Debating Business School Legitimacy: Attacking, Rocking, and Defending the Status Quo 3031127242, 9783031127243

Table of contents :
Praise for Debating Business School Legitimacy
Contents
Notes on Contributors
List of Figures
List of Tables
Part I Background and Introduction
1 Introducing the Debate on the Legitimacy of Business Schools
Introduction
What Have Business Schools Been For?
Previous Criticism of Business Schools and Their Legitimacy
What Makes This Book Unique: A Kaleidoscopic Take
On the Debating Format and the Editors’ Position(s)
The Editors’ Take on the Book Content
Introduction of the Chapters
References
2 (De)Legitimacy of Managerialism Within Business Schools
Introduction to Managerialism
Organizational Legitimacy and Historical Development of B-Schools
Legitimacy Theory and Legitimacy in B-Schools
Historical Expansion of Managerialism in B-Schools
From Modern University to Multiversity
From Multiversity to Managerial University
Signals of (De)Legitimacy of Managerialism
References
Part II Attacking Status Quo
3 Business Schools in Their Ideological Prison: Why Sustainability Challenge Is Our Next Legitimacy Crisis
Business Schools’ Legitimacy Crises
Business School Capitalism and Sustainability
Institutionalization of Business School Capitalism
Neoliberalism
Shareholderism
Managerialism
Ingredients of Business School Capitalism
Business Schools as Imprisoned by Their Ideological Success
Sustainability as the New Ideological Bandwagon
Ways Out of the Ideological Prison
Renewed Identity as a Critical, Business, and Economy Focused Social Science
Ambitious Theory Development
Educating Students on Multifaceted Reality
References
4 The Reflexive Impotence and Neoliberal Neurosis of the Responsible Business School
Introduction
The Slow Turn of Responsible Management Education
The Reflexive Impotence of Business School Faculty
The Neoliberal Neurosis of a CSR Curriculum
In Class with the Psychopathic Selfishness of Economic Man
What Is to Be Done?
References
5 Business School Burnout: Endangering Legitimacy on Pathological Pathways
Introduction
Distressing Trends in Society and the Business World
Business Schools on Pathological Pathways
Depression
Insomnia
Burnout
Conclusion
References
Part III Rocking the Boat of Status Quo
6 The Business School in Ruins: Navigating the Multi-stakeholder Landscape of Contemporary Management Scholarship
Introduction
Legitimacy and Business Schools
The Current Situation
External
Internal
The Legitimacy Dimension of Stakeholder Theory
Conclusion
References
7 Delegitimizing Women Management Scholars’ Underrepresentation in the Research Impact Agenda
Symbolic, Substantive, and Hypocritical Legitimacy
The Research Impact Agenda
Female Faculty Gender Inequality in Business Schools
Times Higher Education University Impact Rankings
Financial Times Rankings Data on Women in Business School
Legitimacy-as-Process
Implications for Research and Practice
Conclusion
References
8 The Myth of the Global Market for Business Education
Introduction
International Sorting of Academic Institutions
Rankings
Accreditations
The Basic Assumptions
Properties of Higher Education
Alumni in the Labor Market
Conclusions
References
9 On How Intercultural Management Education Can Increase the Societal Legitimacy of Business Schools
On Problems and Solutions of Business School Legitimacy
Who If Not Business Schools?
How Intercultural Management Education Can Increase the Legitimacy of Business Schools
What’s Intercultural Management?
Six Dimensions of Intercultural Management Education to Promote Business School Legitimacy
Conclusion
References
10 On the Dilemmatic Legitimacy of Business Schools: The Barbell Syndrome and the Dominance of Business Degrees
The Resilience of Business Schools Since the Turn of the Century
The Barbell Syndrome
Performance Versus Purpose
Research Versus Teaching
Faculty-Centrality Versus Student-Centrality
The Origin of the Modern Business School
Why Are Business Administration Degrees Attractive and Resilient?
How Can Business Schools Overcome the Barbell Syndrome?
Overriding the Barbell Syndrome
Focusing on One of the Barbell’s Alternatives
Differentiating While Downplaying the Barbell
Breaking Away from the Barbell Syndrome and Disrupting the Standard Business Degree Model
Conclusion
Notes
References
11 How Business Schools Can Graduate Business Citizens
Introduction
A Case for the School of Business
Character and Business Education
The Role of a School of Business
Character Development as Part of the Curriculum
Moral Awareness
Moral Judgment
Moral Motivation
Moral Courage
Reflection
Developing Business Citizens, Not (Only) Business Professionals
Leveraging the University Experience
Connecting with Other Disciplines
Schools of Business as Corporate Citizens
Conclusion
References
12 The Market’s Filthy Lesson: Disruption for Business and Management Education in Australian Public Universities
Introduction
Sources of Legitimacy for Australian Business Schools
Changing Society, Changing Needs
A New Coal Face
Possible Implications
Conclusions
References
13 How Business Schools Address Grand Societal Challenges Through Research: Personal Reflections and a Call to Arms
Introduction
Literature Review
Historical Perspective: Business Schools Are a “Burning Platform”
Designing “Lower Walls” to Impact “Grand Challenges”
Institutional Challenges to Addressing Grand Challenges
Institutional Facilitators for Addressing Grand Challenges
University Structures for Addressing Grand Challenges
The Business School’s Research Contribution for Grand Challenges
Branding the Business School to Address Grand Challenges
Addressing Grand Challenges Is an International Phenomenon
Personal Reflections
Incentives for Research to Address Grand Challenges
Career Trajectories for Researchers to Address Grand Challenges
Engaging Other Departments in Your Research to Address Grand Challenges
Engaging with Practice to Address Grand Challenges
Addressing Grand Challenges Takes Time
Conclusion
References
Part IV Defending Status Quo
14 Compared to What? A Realist Defense of Business School
A Stylized Critique of Business School Education
What Are the Liberal Arts For?
The Psychological Basis of Liberal Arts
How Much Do Students Even Learn? How Much Do They Retain?
Selection Effects and Comparing College Grads to Others
Summary
References
Afterword: After the Business School
Introduction
The Epistemology and Finance of Closure
The Politics of the “School for Organizing”
References
Index

