preview

Hubris Argumentative Essay

Satisfactory Essays

If businesses don't evolve, they end up like Atari, Pan Am and Woolworth's, onetime industry leaders that crashed against the rocks of strategy, innovation and competition. So the successful ones aren't shy about borrowing good ideas from others.
Then why is it so hard for the United States to admit its shortcomings and do the same?
Craig Wheeland, a political scientist at Villanova, believes it has something to do with America's innate wariness of government.
"We have a peculiar set of approaches to how government should act in our economy and in our society," he says. "That creates a barrier to looking at best practices and borrowing ideas. The business world doesn't think like that. They look at ideas that seem to solve problems and test them out, and if they don't work, they change. They're more pragmatic." …show more content…

He describes the problem in one word: Hubris.
"Some interest in what's happening elsewhere and how other people are doing this would benefit us enormously," he says. "I think a little less hubris and a little more focus ... would do us a lot of good."
But Gerry Keim, a management professor at Arizona State University, isn't quite so harsh.
"We're not exceptional in all categories, [but] we're clearly exceptional in some categories, and I think we should be proud of that," he says, mentioning America's entrepreneurial spirit as an

Get Access