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From Higher Aims to Hired Hands: The Social Transformation of American Business Schools and the Unfulfilled Promise of Management As A Profession
Abstract
Is management a profession? Should it be? Can it be? This major work of social and intellectual history reveals how such questions have driven business education and shaped American management and society for more than a century. The book is also a call for reform. Rakesh Khurana shows that university-based business schools were founded to train a professional class of managers in the mold of doctors and lawyers but have effectively retreated from that goal, leaving a gaping moral hole at the center of business education and perhaps in management itself. Khurana begins in the late nineteenth century, when members of an emerging managerial elite, seeking social status to match the wealth and power they had accrued, began working with major universities to establish graduate business education programs paralleling those for medicine and law. Constituting business as a profession, however, required codifying the knowledge relevant for practitioners and developing enforceable standards of conduct. Khurana, drawing on a rich set of archival material from business schools, foundations, and academic associations, traces how business educators confronted these challenges with varying strategies during the Progressive era and the Depression, the postwar boom years, and recent decades of freewheeling capitalism. Today, Khurana argues, business schools have largely capitulated in the battle for professionalism and have become merely purveyors of a product, the MBA, with students treated as consumers. Professional and moral ideals that once animated and inspired business schools have been conquered by a perspective that managers are merely agents of shareholders, beholden only to the cause of share profits. According to Khurana, we should not thus be surprised at the rise of corporate malfeasance. The time has come, he concludes, to rejuvenate intellectually and morally the training of our future business leaders.
... Importantly, the dominant logic in business education has changed over time and in a manner that encourages greater risk-taking. Financial economics, which features agency theory as a predominant paradigm, became an increasingly dominant discipline in business schools during the 1980s (Khurana 2007;Fourcade and Khurana 2013). Agency theory posits that there is a fundamental misalignment of interests between managers and shareholders, with managers being more risk-averse than shareholders (Jensen and Meckling 1976). ...
... Managers are tempted to avoid risks that might lead to instability, thereby forgoing opportunities to maximize shareholder wealth (Amihud and Lev 1981;Jensen 1993). In MBA classrooms and media outlets, financial economists touting agency theory principles sought to promote the virtue of taking more risks to expand value for shareholders (Khurana 2007;Dobbin and Jung 2010). ...
... Those who earned an MBA in the 1970s or after the 1970s showed greater risk appetite than those who earned an MBA before the 1970s. Later cohorts were more likely to attend MBA programs after the rise of agency theory in business education (Khurana 2007). 7. The results barely change when all time-varying control variables in Table 2 are included. ...
Understanding the causes and consequences of corporate risk-taking has remained a crucial topic for organizational scholars. Using the case of U.S. banks and one dimension of their risk-taking behavior around the 2008 financial crisis, we offer a theory of how the diverse experiences of corporate leaders can shape their risk-taking behavior. Building on the imprinting literature, we theorize how different types of experiences that bank CEOs had in the past interact to shape current risk-taking behavior, resulting in risk moderation under crisis conditions. We focus on two imprinting experiences with particular relevance for bank CEOs’ risk-taking behavior—MBA education and past crisis experience. We argue that the latter played a pronounced role during the crisis because of greater imprint-environment fit. Our analysis using data from 170 large banks between 2001 and 2019 shows that bank CEOs’ firsthand experience of a prior banking crisis not only directly tempered bank risk-taking but also did so indirectly by limiting the risk-taking tendencies of CEOs with an MBA, particularly during the crisis period. Our study contributes to the sociological literature about organizational risk-taking by emphasizing the crucial role of organizational leaders’ biographies and exploring how earlier institutional conditions shape their risk-taking behavior later.
... To a large extent, management education takes place within a widely accepted agreement about the role of business and other productive organizations in society, the role consumption plays in the lives of consumers, acceptable (or inevitable) patterns of income and wealth distribution, and the appropriate role of managers and employees in organizations. With few exceptions, this paradigm is accepted by business schools and guides their teaching and research (Khurana, 2007; Business-Managed Democracy, n.d). ...
... Those suggestions have been influential in altering how business schools attempt to contribute to training individuals to be successful in that paradigm, regardless of whether or not those changes are desirable (as noted below.) Pfeffer & Fong (2002, Mintzberg (2004), Bennis & O'Toole (2005), Ghoshal (2005), Khurana (2007), and other scholars have provided powerful critiques of how well, or perhaps how poorly, current business and management education does its job within the existing paradigm and how it needs to evolve to continue to do so (e.g., Thomas, Lee, Thomas, & Wilson, 2012). But while some of those authors and others offering similar traditional critiques may hold very grave concerns about the existing for-profit-business paradigm, their critiques in what we call the traditional vein do not challenge the essence of that system. ...
... However, while seeing the purpose of managing as creating, and leaving behind, stronger organizations rather than simply seeking to maximize profits or shareholder wealth, the core of Mintzberg's work does not challenge the fundamental nature of business organizations nor the production-consumption-distribution system they co-create with the rest of society. Khurana (2007) charts the development of management education in American business schools through three phases. The first phase, which he labels "professionalization," began with the creation of business schools within the university in the latter years of the 19 th century, when wealthy industrialists sought to give back to society and garner social acceptance while providing for the future of their companies. ...
... Although there is no simplistic causal relation between the prescriptions inherent in organization and management theories disseminated via business schools, on the one hand, and managers and leaders' practical exercise of judgment, on the other hand, it would also be misleading to assume that there is a no relation at all. In particular, the economics-based governance and agency models that came to proliferate from the 1980s onward, with business schools as the key disseminators (Khurana, 2010), are deemed to have had remarkably damaging effects for how managers exercise judgment (Dobbin & Jung, 2010;Ghoshal, 2005;Stout, 2014). The prevalence and propagation of these economics-based models and theories has had a number of pernicious effects (Ghoshal, 2005;Stout, 2012) including a gradual undermining and mistrust of managers' ability to act responsibly and exercise judgment in a host of organizational settings (Donaldson, 2002;Muller, 2018). ...
... 516-517). Fueling these efforts were two reports issued in 1959 by the Ford Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation, respectively (Khurana, 2010;Waring, 1991;Wren, 2005). In these reports, a strong case was made for the necessity of dispensing with preexisting conceptualizations and understandings of organizational analysis and business school education. ...
... While these developments did provoke concerns and critiques, their proponents nevertheless maintained a strong belief in the possibility of turning management and business school education from a "wasteland of vocationalism into a science based profession," as Herbert Simon memorably expressed it (quoted in Freedman, 2015, p. 517). Such a stance was exacerbated in the 1970s and 1980s, when a new cluster of economically inspired organization theories made rapid forays into, and eventually became dominant within, business schools (Ghoshal, 2005;Khurana, 2010). Of major significance in this regard was "agency theory," a strand of theorizing initiated by a group of economists at The University of Chicago (Jensen, 1983;Jensen & Meckling, 1976; see also Khurana, 2010, pp. ...
... From the 19th century until the mid-20th century, the core mission of (US-American) business schools, and eventually their key source of legitimacy, was to facilitate the professionalization of management, which implied an orientation toward (managerial) practice (Khurana, 2007). 2 Take the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. ...
... The Ford Foundation was at the center of this movement. Its direct involvement, while spanning only a brief period from the 1950s until the early 1960s, was of critical importance (Augier & March, 2011;Khurana, 2007;Starkey & Tiratsoo, 2007). ...
... Under the impression of a changing discursive landscape, business schools initiated lasting reforms in the 1960s and 1970s (Khurana, 2007). Increasingly caring about "respectability and approval on their campuses" (Pfeffer & Fong, 2002, p. 92), science-oriented business schools turned to new hiring practices, implemented scientific standards in research and teaching, and reassessed their traditional forms of evaluation. ...
