Business schools are arguably some of the most influential institutions in contemporary society. The research and education they provide set the standard for how future leaders manage local and global organizations - a responsibility requiring continual discussion, development and challenge. This exciting book explores the role of business schools through 3 key dimensions: - How business school legitimacy has been challenged by the recent economic crisis and corporate scandals; - How schools contribute to shaping and transforming business conduct; and - How institutions, past and present, develop their identities to face the challenges presented by the ongoing globalization process. Combining global perspectives from business school Deans, scholars and stakeholders, this book presents a unique discussion of the current and future challenges facing business schools and their contributions to society.

Business schools are arguably some of the most influential institutions in contemporary society, heavily influencing the way much socioeconomic activity is conducted. The education they provide is an important theme to be considered in its own right -- and perhaps even challenged. This exciting book explores the role of business schools in contemporary global society through 3 key dimensions: How business school legitimacy has been challenged by the recent economic crisis and corporate scandals; How business schools contribute to shaping and transforming business conduct; and How business schools, past and present, develop their identities to face the challenges presented by the ongoing globalization process. Combing perspectives from business school Deans from around the world, as well as scholars and business leaders, this book presents a unique discussion of the current and future challenges facing business schools today.

Education and Consecration of Neoliberal Elites: Introduction -- Business, Economics, and the Nobel Prize: History and Legacy -- Admission: Privilege, Values and Practices -- Consecration, Business Skills and Leadership: The Student Union -- Teaching Business: The Invisible Hand in Class -- Affinity: Pedagogics for a Future Elite -- Academic Freedom and the Business Community -- Business School Faculty and Neoliberal Thinking -- Lifelong Social Relationships and Networks: Business School Alumni -- Elitism and Masculinity: Business Schools and Elite Employers -- Business Schools and the Consecration of Elites: Conclusions.

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.

In recent years business schools have been the fastest growning part of the higher education system. This book assesses this development, and articulates a forward looking research agenda on the study of business schools as institutions.

Do business schools actually make good on their promises of "innovative," "outside-the-box" thinking to train business leaders who will put society ahead of money-making? Do they help society by making better business leaders? No, they don't, Steven Conn asserts, and what's more they never have. In throwing down a gauntlet on the business of business schools, Conn's Nothing Succeeds Like Failure examines the frictions, conflicts, and contradictions at the heart of these enterprises and details the way business schools have failed to resolve them. Beginning with founding of the Wharton School in 1881, Conn measures these schools' aspirations against their actual accomplishments and tells the full and disappointing history of missed opportunities, unmet aspirations, and educational mistakes. Conn then poses a set of crucial questions about the role and function of American business schools. The results aren't pretty. Posing a set of crucial questions about the function of American business schools, Nothing Succeeds Like Failure is pugnacious and controversial. Deeply researched and fun to read, Nothing Succeeds Like Failure argues that the impressive façades of business school buildings resemble nothing so much as collegiate versions of Oz. Conn pulls back the curtain to reveal a story of failure to meet the expectations of the public, their missions, their graduates, and their own lofty aspirations of producing moral and ethical business leaders.

A clarion call to shut down the business school!