Citation preview

PALGRAVE DEBATES IN BUSINESS AND MANAGEMENT

Debating Business School Legitimacy Attacking, Rocking, and Defending the Status Quo Edited by Anders Örtenblad Riina Koris

Palgrave Debates in Business and Management

Series Editor Anders Örtenblad, Department of Working Life and Innovation, School of Business and Law, University of Agder, Grimstad, Norway

This series will take a refreshing and creative approach to business management research, consisting of a number of edited collections that showcase a current academic debate. Each title will examine one specific topic and shall include a number of chapters from authors around the world, presenting their differing points of view on the question in hand. The intention of this series is to take stock of controversial and complicated topics of debate within business and management, and to clearly present the variety of positions within it.

Anders Örtenblad · Riina Koris Editors

Debating Business School Legitimacy Attacking, Rocking, and Defending the Status Quo

Editors Anders Örtenblad Department of Working Life and Innovation, School of Business and Law University of Agder Grimstad, Norway

Riina Koris Department of Marketing and Communication Estonian Business School Tallinn, Estonia

ISSN 2524-5082 ISSN 2524-5090 (electronic) Palgrave Debates in Business and Management ISBN 978-3-031-12724-3 ISBN 978-3-031-12725-0 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-12725-0 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Praise for Debating Business School Legitimacy

“This important and sobering collection of essays on the modern business school will provoke debate and may inspire needed change. If you believe, as I do, that today’s professional schools have an obligation to help address society’s most pressing challenges through the pursuit of actionable research and practical education, you will find much value in this book.” —Amy C. Edmondson, Professor, Harvard Business School, USA “An intriguing read, this book offers different perspectives on the raging debate, with only one solitary defence of the business school as is, despite the criticisms. Provocative in parts but nonetheless evoking questions for business school leaders to reflect upon in deciding what to change to regain legitimacy where deemed lost; or what to retain to defend the status quo where deemed apt. Brilliant!” —Enase Okonedo, Professor, Vice-Chancellor, Pan-Atlantic University, Lagos, Nigeria

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Praise for Debating Business School Legitimacy

“Business schools have become a key part of the landscape of contemporary higher education. However, their role is proving increasingly controversial. This book demonstrates why this is so and what needs to change. This includes a broader definition of purpose beyond a focus on helping individuals and corporations to maximize only their own selfinterest. Business schools need to demonstrate that they can become part of the solution to the excesses of a Darwinian form of capitalism that is actually destructive of long-term value broadly defined. They need to demonstrate that they have the potential to be a source of education innovation responsive to the needs of business and society. Only then will they have a legitimate claim to a continued existence. This book takes us to the heart of the problems business schools face which are, alas, very much of their own making.” —Ken Starkey, Professor of Management and Organisational Learning, Nottingham University Business School, UK

Contents

Part I 1

2

Introducing the Debate on the Legitimacy of Business Schools Riina Koris and Anders Örtenblad (De)Legitimacy of Managerialism Within Business Schools Katariina Juusola

Part II 3

Background and Introduction 3

47

Attacking Status Quo

Business Schools in Their Ideological Prison: Why Sustainability Challenge Is Our Next Legitimacy Crisis Kimmo Alajoutsijärvi, Katariina Juusola, and Kerttu Kettunen

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viii

4

5

Contents

The Reflexive Impotence and Neoliberal Neurosis of the Responsible Business School Nikodemus Solitander

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Business School Burnout: Endangering Legitimacy on Pathological Pathways Volker Rundshagen

105

Part III 6

7

8

9

10

11

Rocking the Boat of Status Quo

The Business School in Ruins: Navigating the Multi-stakeholder Landscape of Contemporary Management Scholarship Brian Howieson and Ian Robson

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Delegitimizing Women Management Scholars’ Underrepresentation in the Research Impact Agenda Emily Yarrow and Julie Davies

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The Myth of the Global Market for Business Education Lars Engwall and Linda Wedlin

167

On How Intercultural Management Education Can Increase the Societal Legitimacy of Business Schools Madeleine Bausch

181

On the Dilemmatic Legitimacy of Business Schools: The Barbell Syndrome and the Dominance of Business Degrees Gabriel Hawawini How Business Schools Can Graduate Business Citizens Yusuf Sidani

12 The Market’s Filthy Lesson: Disruption for Business and Management Education in Australian Public Universities Owen Hogan, Michael B. Charles, and Michael A. Kortt

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Contents

13

How Business Schools Address Grand Societal Challenges Through Research: Personal Reflections and a Call to Arms Graeme Currie

Part IV 14

ix

253

Defending Status Quo

Compared to What? A Realist Defense of Business School Jason Brennan

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Afterword: After the Business School