Organizational sociology and organization studies have a long history together, while also sharing a proclivity to self-diagnose crises. Instead of taking these assessments at face value, this paper treats them as an object of study, asking what conditions have fueled them. In the case of organizational sociology, there are indications of a connection between rising levels of discontent and community building: self-identified organizational sociologists have progressively withdrawn from general debates in the discipline and turned their attention to organization studies, which, they suspect, has seen dramatic levels of growth at their expense. Organization studies, on the other hand, are still haunted by "a Faustian bargain": leaning heavily on the authority of the social sciences, business school faculty were able to facilitate the emergence of a scholarly field of practice dedicated to the study of organizations, which they control. However, in doing so, they also set organization studies on a path of continued dependence on knowledge produced elsewhere: notably, in by university disciplines such as sociology.
... Après les sciences fondamentales, les fondations Carnegie et Rockefeller décidèrent d'élargir à partir des années 1930 leur champ d'action, en appliquant le même modus operandi, mais en ciblant cette fois les sciences humaines et sociales et en particulier le management. Cet engagement dans le champ du management provenait d'un constat documenté, et largement partagé, d'une grande inertie de la part de l'American Assembly of Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) 7 qui ne parvenait pas à engager les réformes pédagogiques jugées 5. Comme le rapporte Khurana (2010), entre 1880 et 1939, c'est près de 680 millions de dollars qui ont été versés par des fondations privées à des institutions de l'enseignement supérieur américain. 6. Abraham Flexner, un universitaire américain, a publié en 1908 un ouvrage critique sur le système éducatif américain, ce qui a conduit la fondation Carnegie à faire appel à lui pour rédiger le rapport éponyme. ...
... Née en 1917, peu de temps après la création des premières écoles à la fin du XIX e et au début du XX e siècle, l'AACSB avait (et a toujours) pour mission de fédérer les doyens des écoles de management afin d'engager des réformes et de rehausser le contenu des enseignements. Tandis que dans les années 1920, l'enseignement supérieur du management se développait rapidement mais de façon inégale à travers les États-Unis, l'AACSB conduisit à partir de cette période différentes études qui établirent un constat de faiblesse sur le contenu des enseignements et le niveau des recherches menées dans les écoles (Khurana, 2010). Ces faiblesses portaient notamment sur l'incapacité des écoles de management à instiller aux futurs managers un sens des responsabilités. ...
... Ces faiblesses portaient notamment sur l'incapacité des écoles de management à instiller aux futurs managers un sens des responsabilités. L'absence d'activités de recherche et la focalisation des enseignements sur des questions opérationnelles furent également identifiées comme problématiques face à un besoin de mieux comprendre le fonctionnement des organisations (Khurana, 2010). Le niveau des étudiants qui intégraient les écoles de management fut jugé inférieur à celui des étudiants des autres disciplines. ...
Le Shift Project a récemment interpellé les différentes structures de l’enseignement supérieur de gestion afin qu’elles accroissent leur engagement en matière de transition écologique et énergétique. Afin de déterminer si cet appel à la réforme peut aboutir, nous évaluons les propositions du Shift Project à l’aune de celles mises en œuvre par la fondation Ford aux États-Unis dans les années 1950/1960. Ce détour historique et analytique permet de dégager trois principes d’action susceptibles de conduire à une meilleure intégration des enjeux écologiques et énergétiques. Elle permet également de comprendre que la Fnege est susceptible de jouer un rôle pivot dans cette dynamique de transition.
... Our research was stimulated by this juxtaposition between the need for skilled leadership teams that can implement sustainable business models versus current difficulties CEOs have in finding them. The historical view of management education as the formal agent for developing managerial talent (Khurana, 2007) led to our research question: How well is management education preparing future leaders to understand, advocate for, and implement sustainability so that transformational change can occur? Even though a growing body of literature identifies sustainability as an increasingly important management education topic (Collins & Kearins, 2010;Figueiró & Raufflet, 2015;Sharma & Hart, 2014;Weybrecht, 2013Weybrecht, , 2016, few existing studies concurrently evaluate MBA students' perceptions on 1) the links between sustainability practice and corporate performance; 2) the barriers to embedding sustainability in their current job; 3) the effects of being a sustainability advocate on their career; and 4) how well their MBA programs foster leadership perspectives and skills related to sustainability. ...
... The well-established mission of business schools and programs is to develop human capital for effectively managing organizations (Grey, 2002;Khurana, 2007;Muff, Dyllick, Drewell, North, Shrivastava, & Haertle, 2013). As such, just as sustainability has crept into corporate operations and strategy, so too has it become increasingly important in management education (Wankel & Stoner, 2009;Weybrecht, 2016), although it still faces challenges (Figueiró & Raufflet, 2015). ...
... Shareholderism is rooted in the mid-1970s economic crisis and the critique of inefficient managerial elites that followed in the aftermath of the depression. The problem of managers supposedly prioritizing their own interests over those of the shareholders (the principal-agent problem, Jensen and Meckling 1976) was proposed as a solution that soon came to redefine the purpose of modern corporations and their management -tying management's incentives directly to share prices (Khurana 2007). Under shareholderistic ideals, financial markets operate efficiently with perfect information and transparency. ...
... Under shareholderistic ideals, financial markets operate efficiently with perfect information and transparency. Managers are still needed; however, their role is defined as being the 'hired hand' (Khurana 2007) of the shareholders, whose value (e.g. stock price) is to be maximized. Refined in the 1980s (Ezzamel, Willmott, and Worthington 2008), the idea of modern shareholderism aligns with neoliberal principles by emphasizing the guiding role of financial markets and prioritizing the interests of owners and investors ('Wall Street') over those of everyday consumers ('Main Street'). ...
... The model of the MBA adopted wholesale by China in the 1980s has also been criticised by Western academics (Grey & French, 1996;Pfeffer & Fong, 2002;Mintzberg, 2004;Chia, 2005;Khurana, 2007;Pfeffer, 2005;Spender, 2005;Stoten, 2018). Before turning to China-specific challenges, it is worth briefly considering these objections. ...
... The first turns on both the utility of the knowledge provided, which tends to be 'scientific' rather than practical (Mintzberg, 2004;Leavitt, 1989), and the way in which that knowledge is delivered in discrete 'silos' rather than in a more realistic cross-disciplinary manner (Gosling & Mintzberg, 2004;Latham et al., 2004;Navarro, 2008). Second, MBA programmes are again charged with fostering 'ethically questionable values and practices' through their focus on 'market capitalism' (Khurana, 2007), 'instrumentalism' (Sturdy & Gabriel, 2000), and 'managerialism' combined with 'turbo-capitalism' (Grey, 2002). The behaviour of managers and business leaders during the 2008 financial crash has put an even greater focus on ethical behaviour and social responsibility (Jarvis & Logue, 2016). ...
This chapter investigates management education in China, with a specific focus on MBA programmes. The chapter begins by briefly considering the economic context for management development in China before turning to a review of the literature on the MBA, both in America, the original source of the Chinese model, and in China itself. Next is an assessment of the MBA offerings from ten highly ranked Chinese institutions against the findings from the review. The chapter then analyses experiments in management development driven by Chinese culture at Fotile, a successful kitchenware company, and The Hupan University set up by Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba and his colleagues (now known as Hupan Enterpreneurship Research Center). The chapter also explores the views and experiences of four senior Chinese managers working in foreign-invested enterprises. The chapter concludes by arguing that the MBA is best understood as a ‘structured field’ made up of Chinese and foreign businesses and their employees, actual and potential, responding in turn to their own environments.
... Movido por teorizações organizacionais nortistas focadas em integração, interdependência e equilíbrio orgânico de sistemas sociais (Reed, 2006, p. 31) e por diálogos progressistas com escolas e acadêmicos do sul e do leste geográficos, o programa mobiliza ideias colonial/racial-blind de desenvolvimento internacional via educação multicultural em uma indústria de escolas colonizada pela governança neoliberal estadunidense que despossui desenvolvedores, desenvolvimentos e organizações de desenvolvimentos enquanto institucionaliza a matriz gerencialista anticomunismo, antipretitude e anti-indigenismo como a única opção de desenvolvimento em escala global (Jenkins & Leroy, 2021). Impulsionado por desenvolvimentos sulistas, o PMG busca recuperar, renovar e expandir a tradição nortista de relações humanas em organizações e gestão desmantelada nos anos 1970 pela profissionalização cientificista/positivista da educação gerencialista liderada pelos EUA em resposta radical ao período 1950-1960 reumanizante (Khurana, 2007). ...
