Government, many executives are quick to assert, would benefit if it were run more like a business. But can business learn anything from the way government manages a wide variety of stakeholders in a globalizing world? A great deal, thinks Richard Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations. Today, as global companies joust on the international playing field, Haass sees increasing similarities between the management challenges facing business and government.
Business now constantly finds itself addressing new social and political demands. Social activists and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are taking a place, alongside governments, as de facto regulators of business. The savviest executives, says Haass, are those who understand the nuances of government and how to balance the concerns of broad, highly varied political and social constituencies.
A veteran foreign-policy expert, Haass, 56, is no stranger to the business world—he wrote a book on management, The Bureaucratic Entrepreneur: How to Be Effective in Any Unruly Organization.1 After teaching management at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, he served as special assistant to President George H. W. Bush and as senior director for Near East and South Asian affairs on the National Security Council. Haass also...