289

Index

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Notes on Contributors

Kimmo Alajoutsijärvi is a professor of Marketing at the University of Agder and the former dean of Oulu Business School. His recent research interests are business schools, management education, and accreditations. He has published in the Academy of Management Learning & Education, International Business Review, Information & Management, Journal of Business-to-Business Marketing, and Industrial Marketing Management. Madeleine Bausch is a researcher and lecturer at the Faculty for Economics and Business at University of Chile. She obtained her PhD from University of Passau (Germany). Her main research interest is intercultural management, such as managerial practice transfer, creativity and innovation in organizations. She co-authored the textbook Constructive Intercultural Management (2021), published in international journals such as International Business Review and is a guest lecturer at Estonian Business School. Jason Brennan is the Robert J. and Elizabeth Flanagan Family Professor of Strategy, Economics, Ethics, and Public Policy at the McDonough School of Business, Georgetown University. He is the author of 15

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Notes on Contributors

books, including Business Ethics for Better Behavior (Oxford University Press, 2021) and Cracks in the Ivory Tower: The Moral Mess of Higher Education (Oxford University Press, 2019). He works on projects at the intersection of politics, philosophy, and economics. Michael B. Charles is an associate professor and a member of the Faculty of Business, Law and Arts at Southern Cross University, Gold Coast, Australia, where he is the director of Higher Degree Research Training. Michael has published well over 100 refereed journal articles and numerous book chapters and refereed conference papers in science and technology policy, transport and infrastructure, and ancient history. Graeme Currie is a professor of Public Management at Warwick Business School, United Kingdom. His empirical research takes place in health and social care settings, with a focus upon theoretical topics of leadership, workforce, innovation, and strategy. Graeme is a senior editor at Organization Studies, and his work has been published in Academy of Management Journal, Journal of Management Studies, Human Relations, Human Resource Management (US), Leadership Quarterly, Organization Studies. Julie Davies is a professor and Director of the M.B.A. Health in the Global Business School for Health, University College London, UK, and Deputy Dean (EDI). Her main research interests are leadership in health care and management education, gender and research impact, and ethnic minority micro-entrepreneurship. Professor Davies was previously Deputy Chief Executive of the Chartered Association of Business Schools. Lars Engwall is a professor emeritus of Business Studies at Uppsala University, Sweden. His research has been directed toward the production and diffusion of management ideas, particularly in media companies, banks, and academic institutions. Among his recent publications can be mentioned Defining Management: Business Schools, Consultants and the Media (Routledge, 2016 with Matthias Kipping and Behlül Üsdiken), and Missions of Universities (ed. Springer, 2020).

Notes on Contributors

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Gabriel Hawawini is an emeritus professor of Finance and a former dean of INSEAD where he held the Henry Grunfeld Chair in Investment Banking. Besides his scholarly contributions to the field of finance, he has written widely on issues related to higher education management and leadership. He is currently a trustee of the University of the People and a member of the advisory board of several educational institutions around the world. Owen Hogan is a lecturer in entrepreneurship and innovation at Southern Cross University. He has an extensive professional background in the creative industries, government and higher education. His research focuses on public value and legitimacy, service innovation, and humancentered design. He is the co-founder of a thriving performing arts school and has released several musical works. Brian Howieson is a professor of Organisational Leadership at Stirling Management School, The University of Stirling. His research is in developing contemporary models of leadership, particularly in the areas of mission leadership and empowerment. Books include Public and Third Sector Leadership: Experience Speaks (2014) and Leadership: The Current State of Play (2019). His latest book—detailing the near collapse of one of Europe’s largest football clubs—will be published in July 2022. Katariina Juusola is an assistant professor of Marketing at Ajman University, United Arab Emirates. During her career, she has published articles in journals such as the Academy of Management Learning and Education, Journal of Management Inquiry, and Organization. Her main research interests are business school research and especially trends such as corporatization, marketization and managerialism, internationalization of higher education, and transnational higher education. Kerttu Kettunen works as an assistant professor of Marketing at the University of Agder. Her research focuses on business schools and management education from a historical and institutional perspective. Her recent research interests are business school leadership and accreditations published for instance in the Academy of Management Learning and Education, Journal of Management Inquiry, and Scandinavian Journal of Management.

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Notes on Contributors

Riina Koris is an associate professor in the Department of Marketing and Communication at Estonian Business School. She publishes on the topics of higher education in general and (purpose of ) business education in particular and centers her research around students of business and management. She publishes in journals such as Management Learning, The International Journal of Management Education, International Journal of Educational Management, among others. Michael A. Kortt is an associate professor in the Faculty of Business, Law, and Arts at Southern Cross University. He has over 100 scholarly outputs including 87 refereed journal articles. His principal research area is in the field of public administration. His publications have appeared in Administration & Society, Australian Journal of Public Administration, Public Management Review, Public Administration Quarterly, and Social Indicators Research. Anders Örtenblad is a professor of Working Life Science at the School of Business and Law, University of Agder, Norway, and Professor II at Western Norway University of Applied Sciences, Norway. He is the editing founder of the book series Palgrave Debates in Business and Management, for which he recently edited the following titles: Debating Equal Pay for All: Economy, Practicability and Ethics and Debating Bad Leadership: Reasons and Remedies. Ian Robson is a professor of Strategic Management at Dundee School of Business, University of Dundee. His research concerns strategic responses to stakeholder communications and relationships. He is currently examining conflict at the business-society interface as well as theoretical dimensions of circular economy. His latest book The Reflective Leader; Reflexivity in Action will be published by Elsevier in September 2022. Volker Rundshagen is a professor for Management and Tourism Studies at the University of Applied Sciences Stralsund. His major research interests are aspects of strategic and responsible management education and of tourism management. He is a member of the Academy of Management (MED and CMS divisions) and MOBTS, among other academic associations. He serves as advisory board member of the International Journal of Pluralism and Economics Education.