Resumo Compartilho com você, leitor, uma pesquisa-ação sobre um projeto de aprendizagem-ação construído em uma organização governamental sediada no Brasil, em cooperação com uma escola de administração, na qual tentamos desfazer dinâmicas da gerencialização recolonizante do campo da administração de desenvolvimento (AD) pelo campo da gestão governado pelo projeto de neoliberalismo como a única opção de desenvolvimento global. A gerencialização de desenvolvimentos sulistas escuros administrados que ressurgem nos anos 2000 com mais importância do que nas décadas 1950-1960 de descolonizações no Sul e no Norte reafirma binarismos civilizacionais da matriz colonial/racial do poder que diferenciam humanos e sub-humanos para combater a patologia do desenvolvimento reverso supostamente internalizada por corpos escuros sulistas como o meu. Por meio de um diálogo entre epistemes sulistas submersas que desafiam binarismos desumanizantes com epistemologias-ação nortistas, abraço a pespectiva de crescente população de condenados da terra e mulheres de cor para reaprendemos AD e epistemologias-ação como corpos escuros parcialmente controlados pela universidade neoliberal creolizante. Com a práxis de decolonizar mais e recolonizar menos, reaprendemos e compartilhamos o agir-refletir-agir do desfazimento da expansão gerencialista do capital colonial/racial e de cumplicidades correspondentes dentro e em torno de nossos corpos sulistas.
... This governance disempowers developers and development organizations while universalizing the managerialist matrix of anti-communism, anti-Blackness, and anti-Indigenism policies as the only development model on a global scale (Jenkins & Leroy, 2021). Inspired by Southern developments and Northern organizational theories focused on integration, interdependence, and the organic balance of social systems (Reed, 2006, p. 31), PMG's intellectual founders aim to recover, renew, and expand the human relations tradition in organizations and management which was dismantled in the 1970s by the US-led scientific/positivist professionalization of management education, in radical backlash against the rehumanizing movements of the 1950s-1960s (Khurana, 2007). ...
This article presents action research about an action learning project developed in a government organization based in Brazil in cooperation with a business school. The project sought to undo the dynamics of the recolonizing managerialization of the field of development administration (DA) by the field of management ruled by the US-led project of neoliberalism as the only option for global development. The managerialization of southern dark administered developments that resurfaced in the 2000s with more importance than in the decolonizing and liberating 1950s-1960s reaffirms civilizational binarisms of racial/colonial capital, which differentiate humans and subhumans to combat the pathology of reverse development supposedly internalized by dark southern bodies. Through a dialogue between submerged Southern epistemes that challenge dehumanizing binaries with Northern action-epistemologies, this study embraces the perspective of a growing population of the wretched of the earth and women of color so that we relearn AD and action-epistemologies as dark bodies partially controlled by the neoliberal creolizing university. With the praxis of decolonizing more and recolonizing less, we learn and share the acting-reflecting-acting of undoing the managerialist expansion of colonial/racial capital and corresponding complicities within and around our dark/light bodies.
... uu. para resolver la inserción de las escuelas de negocios en el campo de la educación superior universitaria(Khurana, 2007).14 La gubernamentalidad neoliberal en la cual se sostiene la cultura de la auditoría, limita las posibilidades para las conductas de las instituciones de educación superior toda vez que, como lo explicaraDeleuze (2006), las prácticas de control se sitúan no en las instituciones de educación sino en las agencias externas a esta y, como sucede con las clasificaciones, la más de las veces ajenas al campo educativo propiamente dicho. ...
Este documento, que hace parte del proyecto de investigación indicado al pie, se propone problematizar las formas en las que el discurso de la nueva normalidad acentúa la intervención de la cultura de la auditoría en el campo discursivo de la universidad. Se analiza cómo se desarrolla su régimen de circulación y cómo opera como condición de posibilidad para el actual proceso de empresarialización del campo discursivo de la universidad, que tiene en el despliegue de la cultura de la auditoría uno de sus engranajes. A este respecto, desde un posicionamiento en la teoría del discurso de la escuela de Essex se indican algunos significantes de la época, en particular sus articulaciones, luego se avanza en la discusión de sus efectos de significación en el campo discursivo de la universidad donde emplazan prácticas procedentes del orden social neoliberal.
... Practice in the field of OP has been dominated by the scientific management approach, and we still seem not to have learned the lessons forensically charted by Khurana (2010) in his book From Higher aims to Hired Hands -begging the question of whether we risk becoming just the servants of industry. The call for more evidence-based practice (e.g. ...
Up until recently, there has been a trend to artificially separate the history of scientific development from the activities or the ‘doing’ of psychology. However, a movement away from a history of personalities towards a history of ideas in psychology is evident in recent decades. Thus, attempting to write a chronological or ‘great person’ history of organisational psychology has limited value in that it runs the risk of suggesting a neat and linear progression that reveals little of the different forces that have shaped the development of the field. Thus, in the present paper, I will examine some of the key landmarks in the field and reflect on the key historical factors informing our approach to practice and research in occupational and organisational psychology (OP). This selective review of the field is not intended to be exhaustive, but rather the challenge is to reflect on the two major historical narratives that have shaped the field of OP; namely the scientific management and humanistic. These two narratives have valorised different approaches to the research and practice in OP. The paper delineates how they have been contradictory and/or unconnected, and how this intellectual zoo has had deleterious effects on the development of OP. The scientific management tradition has dehumanised and lessened the role of both the individual and context resulting in both reductive research and practice. Conversely, the humanistic approach, rooted in ethics and social justice, has been allowed to either drift towards other disciplines (e.g. sociology, philosophy) or marginalised to the edges of OP. This paper is a call for us to inject our intellectual history directly into the study of OP.
... Este conocimiento sistematizado se trasladó para su socialización, de la fábrica a las escuelas y universidades en un proceso de exoeducación que es propiamiente moderno. Con el tiempo, esto dio lugar a la creación de las escuelas de negocios (Khurana, 2007). ...
Analizamos en este artículo el papel que juega el imaginario de los jóvenes de la generación Z en sus procesos de educación formal y en el aprendizaje profesional. Para este análisis trabajamos con estudiantes de entre 18 y 25 años de México y Francia. Concretamente con mexicanos de diferentes centros universitarios de una universidad pública del Estado de Jalisco, y franceses de instituciones equivalentes en la región parisina que estudian carreras relacionadas con las ciencias administrativas. Buscamos que el análisis comparativo tuviera sentido correlacional, que los jóvenes participantes, además de la edad, tuvieran condiciones socioeconómicas y accesos culturales relativamente semejantes. Se asumen desde un inicio las diferencias existentes en los marcos institucionales y contextuales en general, sin embargo, la intención explícita era concentrarnos en las coincidencias que pudiéramos atribuir a la generación de estudio, y las características asumidas como globales de la misma. El presente estudio consta de dos fases principales: en la primera se emplearon entrevistas semiestructuradas a modo de recolección de datos y, en la segunda, se analizó la información obtenida, con el fin de identificar patrones y tendencias en las respuestas de los participantes. De esta manera, logramos caracterizar el imaginario
social de la generación Z vinculado al mundo del trabajo, y sus constantes y sistemáticas dudas sobre las instituciones y su correlación con la obtención de un buen empleo. De manera general, el estudio se inscribe en el análisis de los procesos identitarios de las generaciones, y el peso que el imaginario y las instituciones tienen en estos.
