Published on: October 29, 2026 at 8:04 am
Peter Parker, whose alter ego is Spider-Man, once received the now famous advice from his Uncle Ben Parker: “With great power comes great responsibility.” Current leaders around the world, in both the public and private sectors, should heed this lesson from the Peter Parker principle. Yet many are only in it for themselves. This has had devastating consequences across many sectors, with the US healthcare industry being a noteworthy example.
Academy of Management Scholar Jeffrey Pfeffer of Stanford University said that it was common for business leaders and politicians alike to take pride in being stewards of their organizations and their countries. However, many current leaders—from Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos to US President Donald Trump—see that idea as obsolete.
“I have no particular insight into what has caused that to happen or how and why this has changed in that direction, but it is a societal problem, because people are entrusted with taking care of their employees, constituents, or stakeholders,” Pfeffer said. “Some people say, ‘With great power comes great responsibility,’ but in today’s world, great power apparently comes with no responsibility.”
The brutal 1988 bidding war for RJR Nabisco exposed the raw, ego-driven excesses of 1980s Wall Street, transforming a corporate struggle into a cautionary tale of institutional greed. By tracing CEO F. Ross Johnson’s initial push to take the food and tobacco giant private, the authors of Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco, Bryan Burrough and John Helyar, chart the descent of American business into an era of hyper-leveraged buyouts and cutthroat corporate raids.
“You can see the effects of that ‘greed is good’ ethos in lots of different places,” Pfeffer said. “I am currently doing a lot of work in the healthcare space, and there is a ton of research suggesting that when a private equity firm buys a physician practice, a hospital, a surgery center, or something similar, two things happen: prices go up and the quality of care goes down—this has been consistently found by researchers.
“The word that leaders should aspire to is stewardship. It is a good word, but it is not particularly original or unique to me,” he said. “The idea that powerful leaders who oversee enormous resources and affect the lives of people ought to be good stewards because they have been given great responsibility is a very old one.
“It needs to make a comeback.”
A sample of Pfeffer’s AOM research findings:
- When Time Is Money, Work Is Stressful
- Returning Favors May Be Less Likely at Work
- Employee Health Benefit Hassles Cost US Businesses Billions
- Thirteen Practices for Managing People