Notes on Contributors

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Yusuf Sidani is the dean of the Suliman S. Olayan School of Business, American University of Beirut (AUB) and professor of Leadership and Business Ethics. His research appeared in leading international peerreviewed academic journals such as Human Resource Management Review, Leadership Quarterly, Business Ethics Quarterly, The Journal of Business Ethics, and Journal of World Business. Nikodemus Solitander is a researcher in Supply Chain Management and Social Responsibility at Hanken School of Economics, Helsinki, Finland. He holds a Ph.D. in economic geography, and his research interest includes most critical derivatives around corporate social responsibility and responsible management education. He has a keen interest in pedagogy, teaching, and the praxis of collegial solidarity. Linda Wedlin is a professor of Business Studies at Uppsala University, Sweden. Her research focuses on governance and organizing of higher education and research, as well as on issues of global governance and social change. She has a particular interest in soft regulations, assessments and rankings, and in the travel and translation of management ideas. Publications include Towards European Science (2015, with Maria Nedeva) and the book Ranking Business Schools (2006). Emily Yarrow is a senior lecturer in Management and Organisations at Newcastle University Business School, UK. Her scholarly work focuses on and contributes to contemporary understandings of gendered organizational behavior, governance in higher education, women’s experiences of organizational life, and the future of work. She is passionate about social justice in education and equality of opportunity in organizational life.

List of Figures

Fig. 6.1 Fig. 6.2 Fig. 7.1

Business school—external stakeholder array Business school—internal stakeholder array Macro, micro, and individual level factors impacting on women business school academics and their engagement in the research impact agenda (Source Based on Bitektine and Haack [2015])

132 136

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List of Tables

Table 1.1

Table 3.1 Table 6.1 Table 9.1

Table 10.1

Changes that need to be made at BSs, according to the contributors—an overview of the chapters in Parts II–IV and Epilogue The ideological basis of business school capitalism Stakeholder/legitimacy Six dimensions of Intercultural Management Education and their relation to business school legitimacy Mission statements of ten business schools

18 78 139

189 204

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Part I Background and Introduction

1 Introducing the Debate on the Legitimacy of Business Schools Riina Koris and Anders Örtenblad

Introduction It is easy, not to say convenient and less time-consuming, to agree with those many scholars who during the last few decades have criticized business schools in general and their legitimacy in particular. Those we will take up later. Meanwhile, we have, time and time again, been stunned over the technical knowledge interest (Habermas 1969) that business R. Koris Department of Marketing and Communication, Estonian Business School, Tallinn, Estonia e-mail: [email protected] A. Örtenblad (B) Department of Working Life and Innovation, School of Business and Law, University of Agder, Grimstad, Norway e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. Örtenblad and R. Koris (eds.), Debating Business School Legitimacy, Palgrave Debates in Business and Management, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-12725-0_1

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studies is often featured by. We cannot think of any academic discipline in social science that as distinctly as business studies sides with, often uncritically, with just one of its subjects—the business. If the same analogy applied to, for example, sociology, it would side uncritically with the communities and the society but would neglect individuals. Or if the same applied to psychology, it would, again uncritically, side with an individual but would neglect communities and the society which the individual operates in. This uncritical siding of business studies with profit-seeking businesses appears both startling and problematic, primarily because business schools want to tag the education they offer as higher and academic, and often proclaim that they are there to make the world (not just the business) a better place. On the other hand, criticism against business schools can also appear somewhat one-sided, while we believe in a more reflective perspective where there is openness also for alternative standpoints (see also Örtenblad et al. 2013). If one-sidedness was embraced, there would be a risk that it gives rise to a new hegemony, no matter how well-meant the criticism. To have a less dogmatic impact on business school practice, we believe that a debate—where there is space for different standpoints and various arguments—is better suited and deserved. In this introductory chapter, we will elaborate the above arguments through the initiation of an open debate about the legitimacy of business schools. Concerning legitimacy as such in this book, we rely on organizational legitimacy which contends that an organization as an entity has different stakeholders (e.g., the society, private companies, public sector, students, employees, etc.), all of whom have a rightful claim to exist and persist (see, e.g., Bitektine 2011; DiMaggio and Powell 1983). We start off by giving a brief overview of the history of business schools, particularly on the history of the legitimacy of business schools. Thereafter, we present some of what seems to be an abundance of criticism of business schools that has been published, especially during the last few decades. We then elaborate on the arguments for offering an open debate and, thus, for what makes the present book unique in comparison with the many other studies there are on business schools and their legitimacy. In the section which follows we explain the format of the book—which we

1 Introducing the Debate on the Legitimacy of Business Schools

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call a debating format —and justify the choice of this format. Following this, we, the editors, offer our own take on the book content and, in the final section present the chapters by the recurring themes.