... The late 20th century witnessed a shift toward prioritizing shareholder value, a perspective championed by Milton Friedman (1970), who famously asserted that 'The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits'. University-based business schools played a foundational role in this transition, as argued by Rakesh Khurana (2010), by emphasizing the self-interested assumptions of neoclassical economics in their curriculum, including the principles of agency theory (Jensen and Meckling 2019) in the governance of corporations, stressing the alignment of manager incentives with shareholder goals. ...
... Experts do not often possess the highest hierarchical authority in their organizations. While there are arguably experts in management at the helm, scholars do not agree on how to determine who is a management expert, whether management counts as an expertise, or what type of expertise it is (e.g., Mintzberg, 2004;Bennis & Toole, 2005;Khurana, 2007;Üsdiken, Kipping & Engwall, 2021). Even if top executives were to be considered management experts, they would still rely heavily on other experts who lead the organization's various units and departments, as well as 22 the technicians, engineers, scientists, accountants, and lawyers with whom they must establish a common language in order to engage in decision-making. ...
Deliberative democracy is a prominent political approach that is increasingly attracting the interest of management scholars. While many deliberative democracy scholars acknowledge that expertise improves the epistemic quality of deliberation, some have recognized that experts can become “problematic participants” in deliberations. Through an analysis of Henrik Ibsen’s play An Enemy of the People, I discuss four difficulties of including expertise in public deliberation: manipulations in the deliberative setting; exploitation of the vulnerability of experts; disregard for the limitations of expertise; and inability to translate and enroll. I also argue that the play’s ending leads readers to question the practicality of expert withdrawal. Furthermore, characters in the play suggest two other possibilities for overcoming the obstacles associated with expertise: “epistocracy” and finding new ways to increase deliberation and participation. To advance this latter option, I call for a bidirectional view of translation, following scholars in both deliberative democracy and science and technology studies, and underscore the complexities of building trust when boundary crossing between expertise and non-expertise. These insights enrich the stream of management studies that explores deliberative democracy and reinforce recent claims that management scholars should be more involved in the public sphere.
... The very same weaknesses were under scrutiny by many scholars. The criticism on MBA education and management education in general, rooted in the work of two highly distinguished gurus like Rakesh Khurana (2002Khurana ( , 2007 and Henry , diffused very quickly and questioned the value of management education for today's managerial job. Despite its lasting reputation, the contributions academia provides to the corporate world is less and less clear. ...
... Este conocimiento sistematizado se trasladó para su socialización, de la fábrica a las escuelas y universidades en un proceso de exoeducación que es propiamiente moderno. Con el tiempo, esto dio lugar a la creación de las escuelas de negocios (Khurana, 2007). ...
Analizamos en este artículo el papel que juega el imaginario de los jóvenes de la generación Z en sus procesos de educación formal y en el aprendizaje profesional. Para este análisis trabajamos con estudiantes de entre 18 y 25 años de México y Francia. Concretamente con mexicanos de diferentes centros universitarios de una universidad región parisina que estudian carreras relacionadas con las ciencias administrativas. Buscamos que el análisis comparativo tuviera sentido correlacional, que los jóvenes participantes, además de la edad, tuvieran condiciones socioeconómicas y accesos culturales relativamente semejantes. Se asumen desde un inicio las diferencias existentes en los marcos institucionales y contextuales en general, sin embargo, la intención explícita era concentrarnos en las coincidencias que pudiéramos atribuir a la generación de estudio, y las características asumidas como globales de la misma. El presente estudio consta de dos fases principales: en la primera se emplearon entrevistas semiestructuradas a modo de recolección de datos y, en la segunda, se analizó la información obtenida, con el fin de identificar patrones y tendencias en las respuestas de los participantes. De esta manera, logramos caracterizar el imaginario social de la generación Z vinculado al mundo del trabajo, y sus constantes y sistemáticas dudas sobre las instituciones y su correlación con la obtención de un buen empleo. De manera general, el estudio se inscribe en el análisis de los procesos identitarios de las generaciones, y el peso que el imaginario y las instituciones tienen en estos.
... For the academic world, this period presented many scholars with both an existential challenge and a moral responsibility on the relevance of our research in addressing real-world problems. We resonated strongly with the philosophy of responsible research to address societal challenges and real-world problems, as advocated by the responsible research network (c.f., George, Howard-Grenville, Joshi, & Tihanyi, 2016;Khurana, 2010;Tsui, 2013Tsui, , 2016Tsui & McKiernan, 2022;Van de Ven, 2007;Van De Ven & Johnson, 2006;Wiklund, Wright, & Zahra, 2019, and calls by Responsible Research in Business and Management [Co-founders of RRBM 2017, 2020). We, as two scholars with business research backgrounds, sought to leverage this knowledge and expertise in ways that were beneficial to society. ...
This essay reflects the journey of two business scholars, Stephen X. Zhang and Jiyao Chen, who ventured into mental health research during the COVID-19 pandemic. We experienced first-hand how health sciences have operated their publication systems in ways that uphold scientific standing while addressing real-world problems. In doing so, we found the publishing expectations and norms in health and medical sciences to be vastly different from those in management. This essay further discusses aspects such as the preference for evidence over theory, the relationship with basic sciences, diverse evaluation criteria, encouragement of exploration and replication, timeliness, and democratization and inclusivity of scholarship as concrete steps of responsible research.
... Nearly 20 years ago, Ghoshal (2005) argued that bad management theories are destroying good management practice, and called for management educators to own up to our own role in creating a culture that breeds individualism, competitiveness and wealth maximisation. And Khurana's (2007) seminal work argues that we should not be surprised at the rise of management practice malfeasance as business schools have become purveyors of a product, managerialism, where moral ideals have been eroded. More recently, Breen (2017) notes that the problems afflicting management education are still so deep and widespread that there is a cultural shift in the belief that business schools are harmful to society. ...
In this paper, I take Contu's call for a performative turn in critical management studies into my teaching as a form of intellectual activism praxis. I problematise management learning and education in regard to perpetuating inequalities, and offer a critical management pedagogy as a form of intellectual activism praxis to help infuse management education with a critical and socially conscience awareness. This paper is a reflexive account of the development of my critical management pedagogy and an analytical discussion weaving together the practice of a critical management education with intellectual activism. I argue that business schools need to question the relationship between neoliberal capitalism and our global epoch of crisis and uncertainty, and that as management educators we must consider how we might inform this relationship. In our teaching, we are often complicit in practices and institutions that reproduce economic and environmental exploitation, white supremacy, heteronormativity and colonial and patriarchal relations. Inspired by Freire's critical pedagogy, I developed a critical management module to try engage students' critical and social conscience by providing them with a space to think critically about the social, political and economic phenomena that shape individuals and societies, and the tools to engage in new ways of thinking to challenge systematic inequalities. This paper contributes insight into the context and praxis of developing and delivering this module.
... The scope for any curricular reform in management education is further constricted by neoliberalism's ideological dominance (Colombo, 2023;Fotaki & Prasad, 2015;Morsing & Sauquet, 2011). With an unremitting emphasis on instrumentality, business schools have moved away from serving the wider public good and instead committed themselves to the pursuit of individual, private gains (Khurana, 2007;Wang, Malhotra & Murnighan, 2011). Dedicated to servicing shareholder wealth and ignoring both its social and political contexts and consequences, management educators have failed to prioritize teaching and learning about inequality. ...
... This situation is quite contrary to the context offered to business Frontiers in Psychology 03 frontiersin.org management students, where the business schools try to outshine each other in the extent to which they claim to develop "tomorrow's leaders" (Khurana, 2010). Therefore, it is reasonable to believe that individuals in artistic careers differ from individuals in business management careers in terms of their MTL. ...
