Publication Type
Magazine Article
Version
publishedVersion
Publication Date
1-2023
Abstract
The business school has been an important success story in the evolution of the modern university. Yet it is increasingly valued in that context “much more for its managerial expertise, cash generation ability and financial strength than its intellectual vigour and scholarship. Indeed … its legitimacy as a serious academic discipline is critically questioned by scholars in science, arts and the humanities” (Thomas, Lorange and Sheth, 2013, pp 52/3). Rakesh Khurana (2007) argues that business schools have become the ‘hired hands’ of business and have abandoned any pretence of fulfilling goals of developing a cadre of professional managers as proposed by early deans (e.g. Dean Donham at Harvard Business School). Therefore, when business schools evolved into “businesses” they framed their mission and vision around a dominant paradigm, a market-based view focused on market efficiency and the principle of shareholder value maximisation – essentially ‘market managerialism’ (Locke and Spender, 2011). However, after a number of catastrophic business failures such as Enron, the late Sumantra Ghoshal (2005) and other critics argued that business schools in their desire to be acknowledged as legitimate and serious academic players, had been guilty of perpetuating and teaching ‘amoral theories’ that destroyed sound managerial practices and produced profit-maximising managers and professionals. This, in turn, may have contributed to ethical and moral behavioural lapses in events such as the global financial crisis. A key consequence was that the principle of trust central to the operation of market capitalism has been called into question.
Keywords
Business education, business schools, higher education
Discipline
Business | Higher Education
Research Areas
Strategy and Organisation
Publication
Global Focus (EFMD)
Volume
1
First Page
2
Last Page
8
ISSN
1784-2344
Publisher
European Foundation for Management Development
Citation
THOMAS, Howard and THOMAS, Howard.
Perspectives on the mission, value and impact of the business school. (2023). Global Focus (EFMD). 1, 2-8.
Available at: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/lkcsb_research/7191
Copyright Owner and License
Publisher
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Additional URL
https://www.globalfocusmagazine.com/perspectives-on-the-impact-mission-and-purpose-of-the-business-school/
Comments
For publication by Routledge as open access book in 2023