What Have Business Schools Been For? Good practice dictates that the introduction of a topic starts with a historical account of it. However, a quick search on Google Scholar for “business school history” produces instantly over 4 million hits, which is why we believe that just a very brief account of it is appropriate lest we get repetitive. Besides, the whole next chapter (by Katariina Juusola, Chapter 2 in this volume) is devoted to the legitimacy of business schools in a historical perspective, so we do not find it necessary to go into depth into the history of business schools, particularly because also other chapters of this book contain sections which briefly elaborate on it. According to Kaplan (2014), European business school history can be roughly divided into two periods—the Founding Period (1819–1944) and the Assimilation Period (1945–today). The Founding Period accommodates two models of operation—the French/Belgian model (which combined a theoretical approach with the practical and was reluctant to adopt too theoretical an approach to business education), and the German model (which embraced the academicization of the field, claiming that it is only through scientific research that students acquire deep and specialized knowledge of a discipline). Although in the USA the first business school (Wharton School of Finance and Commerce) was founded in 1881, the business school as we know it today was inspired by Harvard Business School, founded in 1908, who pioneered the MBA degree and the case study method. Starting 1945 (the Assimilation Period), it was hoped that the US approach to train managers could help Europe to restore its economy which found itself in ruins after World War II (Leavitt 1957). The Ford Foundation promoted American management style all over Western Europe (McGlade 1998) and a number of US-type business schools were set up in France, Germany, the UK, and Spain. However, in 1997 the homogenization of the European business schools started with the

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advent of Europe’s own accreditation body EQUIS (European Quality Improvement System), allegedly to counter what Oliver (1993) called the “overabundance of MBAs in the UK […] where the MBA glamour had quickly faded in the harsh climate of the 90s” (p. 26). Although it is difficult to pinpoint the exact time in history when business schools started mushrooming all over the world, Khurana (2007) claims that the period between 1950s and 1970s was the belle epoque of business schools. Hay (2008) adds that they are the major success story of the twentieth-century higher education. However, as with every silver lining, those do not come without the cloud. Regardless of whether it is a private or public business school, a university-affiliated or an individual one, criticism within and around the entire business school arena started to surface just about half a century later and, just as a snowball moving downhill, it began to gather layers and layers of snow and stands currently unresolvable. More often than not, the business school playground with its multitude of constituencies who often have conflicting interests and the impact the business school is making or should be making are topics which most like to criticize. They are topics which are easy to criticize. And, resorting to Freddy Mercury’s words in the 2018’s movie called Bohemian Rhapsody, “Everyone’s a critic!” (Mercury 2018). As Kieser (2004, p. 92) states, “Schmalenbach [a celebrated German economist and academic from the start of 1900s] and his colleagues insisted that its [school of management education] goal was not to maximize the profit of individual businesses but to increase common welfare”. This is somewhat contrary to the legitimate purpose of Wharton School of Finance and Commerce (founded in 1881) whose primary goal, inspired by Taylorism and the works of Adam Smith, was to teach how to improve economic efficiency, especially through labor productivity (Wren and Van Fleet 1983). What is interesting, perhaps, is that as early as the end of the nineteenth and start of twentieth century, the legitimate purposes originated from two different perspectives—the societal perspective vs. the economic perspective. In 1967, Herbert Simon claimed that the legitimate purpose of the business school is “to train managers for the practice of management as a profession and to develop new knowledge that may be relevant to improving the operation of business” (1967, p. 5). In 1989, however,

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Leavitt scrutinized Simon’s purpose by saying that the business school with its single-minded economic purpose “distorts well-proportioned young men and women into critters with lopsided brains, icy hearts, and shrunken souls” (1989, p. 39). Just a few decades after Simon’s claim on business school purpose and legitimacy, and upon the many criminal scandals of business school graduates, Hanson and Moore (2014) state that there is an “unease about whether higher education adequately prepares business students for the moral challenges of both college and their subsequent entry into the business world” (p. 525). French and Grey (1996) state that management education would begin from the desire to stress its “educative” rather than its managerial aspects. This involves an appreciation of management as a social, political and moral practice. (French and Grey 1996, p. 6)

In 2002, however, Grey suggests that the business school’s legitimate purpose is to supply [organizations with] people who are technically equipped to manage better as a result of their MBAs (and other qualifications), so they are hired by companies, which in turn perform better, contributing to the economic competitiveness of nations. (2002, pp. 497–498)

Some others, who “operate” within critical management education research, claim that the legitimate purpose of the business school is to create value for the society at large (Hay 2008; Hussey and Smith 2010; Starkey 2010; Starkey and Tempest 2009; Starkey et al. 2004); or, in addition to serving the utilitarian purpose of teaching people “useful” knowledge, to also educate people in free thinking and free inquiry (Calhoun 2009; Kolakowski 1997; Ryan 2009); or to critically comment, review, and examine business practice rather than praise and teach people how to replicate it (French and Grey 1996). Apparently, the suggested legitimate purposes of the business school are many.