Research on personality in leadership indicates that self-selection to leadership careers and artistic careers correlates with diverging personality profiles. People in leadership careers traditionally display lower neuroticism and higher conscientiousness than artistic individuals. In between, there are individuals entering arts management careers. To study these individuals directly, we collected Norwegian data from 91 musical theater students and 102 arts management students and compared with 109 business management students. As expected, conscientiousness and neuroticism predicted artistic careers against business management careers, aligned with the “arts for arts’ sake” myth of artists. Interestingly, arts management careers were not different from artistic careers. They weren’t more motivated to take on leadership roles than performing artists either. However, the Highly Sensitive Person Scale indicated that narrower traits of sensitivity predicted higher levels of motivation to lead in many artists. Some arts and arts management students seem to bring unique talents into forms of leadership particularly useful for artistic organizations. Our findings are discussed in terms of how leadership characteristics operate in the field of art, and the effect of domain-specific characteristics in this setting.
... And with this narrative came a thinly veiled threat that deviation from the tenets of the new theory of the firm that put the interests of shareholders conceived as 'principals', 'owners', or 'residual claimants' at the center of their attention could expose the company and/or the board members to significant reputation loss, derivative suits or legal liability (Du Plessis and Ruehmkorf, 2015). More directly, as managers were increasingly remunerated through stock options and average tenure fell, deviation from this new theory of the firm increasingly affected expectations regarding remuneration, tenure, career progression, and chances of being reappointed or appointed elsewhere (Fourcade and Khurana, 2013;Khurana, 2007). ...
The next decade will be very challenging for practitioners. Emerging systemic risks mean that ‘business as usual’ is not an option.
Growing physical risks lead to a ‘stakeholders at the gates’ scenario and an ‘inevitable policy response’. Not presenting an adequate response amplify these scenarios and lead to increasing volatility for practitioners. Therefore, an orderly transition is in the self-interest of companies, investors and states.
To organize this transition, the EU Framework for Sustainable Finance and Corporate Sustainability (FSFCS) is currently being implemented. This Framework is market-oriented as it seeks to reroute investments to sustainable business models in order to enhance the resilience of the financial system. And it builds on the currently dominant theory of the firm in CG by focusing on the monitoring and engagement capacity of institutional investors and by seeking to enhance transparency, specifically regarding longer term costs and risks associated with business models.
But this Framework and its implementation are also very challenging, both conceptually and practically.
For this reason, practitioners need to be supported during the current implementation of this Framework.
This starts by acknowledging the complexity and pitfalls present in the Framework.
Also, regulators and institutional investors need to stick to the script. ‘Buyer’s regret’ leads to less clarity regarding the regulatory horizon and will only make the situation worse.
And finally, I call for a phase in period. It will take a few years to fully develop the data collection and exchange processes necessary and to build a working set of metrics that enable meaningful comparison within sectors.
The adoption of a strict compliance-driven approach will lead to lead to many unexpected and counterproductive consequences, including significant pressure on SMEs.
For this reason, I call on regulators to communicate that they will put the emphasis on supporting practitioners and organising multi-stakeholder initiatives during a phase-in period.
The relation between systemic risks; the development of new theory and institutions, and a fast changing environment for practitioners together inform Board Agenda 2035.
... Despite these challenges, the call for a more socially conscious business education remains undeniably urgent (Prieto, Phipps, Giugni, & Stott, 2021;Parker, 2018;Khurana, 2007;Spender, 2016). In the face of growing social inequalities, environmental degradation, and economic instability, business schools can leverage their expertise and resources to create positive change. ...
This article explores the pivotal role of an AACSB-accredited business school at a predominantly Black institution in enhancing social mobility and addressing societal challenges through education and community engagement. It delves into how the institution integrates societal impact into its mission and curriculum, demonstrating a commitment to shaping students who are adept in business and conscious of their societal responsibilities. The article emphasizes a shift towards more socially responsive business education by aligning educational programs with real-world social issues. It highlights various initiatives and centers within the school that drive these efforts, fostering a deep connection between academic pursuits and community needs, ultimately enhancing social mobility and societal impact.
... Business Policy as the precursor to the modern field of Strategic Management was grounded in several areas of study. Primary among these were the administrative sciences, which had emerged in the early 20 th century and especially in the decades immediately after World War II from the belief that corporate activity would advance economic development for a better society (Drucker, 1954;Khurana, 2010). ...
The field of Strategy has its origins in Business Policy, which emphasized how firms could pursue important social aims that individuals and governments could not pursue otherwise. This emphasis shifted in the 1970s as the field turned towards economics for insights. Strategy scholars began to address how market‐ and industry‐level considerations, such as performance, price, and competition, were pursued by firms. By applying macro‐level principles and assumptions analogically to a more micro‐level of analysis, strategy scholars inadvertently committed what statisticians call an ecological fallacy. Educators and scholars in the field of Strategy started to accept the constructive consequences of growth, not only for the economy, but for every firm, without considering the implications for society and the natural environment. In so doing, Strategy scholarship inadvertently undermined its very ambition to advance social aims. Our Point advocates for reconsideration of the field's foundations so as to remediate the ecological fallacy and to address the climate and biodiversity crises. The goal is to offer a brighter and more relevant future for our discipline.
... This prompted business schools to hire scholars from other academic fields whose academic research was beyond any reasonable doubt such as psychology, applied mathematics, statistics, and economics. Other changes -like the establishment of formal PhD programs, the foundation of scientific journals whose publication decisions were based on peer reviews, and the grounding of promotional decisions in academia on rigour of scientific publications further contributed to the institutionalization of the logic of basic research in business schools (Khurana 2007). ...
The paper builds on recent approaches in institutional theory on the co-existence of logics to analyse how field actors handle competing institutional demands in their practices. Business schools’ reactions to the critique that their research is not sufficiently relevant is analysed empirically. The logic of research in professional schools has been suggested as an alternative logic which is supposed to produce more relevant research than is possible under the logic that nowadays dominates management science in business schools: the logic of basic research. A contribution is made to institutional theory by showing how these two logics, even though competing, co-exist on the field level. The results of this exploratory study indicate that management scholars contribute to the co-existence of competing logics by separating the social spheres associated with a particular logic from each other, and by symbolically referring to a conflicting demand. The analysis of publication practices suggests decoupling as an underlying mechanism enabling the co-existence of two competing logics in the field of management science.
... Researchers in this field have even gone so far as to claim that major issues in modern management can be attributed, in part, to Master of Business Administration (MBA) degrees. (Mintzberg 2004, Ghoshal 2005, Khurana 2007). Given that thousands of Indians' ambitions, goals, and dreams are connected to management education, this contradiction is a good enough cause to investigate the growth, relevance, and direction of management education in India. ...
To lead the information economy, India's ambitions depend heavily on management education. The availability of skilled workers and the necessary skill sets are critical to the Indian economy's ability to compete globally and create jobs. In order to satisfy the corporate sector's desire for qualified human resources for seamless company growth and development, India has seen a rapid increase in the number of institutions spread across its several States. The objective of this research is to identify the main factors of education which needs to be addressed and improved. The concern is that majority of institutions have been found to struggle for filling their intake of students and for meeting concern of industry regarding low level of employability of students. This is a review paper which have identified main flaws in higher education industry i.e. Low level of student's employability, incompetent faculty employed due to lack of resources and low level of research, obsolete syllabus, lack of industry orientation and foreign collaborations with academic Institutions, Focus on creating job seekers not on job creators, FDI, lack of serious players in education sector etc.
... In light of the world's important development areas, as exemplified by the United Nations SDGs, the biggest challenge today seems to be how to prepare future business leaders for the on-going social and environmental challenges such as globalization, climate change, demographic shifts, inequality, and so forth (Herrmann & Rundshagen, 2020;Parkes et al., 2020;Rusinko, 2010). Recent discussions regarding the future of management education (Khurana, 2007;McDonald, 2017;Pattit et al., 2018), raise the important question how future leaders can acquire the necessary competences to adequately meet these global challenges. ...
