Preface

In September 1993, the Harvard Business Review and the Harvard Business School Alumni office invited me to conduct a survey of the Class of '49. The purpose of the survey: to develop an appraisal of the class by means of a series of interviews with a representative cross section. This report presents the findings of the survey.[1]

In the survey, we asked members of the class to reflect on their lives and business careers, drawing them out on such matters as how they had juggled their careers and family/community commitments, what they identified as their major accomplishments, whether and how they had changed their values and outlook over the long 45 year time span since they received their MBA's, whether or not they had retired and how they feel about retirement, how they had benefited from their B-School education, how they would advise young people just starting their business careers and how optimistic or pessimistic they were about the nation's future.

One use for the survey is to serve as raw material for a Harvard Business Review article. The editors of the Review invited the distinguished business historian and B-School faculty member, Richard Tedlow, to coauthor (with me) an article based on the survey that focuses sharply on the theme of success. The Class of '49 is acknowledged to be one of the School's most successful, perhaps the most successful class ever to have graduated. If this class symbolizes success in America, what does a closer look at the class tell us about the nature of success? This was the question the editors were most interested in having the survey illuminate.

Another use for the survey is to serve as a contribution to business and social history, especially in providing materials for class instruction. The members of the Class of '49 entered their careers at the very start of the post World War II economic boom. Indeed, they were instrumental in building the postwar economic engine that powered the greatest burst of global economic growth the world has ever known. In Professor Tedlow's view, capturing the attitudes, values and reflections of this class in their own words can contribute enduring insights to students for generations to come. With this use in mind, almost all of the interviews were audio-taped (just a few class members refused). The tapes are on file with Professor Tedlow, available for scholarly use.

How the study was conducted. I am pleased to report a high level of participation in the survey. At the outset, it was decided that the survey should include not only those class members who attend reunions and respond to solicitations, but also those who are less active so that it would represent the views of the class as a whole. With this objective in mind, we agreed on a sample size of almost one out of five class members, to be selected at random from the full class membership list.

In September 1993, we met with the class Steering Committee and received their approval for the survey. Subsequently, the Committee sent letters to all 531 class members alerting them to the possibility that they might be selected for the survey. Undoubtedly, this letter greatly improved class member receptivity to the survey. The interview guide was then submitted to HBR editor Joel Kurtzman for his approval, who followed up the Steering Committee letter with his own letter to those class members who had been selected through a random process for the interview.

The interview was pretested in October 1993 with a half dozen class members, revised in the light of the pretest, and appointments were made by phone with all class members selected for the interview. Subsequently, 100 formal interviews were completed between October 25 and December 7, 1993.

The interviews were conducted by telephone. The average length of the interview was 90 minutes, three times the average for standard telephone interviews. This is a measure of the high level of interest class members had in participating. The reason for the exceptional length of the interview was that most of the questions are open-ended, giving class members the opportunity to answer them as they wish rather than forcing their answers into preexisting categories. The blend of closed-ended questions to provide statistics and open-ended questions for self-expression yield rich and abundant insights.

To insure a good mix of interviewers (it is always prudent to have a number of different interviewers conduct this kind of survey), five highly experienced professionals conducted the interviews: Hazel and Michael Kahan of Hazel Kahan Research; and Ken Dutter, Lee Adair and William Adair of Executive Focus, Inc. Dr. Kahan also helped to design the interview guide and interpret the findings.

In January and February 1994, the interviews were read, abstracted, coded, tabulated, and analyzed. Since the study was designed to capture the sentiments of class members in their own words, it was necessary to cull extensive quotes in response to every open ended question. This process of coding, tabulating and abstracting quotes was done by Mary K. Yankelovich and Kathy Kilfara of MK Research who also prepared the statistical tables and charts for the HBR article and final report. Extended quotes and tabulations of findings were sent to Richard Tedlow as background for his participation in co-authoring the HBR article. I was responsible for overall analysis, interpretation and preparation of report and article drafts.

Organization of the Report. The report is organized in two parts -- this Executive Summary and The Research Report. The Executive Summary includes both a brief Highlights of Findings section and an edited version of the article, "Fun, Family and Ethics: The Class of '49's Real Meaning of Success," submitted to the editors of the HBR. In the interests of avoiding excessive repetition, findings elaborated in the HBR article are merely mentioned in the Highlights.

The Research Report under separate cover presents the findings for every question in the survey: both statistical counts and extensive verbatim quotes from the interviews. It is, therefore, necessarily a long document. But for those who want to capture the full flavor of the language and thought processes of class members, the length and detail are indispensable. Few readers will plow their way through every word of the Research Report, but I strongly recommend that whenever readers find themselves intrigued by a particular finding in the Highlights of Findings section or the article, they refer to the relevant questions and read the detailed statistics and quotations.

Author's Observation. I believe this study has particular value as history. Read in its entirely, it offers a compelling overview of an important generation of business men in American history at a moment in their lives when most are withdrawing from active economic participation and are perhaps more self-reflective than ever before. (It is unfortunate that there were no women in the class.)

In their answers to the survey questions, they look back at an astonishing half century of social and economic change. In that period they changed America and America changed them. Most of them do not think they personally have changed very much over the past four and a half decades, perhaps because ~e tempo of change was imperceptible. But from my perspective as a social scientist, I see an extraordinary range of change, especially in what success means to them now, in contrast to what it meant to them 45 years ago.

The members of the Class of '49 personify a value orientation that is important to document because it is disappearing rapidly from American life. These men were brought up in a manner that caused them to internalize a deep sense of personal responsibility -- to themselves, their families, their communities. Obligation and responsibility are as automatic to them as breathing. They take it for granted that this inner sense of responsibility requires hard work, self sacrifice, independence and care taking of others.

At this stage of their lives most now feel free to enjoy the fruits of their hard work. In the spirit of the times, they also counsel others to enjoy their work and business careers. But the record of their lives tells another story, one in which responsibility to work and family were far more important than enjoyment and self-satisfaction. In today's America, especially among younger generations, the automatic assumption of responsibility has been diluted by an emphasis on individual rights. My firm's tracking surveys show that the majority of Americans today are far more preoccupied with their rights than with their responsibilities, and that a massive imbalance between the two is causing Americans to fear that we are living in a period of ethical decline.

Fortunately, there are signs that the current imbalance between rights and responsibilities is causing enough concern among thoughtful citizens that the future may see an effort by the society to restore the balance. This survey of a generation of American men who struggled all of their adult lives to maintain the balance, and who largely succeeded in doing so, can help to lead the way.

Daniel Yankelovich

 

Highlights of Findings

Fun, Family and Ethics:The Class of '49's Real Meaning of Success