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Previous Criticism of Business Schools and Their Legitimacy The publication of a book on the legitimacy of the business school may raise the eyebrows of many. After all, a plethora of academic and non-academic writings exist on the very same topic in tens of journals. Moreover, not just (academic) articles, but many books have been written on this topic. Although those do not necessarily carry the word “legitimacy” in their title, most, if not all, touch on it either explicitly or implicitly. What is important, however, is that although the authors of those have framed their arguments within different keywords and concepts, the thin red line in those still maintains that contemporary business/management education must undergo a thorough makeover at best or be done away with at worst. Among so many others, in 2007, Rakesh Khurana claimed in his From Higher Aims to Hired Hands that business schools have lost the battle for professionalism, intellectuality, and morality. Although not solely an attack on business schools and management education in 2013, Mats Alvesson in his The Triumph of Emptiness maintains that education fundamentalism which has resulted in the proliferation of universities that stand heavy on form, but light on content, is, to an extent, to be blamed for the corrupted societies, and in 2018, Martin Parker recommends that we Shut Down the Business School altogether. Within the interplay of time, growth in the business school demand and supply, and societal changes on many fronts, the business school arena has, apparently, acquired and is now accommodating many inconvenient tenants—the questionable value of what it teaches (Pfeffer and Fong 2004), the irrelevance of what it researches (Pfeffer and Fong 2002), its questionable operation principles (Locke and Spender 2011), including the management of the business schools by applying costefficient practices (Khurana 2007; Parker 2014), the negative moral impact it makes on students (Desplaces et al. 2007; Hanson and Moore 2014), its questionable ethical and moral standards (Starkey et al. 2004), its overly strong emphasis on teaching “the profitable” instead of the “societal” (Bertelsen 2008; Humphries-Kil 2017), the producing of greedy (Wang et al. 2011), and single-mindedly instrumental

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(Varman et al. 2011) business school graduates who praise certification over substance (Alvesson 2013), its corruption scandals which surround business school alumni (Adler 2002; Örtenblad et al. 2013), its gender inequality (Haynes 2015) in general, and gender gap in research productivity (Aiston and Jung 2015; Davies et al. 2020) in particular, its promotion of the narrow-minded economic logic (Currie et al. 2010), its relentless struggle to live up to the government imposed league tables and ratings (Ghoshal 2005), its loss of the ability to think critically (Starkey and Tempest 2009), be curious (Zell 2001), or have a sense of introspection (Ford et al. 2010), its strive to teach profit-maximization, the outsmarting of the competition and the warding off of the new entrants (Koris et al. 2017), its propagation of ideologically inspired amoral theories which have actively freed their students from any sense of moral responsibility (Ghoshal 2005), among others. Apparently, the list is nearly endless or definitely longer than the allocated space for this chapter. Thus, based not only on the amount, but also the content of criticism, one is justified to ask how come business schools are still alive and kicking and even mushrooming (see, e.g., Durand and Dameron 2011) ever since the first one emerged in 1819 in Paris. Is it that no better alternative has been found to educate (or train) the men and women who would occupy the managerial positions of different institutions or is it that the business school, after all, does something right?

What Makes This Book Unique: A Kaleidoscopic Take Drawing on the variety of viewpoints which exist in (academic) texts as well as on the authors’ own experience, and to “steal” from an international bestseller (albeit on a different topic), the basis for this anthology is “fifty shades of grey”. Namely, although many books, including anthologies, have been published on higher education, the university, the business school, and management education, ours, unlike those we have come across, will propose multiple perspectives on and within the topic at hand. Instead of showing one-sided critical takes, contributors to this

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book debate the legitimacy of the business school from different contexts and perspectives. Some rather argue for the business school and make a case in its support, others remain critical but see a way forward to rectify today’s concerns, and yet others see very little or no hope at all to fashion the business school with even a flavor of legitimacy. Thus, we intend to provide the reader with a book in the “debate” format which would offer a relativist rather than a positivist standpoint on business school legitimacy and show that although not all that glitters is gold, some of it still can be and is gold. Although Cameron (1978) claims that the higher education institution (including the business school), while serving its multiple constituencies, must pursue multiple legitimate purposes, this surely is a daunting task. In reality, the question is frequently not about how to serve all constituencies equally (well), but which constituency’s interests the business school should tailor its legitimacy for first (or whose interests should be served foremostly, before the others’). Examples of business school legitimacy claim on serving the economic purpose, the societal purpose, its environmental purpose, and some other purposes all at the same time and equally (well) are frequent on business schools’ webpages. However, the fashioning of legitimate purposes for multiple constituencies simultaneously and equally well hardly works— some always take precedence over others. We now arrive at Michel Foucault’s “power games”, according to which power is built into the very structure of social relations that make up social order—a machine in which everybody is caught, and which pre-defines our ontology (Svensson 2019). Thus, while some business schools today still uphold the claim that “the purpose of business is business” and this is what they teach, most have coupled (or have even substituted) this claim with “ethical behavior”, “sustainable development”, “social responsibility”, “serving of the society”, and the like. Be that as it may, it is important to point out that “the society” consists of many constituencies who, more often than not, have contradicting claims (see, e.g., Alajoutsijärvi et al. 2015). And the (economic) logic which a society operates in (but we speculate that most still operate within the economic growth or capitalist logic) often, albeit implicitly, determines the constituency whose interests are served first. To illustrate this, we have chosen to rely on a typology