The challenges of today’s globalized world are manifold. This relates to challenges to overcome political and social crises around the globe. Solutions to these challenges are urgently needed, more precisely social innovations that help solve these complex global problems. Universities and educational institutions provide places where people can learn to create solutions and social innovations. Future generations need decision-making and problem-solving skills to be able to shape constant change. They also require the skills to work with people of different cultures and religions, to cooperate and to consider different perspectives in their daily work. Therefore students, teachers, lecturers, and researchers alike must understand how they can change and improve the world. They need to learn how to analyse and research social problems and how to create solutions in an entrepreneurial way. Teachers should learn how to design learning programmes or develop holistic learning systems. Finally, they must understand what competencies they and their students need to do this. In this globalized world, universities and educational institutions have a special responsibility to develop and offer learning programmes that help meet global and local challenges, and to do so together with stakeholders from society, politics, and business at both national and international levels. This dissertation therefore addresses the nascent field of social innovation education. It examines the field mainly from the perspective of economics and business education literature with its ramifications in various social science disciplines. It contributes to social entrepreneurship education and its interfaces with global citizenship education, education for sustainable development and management education in general. In addition, social, curricular, and extracurricular learning settings in communities of practice, which include (volunteer) engagement in initiatives, social start-up teams and project teams, serve as the central object of inquiry in this work. The first paper (Chapter 1) asks how a holistic learning system for social innovation education can be designed and anchored institutionally. It describesthe World Citizen School model developed at the Weltethos Institute 1 at the University of Tübingen, which identifies and systematically reflects on the various constitutional aspects of a holistic learning system. The second paper (Chapter 2) examines the principles according to which social-innovative teaching and learning settings can be designed. Using the design-based research approach as a method for the development of the learning design “social innovation camp”, the study describes the theoretical foundations, the process, and their practical relevance on the basis of the inquiry-based learning approach. The third paper investigates what (social) entrepreneurial competencies engaged students develop or can develop through their volunteering (Chapter 3). The subjects of this study are engaged students from different student initiatives and their “communities of practice” in which they engage with different topics and activities. In total, more than 1000 engaged and non-engaged students from 13 different universities were interviewed. The results of the three studies, their strengths and limitations are discussed and reflected on in the context of the young concept of critical entrepreneurship education and critical pedagogy. Finally, practical implications for the further development of social innovation education are formulated. The dissertation contributes on an institutional and didactic level, as well as to the discussion about the transfer function and third mission on a higher education policy and socio-political level of the young concept. All studies were developed within an explorative approach, due to the young concept of social innovation education. The starting point for all considerations and questions arose from the practical implementation and development of the “World Citizen School” model, which began in 2013 at the Weltethos Institute of the University of Tübingen as a "social innovation school" and whose formats have since been tested at other universities. Both the results and the approach are closely linked to the tradition of pragmatism.
... Researchers in this field have even gone so far as to claim that major issues in modern management can be attributed, in part, to Master of Business Administration (MBA) degrees. (Mintzberg 2004, Ghoshal 2005, Khurana 2007). Given that thousands of Indians' ambitions, goals, and dreams are connected to management education, this contradiction is a good enough cause to investigate the growth, relevance, and direction of management education in India. ...
To lead the information economy, India's ambitions depend heavily on management education. The availability of skilled workers and the necessary skill sets are critical to the Indian economy's ability to compete globally and create jobs. In order to satisfy the corporate sector's desire for qualified human resources for seamless company growth and development, India has seen a rapid increase in the number of institutions spread across its several States. The objective of this research is to identify the main factors of education which needs to be addressed and improved. The concern is that majority of institutions have been found to struggle for filling their intake of students and for meeting concern of industry regarding low level of employability of students. This is a review paper which have identified main flaws in higher education industry i.e. Low level of student's employability, incompetent faculty employed due to lack of resources and low level of research, obsolete syllabus, lack of industry orientation and foreign collaborations with academic Institutions, Focus on creating job seekers not on job creators, FDI, lack of serious players in education sector etc.
... Researchers in this field have even gone so far as to claim that major issues in modern management can be attributed, in part, to Master of Business Administration (MBA) degrees. (Mintzberg 2004, Ghoshal 2005, Khurana 2007). Given that thousands of Indians' ambitions, goals, and dreams are connected to management education, this contradiction is a good enough cause to investigate the growth, relevance, and direction of management education in India. ...
To lead the information economy, India's ambitions depend heavily on management education. The availability of skilled workers and the necessary skill sets are critical to the Indian economy's ability to compete globally and create jobs. In order to satisfy the corporate sector's desire for qualified human resources for seamless company growth and development, India has seen a rapid increase in the number of institutions spread across its several States. The objective of this research is to identify the main factors of education which needs to be addressed and improved. The concern is that majority of institutions have been found to struggle for filling their intake of students and for meeting concern of industry regarding low level of employability of students. This is a review paper which have identified main flaws in higher education industry i.e. Low level of student's employability, incompetent faculty employed due to lack of resources and low level of research, obsolete syllabus, lack of industry orientation and foreign collaborations with academic Institutions, Focus on creating job seekers not on job creators, FDI, lack of serious players in education sector etc.
This paper develops a framework comprising a typology of distinct approaches to understanding the development of maverick organization design ideas: design science, life-cycle, dramaturgical and translation. These approaches represent influential but distinct research traditions that vary substantially in their primary assumption of envisioned outcomes and drivers of design knowledge development. Yet, in combination, the insights from these approaches extend research into design theory, as well as provide a broader and more integrative basis for management practitioners to adequately dealing with new maverick organization design ideas.
The Global Financial Crisis arose an increasing interest toward the role of management education in not anticipating the crisis and, to a certain extent, in having provided some ideological premises of the crisis itself (i.e., ruthless look for profit). The critique on business schools and management education becomes prominent during the current never-ending crisis, since it does not seem that management education is able to provide Boards with instruments to face the current challenges. Therefore, management education institutions should make the effort to stop teaching “management as usual” and take into serious account the current crisis and its present and future implications. A complete U-turn of the management narrative is needed: from success stories highlighting the role of brave top managers winning business wars, to stories of survival and resilience where Boards were able to face strong challenges. To do this, cross-disciplinary teaching about the current crisis, how it affects organizations and society in broad terms as well as its new persisting social nature is in high demand. We propose three areas of reflection: (i) the hybridization of management education, calling for a multidisciplinary and not overly specialized content of management knowledge; (ii) the redesign of the relation between Boards and management, rediscovering the role of business schools as avant-garde of multidisciplinary studies about the “managerial phenomenon”; and (iii) the redefinition of management as esprit de finesse. Along with these three lines of thought, we outline the need to re-focus management education on teaching how Boards’ decision-makers should take risks.
Relevance with regard to the social sciences can be presented as a new imposition from external stakeholders and an obligation imposed upon the individual researcher. As an alternative approach, we place relevance in a larger institutional but also historical perspective. Taking the case of two non-traditional locations for the social sciences, we suggest that ‘relevance’ has been actively constitutive of both institutions from the beginning—even if the definition and practice of relevance have been matters of discussion, change and contestation. In what we describe as a process of multi-layering, relevance has over time accumulated new meanings which can co-exist with older concerns. It follows that, even when universities express a commitment to relevance, the enactment of that commitment will be open to competing interpretations. Our account identifies an element of circularity as old issues return in new form. We also note that both the institutional past and organizational complexity can be overlooked within contemporary discussions. Relevance is not a static concept around which critical debate then circulates. Its contextuality, case-specificity and multi-dimensionality make it difficult to impose from above. Nevertheless, the shifting construction of its meaning and enactment provokes questions about the identity and purpose of both the social sciences and the universities.
It is clear that contemporary management education (ME) needs to be transformed to tackle complex social‐ecological crises effectively. However, the concept of transformation is often ill‐defined in the context of ME; while there is also a lack of understanding about what concrete transformation trajectories (also called scaling pathways) are available to management educators. This conceptual paper adopts a social‐ecological systems lens to shed light on the basics of transformation (the why, what, where, when and who); combined with a social innovation lens to provide more clarity on transformation's practical specificity (the how). Rooted in a vision of ME aimed at cultivating social‐ecological flourishing (i.e. a civic ME), this paper integrates different theoretical lenses to assert the possibility of–and outline trajectories for–transformation in the business school. This work contributes to developing a social‐ecological systems approach to ME; while proposing multiple concrete scaling pathways to support a civic transformation of ME. It highlights that ME stands at a crossroads: management educators could passively wait until transformation is forced by the unintended crossing of tipping points; or deliberately and collectively navigate it. Ultimately, transformation emerges from the delicate interplay of structure (i.e. inescapable structural barriers) and agency (i.e. intentional transformative actions).
