{"id":10586,"date":"2026-10-29T08:04:34","date_gmt":"2026-10-29T08:04:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aom.org\/today\/?p=10586"},"modified":"2026-10-28T16:08:58","modified_gmt":"2026-10-28T16:08:58","slug":"why-peter-parkers-uncle-ben-is-rolling-over-in-his-grave","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aom.org\/today\/why-peter-parkers-uncle-ben-is-rolling-over-in-his-grave\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Peter Parker\u2019s Uncle Ben Is Rolling over in His Grave"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Daniel Butcher<\/a><\/p>\n

Peter Parker, whose alter ego is Spider-Man, once received the now famous advice from his Uncle Ben Parker: \u201cWith great power comes great responsibility.\u201d 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<\/a> industry being a noteworthy example.<\/p>\n

Academy of Management Scholar Jeffrey Pfeffer<\/a> 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\u2014from Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos to US President Donald Trump<\/a>\u2014see that idea as obsolete.<\/p>\n

\u201cI 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,\u201d Pfeffer said. \u201cSome people say, \u2018With great power comes great responsibility,\u2019 but in today\u2019s world, great power apparently comes with no responsibility.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u2019s initial push to take the food and tobacco giant private, the authors of Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco<\/em>, Bryan Burrough and John Helyar, chart the descent of American business into an era of hyper-leveraged buyouts and cutthroat corporate raids.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can see the effects of that \u2018greed is good\u2019 ethos in lots of different places,\u201d Pfeffer said. \u201cI am currently doing a lot of work in the healthcare<\/a> 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\u2014this has been consistently found by researchers.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe word that leaders should aspire to is stewardship. It is a good word, but it is not particularly original or unique to me,\u201d he said. \u201cThe 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt needs to make a comeback.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A sample of Pfeffer\u2019s AOM research findings:<\/strong><\/p>\n