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developed by Chatzidakis et al. (2014). Although the typology’s focus is on the contrasting logics of growth in consumption (cultivated growth, sustainable growth, and degrowth), the underlying principles for the three logics of growth are also well-suited for our business school context. Thus, if the society relies on the logic of cultivated growth, which is underpinned by economic rationality, the neoclassical economic theories, and where “the show is run” by multinational, world-wide market elites who are concerned with maximizing economic growth and profitability, then business schools tailor their legitimate purpose and teaching primarily to the growth-oriented multinationals. If, however, the society as such relies on the logic of sustainable growth, which stands on the interaction of the market and society impacting one another, and where the primary actors are governments and middle class, concerned with maintaining social order, then it is those constituencies that the business school foremostly tailors its legitimate purpose and teaching to. Alternatively, if the society as such stands on the logic of degrowth which goes against the dominant growth-orientation of modern economics because it decreases the GDP, shrinks the economic system, leaves more space for human cooperation and ecosystems, and builds on alternative hedonism which rejects materialism and favors life rich in other sources of meaning and experience, such as creativity, time with family and friends, and so on (Carrington and Chatzidakis 2019), and each citizen’s role and worth is defined by social participation, then business school legitimacy is tailored also accordingly. It is possible that in case the latter, new and today still largely unaccepted and under-practiced logic is embraced, the name “business school” is also subject to change due to its semantic connotation. After all, as shown above, “the business school” has until today incorporated in itself the notions of neoclassical economic theories, capitalism, narrow-minded profit-seeking, and instrumentality where ends, more often than not, justify means. What is also important to point out is that while the paragraph above applies the bottom-down approach where the societal logic determines the legitimate purpose of the business school, the bottom-up approach is also possible. In case of the latter, it is the business school which determines its legitimate purpose even if it does not necessarily accord with the current societal logic. After all, as Foucault has claimed,

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Knowledge produced by science (and indeed by business schools), provides the concepts, categories, casualties, explanations, and language needed for us to develop as thinking and acting subjects. Hence, established knowledge partakes in the everyday exercise of power and the regulation of human beings, their thoughts, emotions and conduct. (Svensson 2019, p. 161)

The importance of the latter is difficult to overestimate for it suggests that in the academia’s (including the business school’s) hands lies enormous responsibility in shaping the society’s ontology and principles of “operation”. The intended market for this book constitutes business school managers and deans who are in charge of running the schools of business and management. We hope that it will also trigger the interest of researchers whose writings center around business and management education. It will provide a multi-view perspective not only to PhD students writing on the topic, but also to those in master and bachelor programs. Given the contributors’ different countries of residence or origin, this anthology and its content are not restricted to a particular region.

On the Debating Format and the Editors’ Position(s) This anthology is included in the book series “Palgrave Debates in Business and Management”, or one what we can call a “debating format”. While many anthologies tend to only contain chapters authored by people having the same (or at least very similar) perspective, this book, as well as the book series it is published in, takes pride in publishing books where not all contributors agree. Thus, in this book, readers find that some of the contributors argue that business schools need to go through major changes (or even shut down) to regain legitimacy, while others believe that moderate or minor (and in one case even no) changes would be enough to secure the future of business school legitimacy.

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A book format where academics are invited to debate something rests upon the belief that not everything can be judged by strict academic research measures; no single, unanimous, final answer can be found “out there” to the question on the legitimacy of business schools. There is, by necessity, also room for subjective construction of the reality by the academic or at least for subjective interpretation of the same “data”. The debating format also rests upon a firm belief in academic freedom, where the researchers themselves are free to choose what to study and which perspective to employ. We believe that “political correctness” has become a device that is too often practiced (also in academia), and that academic debates are, equally often, also cramped by the walls of the opinion corridor. Instead, we should more often include perspectives and opinions contrasting our own convictions. While the overall theme of the book (and debate) is decided by the editors, we have remained open for a variety of standpoints, perspectives, and arguments. That is not to say, though, that “anything goes” or that any argument is as strong as any other argument. In an academic book where “debating” is the chosen format, any position taken and any argument put forward needs, of course, to be well-argued. And unlike many research books which have a more traditional, less of a debating format, this book does not even make an effort to evaluate or judge the positions and arguments. Neither does it suggest a conclusion that points in one direction. Thus, at the end of the day, it is up to the readers to side with or against or remain abstained within the arguments that appear in the book. In this book, all contributors start off by taking a clear position within the debate and argue either “against”, “in between for and against”, or “for” the legitimacy of the business school, and, while doing so, express their arguments as clearly and concisely as possible. The chapters contributed to in this book deserve, not doubt, to be the main focus. However, at this point, we would like to take the chance and a few lines to voice our own position(s) within the debate. As stated above, we think it is somewhat strange that business schools are characterized by the technical knowledge interest (Habermas 1969) to such an immeasurable extent, which is why we believe that some kind of change within the business school arena in general is needed. We are also somewhat surprised over the ways that competition at business

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schools manifests itself. Despite their competence in humanities (which most business schools possess), it is surprising to witness the competition between individual colleagues, competing in a “meta-game” that is (too) disconnected from interesting studies of business, and which, in its turn, is anything but healthy (cf. Butler and Spoelstra 2020). Despite the competence in strategy (which, again, most business schools possess) and familiarity with concepts such as “mimetic isomorphism” (DiMaggio and Powell 1983; see also Meyer and Rowan 1977) (which, yet again, most business schools possess), it is surprising to find enumerable business schools which claim to prioritize “sustainability”, “diversity”, and “internationalization” or single-mindedly focus on areas such as “digitalization”, “hybridization”, “innovation”, and “entrepreneurship”. This is not to say that investments in any of these trends (or perhaps even fashions) is purely a waste of resources. Instead, it is to say that the automaticity that business schools and colleagues alike embrace when approaching these subjects may not necessarily help make the world a better place, at least not in the long run. Neither does it, or so we believe, help to create a desirable degree of variation within or among business schools. To us, business schools seem to be farther away than ever from academic values such as freedom to choose the topic of study (or its perspective), and critical thinking. Apparently, as many business schools’ websites claim, the “sustainability-diversity-internationalizationdigitalization-hybridization-innovation-entrepreneurship”-mode is the new(ish) modus operandi and you either “take it or leave it”. The latter is not, of course, explicitly stated on business schools’ websites, but has been gaining popularity as a topic of discussion among colleagues not only in a business school’s premises, but also in various academic conferences, particularly in the unofficial “ventilation”-sessions during breaks and “extracurricular” events (often, but not necessarily, following a glass or two of wine). Having said this, we now move to our understanding of why the book turned out to be what it did.