This article uses a prosopographical methodology and new dataset of 1,558 CEOs from Britain’s largest public companies between 1900 and 2009 to analyze how the role, social background, and career pathways of corporate leaders changed. We have four main findings. First, the designation of CEO only prevailed in the 1990s. Second, the proportion of socially elite CEOs was highest before 1940, but they were not dominant. Third, most CEOs did not have a degree before the 1980s, or professional qualification until the 1990s. Fourth, liberal market reforms in the 1980s were associated with an increase in the likelihood of CEO dismissal by a factor of three.
Extant literature tends to see Homo academicus as a full-time, increasingly stressful, position as new emerging challenges in the managerialized high education field seem to distance from the authentic academic behaviors and attitudes (Mazza, C., & Quattrone, P. (2018). Living in a world of foam: Global ideas, bubbles, and the fairy tale of business education. In M. Izak, M. Kostera & M. Zawadzki (Eds.), The future of university education. Palgrave-MacMillan, (pp. 111–121). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-46,894-5_1 ; Parker, Pluto Press, 2018). Building on my personal experience combining academic job with consulting and managerial roles, I discuss whether a multiplicity of belongings crossing academia and other fields, the position I called “ academic-cum-something else ”, is a viable solution for this stress or just a limbo excluding from each of the belongings.
I adopted an autobiographic style, reporting self-reflexive, post-hoc rationalizations of events. The autobiographic genre allowed me to report my observations about Homo academicus at the same time as an insider and as an outsider, critically assess constraints and habits. Therefore, the experience I described in this chapter is ambivalent. It includes the reflections on the academic life by somebody who had the illusio of academic field but also invested in the value of membership of other fields, such as consulting and management.
This ambivalence may help shedding light on controversial aspects of what the life of a Homo academicus meant to be and, more in general, on the extent to which roles and trajectories in different fields could coincide in a single life. It results in the paradox that by staying in the limbo across different fields, I can feel the enchantment of the illusio of the different fields but, reflexively, I could doubt the real value of the stakes of their memberships (Bourdieu, Pascalian meditations, Stanford University Press, 2000), thus experiencing disenchantment. This paradox leads to further reflections on how the Homo academicus should change to cope with the challenges that today’s societal context poses on the higher education field.
Here you will find an open letter written by Tito Designori, a Chief Education Officer of the management and engineering school Impulsia, informing the community of scholars about the abdication from his role. Recalling the times of pedagogical province Castalia, the life of its rector Joseph Knecht, Tito engages in a poetic account about the reinvention of Castalia into Impulsia - the School of Impact, a school that would be directly aimed at creating change in the world. Notwithstanding its name, he witnesses the decline of teaching in the school, its failure to educate students to take responsibility for the world, and its complicity in its crisis. He tells the story of two teachers using arts-based pedagogy in Impulsia, in an effort to light a fire in the students and connect their education to what really matters. Tito remains silent about whether the teachers’ efforts were successful, and somewhat surprisingly ends his accounts in the midst of the teachers’ careers. However, from his stories and analyses, he seems to imply that he finds some hope in their life stories that might bring teaching back to the school.
World War II was arguably one of history's largest shocks to the US economic and production system. In this paper, I argue that “managerial technology” played a key role in shaping US WWII production and its capacity to defeat some of the most advanced economies in the world. The large-scale diffusion of innovative management practices to US firms involved in war production acted as a technology that put them on a higher growth path for decades. Moreover, it made US managerial practices internationally distinctive and created the “American Way” of doing business—exported worldwide in the aftermath of the war.
It has become commonplace to highlight that the humanities are undergoing a severe, acute and decisive crisis. The claim is that the crisis is the outcome of a longstanding process of decay and decline. Consequently, the humanities are facing a period of intense difficulty and danger threatening their very existence. This perception is voiced by various defenders of the traditional values of the humanities.
If the human sciences seek to hold onto what is deemed essential to the human and particular to the humanities, they risk missing out on the knowledge gains, dynamism and societal relevance that an exchange with other sciences can provide. With the withdrawal to the humanities’ ‘essential’ identity, the humanities cut themselves off from participating in and contributing towards the vast majority of current university activities.
This is all the more pertinent because the legacy of the humanities is not quite the carefully handed-down ‘silver heirlooms’ that the proponents of the ‘traditional’ humanities claim to polish. Since the foundation of the university and the humanities in an anthropocentric structure of knowledge that gathers around the human, the inception has been persistently contested. The initial centripetal foundation of the university has been followed by a continued opposing centrifugal movement experienced as an ongoing but productive crisis. As the disciplines at the faculty of arts have continually given rise to new branches of science and knowledge, the human sciences have had to continually reformulate and reassert themselves.
Following the survey of the book and the main historical stages of the history of the human sciences in the modern university outlined in the preface and the introduction, the chapter articulates the main analytical, methodological, epistemological or ontological tenets that this alternative history builds upon. In keeping with the driving ambition to write a new history that highlights their productive character and influence, the study follows the trace of agenda-setting major contributions to the human sciences. In continuation hereof, the study understands the epistemic tradition of the human sciences as established through an ongoing and open-ended series of prescriptive and normative events permeated by a virtuality that constantly gives rise to dispositions that previously did not exist. The approach applied also implies that the study understands and articulates cognation and knowledge as activities that have decisive normative and performative effects. As articulated in this study, the ongoing productive crisis of the human sciences is to be perceived as an enduring and unending transcending and norm-setting undertaking resulting in the establishment of new, irreducible modes of science and conceptions of scientificity that continuously create and vindicate new conditions of assertability for knowledge.
To depict this continuing establishment of new modes of science and scientificity, the study takes the form of a transversal investigation that aims to trace the transcending and norm-setting cognitive activity as it moves across borders, where the baton is picked up from previous inventive activity and passed on to the next generation. The study of cognition and knowledge as normating activities presented here differs decisively from more traditional and well-established accounts of the history and contributions of the human sciences, in particular those that portray them either as containing an inherited value in themselves or as a primarily problem-solving cognitive activity. In this manner, the study depicts the tradition of the human sciences as a precious heritage that is not preceded by any kind of testament and is thus in need of constant reinterpretation.
To be able to follow and cover the normative, unveiling and agenda-setting movement fraught with consequences in its full breadth and complexity, the study adheres to a wide and inclusive understanding of the human sciences as the sciences that distinguish themselves by researching and producing knowledge concerning human affairs. By contrast, the study also uses the nomination ‘humanities’ to designate a demarcation that is more exclusive and narrow in scope in so far as it refers to the parts of the human sciences that are devoted to studying and cultivating the particularly, specifically and emphatically human.
The establishment of the Humboldtian university model and the decisive role allotted to the humanities within it permitted an ongoing formation of new specialized disciplines and subject areas which continually challenged the initial organization. During the nineteenth century, a number of new disciplines and faculties, such as the natural sciences, the life and health sciences, the social sciences, economics and the sciences of business economy and administration, began to establish themselves and assert their independence from the faculty of arts. Often originating in this faculty but also establishing alternative faculties, these disciplines began to offer all sorts of specific empirical and pragmatic forms of knowledge and know-how.
In so far as they investigate human modes of being, these disciplines also offer empirical and pragmatic knowledge that add to and may begin to compete with the understanding of the human provided by the traditional humanities. This development establishes not only a new, clear-cut distinction between letters and science, but also the conception of the humanities as a distinct activity in the shape of ‘Geisteswissenschaft’. The separation between forms of knowledge that concern themselves with nature and culture leads not only to subsequent interaction, but also to competition, clashes and science wars. If the humanities are to assert themselves in this context, they can hardly remain self-centred but are forced to study and interact with the ‘new-fangled’ important corpora of knowledge. Measuring up to the challenge constituted by competing knowledge has remained a task ever since.
