Summary Of Liberal Arts And The Bottom Line By Lane Wallace

The article “Liberal Arts and The Bottom Line” by Lane Wallace suggests that business executives that are being taught more liberal art based courses will be taught how to be a well-rounded human being. Instead of being all about what Wallace refers to as the bottom line, which can do great harm to the economy and the company’s employees, it is presented that business executives that took liberal arts courses are less concerned about the business bottom line and more about the well-being of the people around them. Wallace’s argument that liberal arts shapes a person into a more well-rounded human being is not effectively supported in the article.

Being a business executive comes with the responsibility of trying to increase its profits.

Firstly, the use of the term “the bottom line,” it is described as “the almighty measure for success” but as a business term it is not thoroughly defined in the article. Without personally looking up the definition it is not clear what that means for a company. It seems like business lingo and if a person is not relatively familiar with this term in the business world it can be confusing to know what a company actually means by using it. This term is used in other ways also outside of the business world that could confuse the meaning when implied as no exceptions or an final outcome. For example, in an argument and a person says “and that’s the bottom line,” it is another way of saying it is the way it is and it nots going to change. While in the business world it has to do with profit, numbers, and total amount of financial accounts, it needs to be expressed more thoroughly throughout the article to make it more clear so the reader can understand why this bottom line is such an important aspect of business. Secondly, discussing the bottom line in this articles starts off with a sarcastic tone expressing the negative effects on how meeting the bottom line can lead to negative impacts on the environment and the employees welfare. Wallace sets up this article to give an impressive case by using the reader’s emotions to see how harsh business executives decisions are and how they affect the community. Wallace also presents that changing the mind sets of business executives might help steer their choices to be more thoughtful and less about the bottom line when liberal art based courses are added to their learning development. Evidence showed that a 10-month program that managers took through a company called Bell Telephone of Pennsylvania that seemed very successful and showed the benefits of adding liberal arts to education. But with