This article is the first to reconstruct the intellectual history of Milton Friedman's criticism of business and its social responsibilities. Using original archival research and printed evidence, this article makes three major arguments. First, Friedman's criticisms of business and its social responsibilities evolved over time and emerged from persistent anxieties among economic liberals about monopoly, business interests, and political authority that were explicitly read from Adam Smith. Second, the article contributes to the emerging intellectual history of corporate social responsibility (CSR) by reconstructing the development of Friedman's criticisms, their transformations, and their reception within the context of American managerial thought from the 1950s to the 1980s. Finally, contextualizing Friedman's criticisms demonstrates his concern about decision-making logics within organizations, which in turn explains his belief that CSR would contribute to collectivization and enhances the understanding of neoliberal political thought.
Abstract This study provides an initial examination of data from a passion project of Tim Baldwin, known as the Kelley Career Progress Study (KCPS). The KCPS is a longitudinal study designed to track Kelley School of Business students and their subsequent career outcomes. As originally intended, the study was set to track students 30 years into their careers. With the unfortunate passing of Professor Baldwin, we sought to provide an initial analysis to honor his memory. Using information gathered beginning in 2002 and subsequent LinkedIn data from 2020, we provide observations focused on occupational attainment. Specifically, we describe first occupations attained along with later occupations and find that after 18 years, a majority of students had attained a managerial-level role. We further examined the level of occupational prestige associated with first and last occupations and related factors such as geography, initial job, and obtaining an advanced degree. Importantly, student characteristics like intelligence, gender, and race, as well as undergraduate grade point average, were not associated with managerial attainment or occupational prestige. We conclude with some advice for graduates and with suggestions for further research as the KCPS continues.
How has mainstream academic economic discourse evolved to regain its epistemic authority after the financial crisis of 2008 revealed serious blind spots in economic modelling that shattered the profession’s claim to be able to predict and control macroeconomic variables? To answer this question, we combine content with bibliometric analyses of nearly 70,000 papers on macroeconomics and finance published in academic journals from 1990 to 2019. These analyses reveal how a structural rapprochement between macroeconomics and finance created the new subfield of macro-finance. We show that contributions by central bank economists, driven by central banks’ newly acquired macroprudential mandate, were key to its establishment. Acting within the space of regulatory science, they connected macroeconomic and financial knowledge to satisfy their employers’ administrative needs, while also helping to bridge the gaping hole in economic discourse, thereby taking on an important stabilizing role for the epistemic authority of economics.
This paper seeks to track the intellectual evolution of four important streams of thought in the American accounting literature, tracing them back to their originating expressions. The four streams are decision usefulness in both management accounting and financial accounting, futurity in financial accounting, the literature on general price-level accounting, and consolidation goodwill in business combinations.
Este artigo propõe avançar na promoção da aprendizagem organizacional por meio da integração dos processos e recursos dentro do ambiente organizacional. Para isso, é necessário considerar tanto as características intrínsecas de aprendizagem do ser humano, bem como as informações, conhecimentos, aspectos sociais e quanto aos processos e fatores organizacionais que influenciam na aprendizagem, como a prática dialógica reflexiva, liderança e memória organizacional. Com objetivo de verificar a evolução da literatura de aprendizagem com a utilização e reutilização dos recursos da empresa como todas as capacidades, processuais e atributos sociais, que constituem ativos tangíveis e intangíveis. Seguindo os passos de uma revisão crítica da literatura proposta por (Wright and Michailova, 2022) utilizando fontes de evidências, reunindo e fornecendo informações ricas para provocações construtivas. Por fim, apresentamos uma proposta teórico-metodológica de aprendizagem infocomunicacional a ser aprofundada, como fator valioso nas organizações que devem ser pensadas em sua totalidade, pois são recursos relevantes por serem características inerentes ao ser humano e às estruturas organizacionais.
The environment of business education now resembles aspects of the competitive environment facing for-profit industries. A major contributor to the character of this environment in the USA are the published rankings of business school programs, which have risen in prominence over the last decade. We conducted interviews with top management team members from the top 50 business schools in the USA to assess the effects of business school rankings on the conduct of business education. These informants characterized the rankings process predominantly as a game where the players face a field that is not always level and where the rules are not only ill-specified but also subtly changing. Our examination of how business schools play `the rankings game' revealed a structuration-like pattern whereby projected images by business schools and subsequent responses to those images both enabled and constrained further action by the schools as well as the magazines responsible for the rankings. This pattern has implications not only for gaining insights into the management of reputation in academia, but also for conceptualizing relationships among image and substance in a world increasingly dominated by media.Corporate Reputation Review (2000) 3, 319-333; doi:10.1057/palgrave.crr.1540123
U.S. business schools are locked in a dysfunctional competition for media rankings that diverts resources from long-term knowledge creation, which earned them global pre-eminence, into short-term strategies aimed at improving their rankings. MBA curricula are distorted by quick fix, look good packaging changes designed to influence rankings criteria, at the expense of giving students a rigorous, conceptual framework that will serve them well over their entire careers. Research, undergraduate education, and Ph.D. programs suffer as faculty time is diverted to almost continuous MBA curriculum changes, strategic planning exercises, and public relations efforts. Unless they wake up to the dangers of dysfunctional rankings competition, U.S. business schools are destined to lose their dominant global position and become a classic case study of how myopic decision-making begets institutional mediocrity.
Corporate governance describes the structures, processes, and institutions within and around organizations that allocate power and resource control among participants. Law and economics scholars have developed a view of the public corporation as a nexus-of-contracts whose structure is driven by the requirements of financial markets, and thus features of the corporation and its surrounding institutions are theorized in terms of their function in directing corporations toward share price as a criterion of value. Working from this base, more recent research has studied historical and cross-national variation in governance institutions, producing highly varied interpretations of their sources and function. Sociological work, particularly within organization theory, has critiqued this functionalist view and provided alternative interpretations based on networks, power, and culture. The most promising contemporary work seeks to analyze governance in terms of the dynamics of institutions - where they originate, how they operate, how they change, and how they spread beyond their original purposes.
This article examines Thomas Jefferson's vision of the role of lawyers and education in the preservation of America's republican form of government.Jefferson believed that the new nation desperately needed virtuous leaders who would place the public interest above their own private interest.Proper education could help develop this needed virtue, Jefferson concluded, particularly among lawyers who by the nature of their work were well positioned to provide direction and leadership to the new nation.Accordingly, Jefferson urged not merely that aspiring lawyers be taught the details of legal doctrine and nuances of proper pleading, but that they also be afforded a broad understanding of political theory, modern and ancient history, and moral philosophy.Jefferson implemented his vision of legal education at the College of William and Mary in the early 1780s, thereby launching the tradition of training lawyers in the university setting which was adopted by other colleges during the next few decades. Although many scholars have argued that this initial experiment in university-based legal education was of limited success, in fact Jefferson's experiment in legal education at William and Mary helped train an extraordinary group of lawyers who fulfilled Jefferson's vision for republican leadership.
The traditional focus in organization theory on corporations as bounded, countable units of social structure is a poor fit with the emerging nature of the new economy Increasingly 'boundaryless' production processes, and the predominance of evaluative standards based in financial markets, undermine the explanatory usefulness of theories such us resource dependence and population ecology. Yet economic theories of the firm are ill-equipped to make sense of the social and political processes that shape the structure and evolution of the corporation. This chapter argues that social movement theory provides an explanatory approach well-suited to forms of coordinated collective action in a post-industrial economy. We illustrate the argument by comparing the emerging media industry to the emergence of a national social movement, and everyday workings of the network economy of Silicon Valley To the routine mobilization of Local movement activity. We close by describing four areas for future research.