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The Editors’ Take on the Book Content They say that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Although we did not end up in hell as such, our good intentions did backfire in a way. Namely, when we embarked on the project, we intended the book to contain chapters which would attack the current state of business school legitimacy, those which would criticize it, but would still contend that not all is lost, and those which would defend the status quo. Or to refer to what we said earlier, “to show that although not all that glitters is gold, some of it still can be and is gold”. Alas, as many before us, albeit in different times, we did not hit gold. While we received a fair number of chapters on the first and an armful of chapters on the second intended part above, what we did not expect was to receive just one (!) chapter on the defending of the status quo. We even made efforts to invite scholars who previously had argued in defense of business schools and/or who we thought (or rather hoped) would take a “for”-position to business schools and their current state of affairs, but as readers of this book will discover, we failed rather miserably. Our struggle on the final structuring of the book produced a result where the last part on “Defending the status quo” contains just one (!) lonely but a certainly relevant and well-argued chapter. However, the fact that hardly anyone had anything to say in defense of the business school legitimacy is a telling fact in itself—business school legitimacy as a topic has become so controversial due to the multitude of stakeholders, contexts, nature of business schools, and the innumerable other “issues” which surround it that there is very little left to defend. Or rather, there is so much more to criticize. Which is why we are most grateful to Jason Brennan who makes a claim that even though business education is not perfect, the much promoted and praised and endorsed and adopted liberal arts education is no better. However, it is also fair to admit that Brennan’s chapter does not necessarily defend the business school legitimacy per se, but rather discredits liberal arts education, thus equating both and shining the generally accepted “glory” of liberal arts education also on business education. One may ask why we were able to find very little or almost no defense of the current state of affairs at business schools? One answer

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is that we did not search very thoroughly and/or long enough. This answer we would like to disagree with (as is only natural to a human being), particularly because realizing that we do not have much for the last part of the book (a disturbing perspective) made us search even higher and lower than before. Or is it that we were clumsy (or “clumpsy”, as it has, apparently, become “legitimate” for the younger generation to say (see Larman 2015). Another possible answer is that only very few are defending the business schools’ legitimacy as it currently stands? But if the criticism that the contributors to this book put forward is something to embrace rather than dismiss, then why do business schools choose not to go through more substantial makeovers than just subscribing to the sustainability-diversity-internationalizationdigitalization-hybridization-innovation-entrepreneurship”-mode, but no more. Or is defense lacking because of inertia or even “functional stupidity” (Alvesson and Spicer 2012)? Or perhaps because business schools are more resilient and better-equipped to adapt to the constantly evolving economic and social environment, as Gabriel Hawawini is suggesting (see Chapter 10 in this volume)? Or is it, perhaps, that to defend the business school legitimacy is to leave the (protective) crowd of thinkalikes? And then, of course, there is one of the most uncomfortable questions of all—if it really is true that business schools are doing more harm than good, that they are ethically bankrupt and void of moral values, why are we, as academics who possess the (un)fortunate skill to reflect critically and with introspection, working for them? (see also Koris and Aav 2019). Perhaps we still do because the same “inertia” and “functional stupidity” and “resilience” and “adaptability” create comfort zones for us? We cannot and will not answer any of the questions above lest we interfere and meddle with the debate, which we hope will not end with this book but would rather continue. What we will do in the next section, however, is present the contributors’ different viewpoints within the different micro-contexts of the business school and its legitimacy.

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Introduction of the Chapters As can be seen in the Table of Contents, this book is divided into four parts which form the debate on the topic of business school legitimacy. Concerning the types of business schools (private, public, university-affiliated, individual, etc.), the author(s) of each chapter were free to choose themselves which type of business school they situate their writing in. On a more technical note, the adage goes that tables and figures save the readers time and energy, and aid their understanding (see, e.g., Franzblau and Chung 2012) of a written text. We, therefore, hope that Table 1.1 will do just this and offer a bird’s-eye view of the contributors’ take on a particular problem and where it originates from, what needs to be changed and why, what the result of the change could be, and what would happen upon the change. The table additionally outlines each chapter’s key terms and the main theme(s) in focus. A description of each of the chapter follows the table. However, unlike most chapter introductions in existing anthologies, ours is not customarily structured by the order of chapters, or even by the parts of the book (those are evident just by looking at the Table of Contents), but by recurring themes across the chapters which appear in italics below. Following Katariina Juusola’s “(De)legitimacy of managerialism within business schools” in Chapter 2 of this volume which offers an overview of how legitimacy has been constructed in university-based business schools throughout their history in different eras, and thus builds an undeniably relevant foundation for the chapters to follow, the two themes that a vast majority of the contributors in this book touch upon are (1) the need for business schools to employ other purposes than merely helping private corporations to maximize their profits and (2) the critique toward rankings and accreditations. To start with the former, contributors suggest a variety of alternative purposes for business schools, instead of (or in addition to) educating for increased organizational efficiency or generating income for the business school owners. While the problems related to educating for increased organizational efficiency and generation of income for the business school owners are dealt with by Martin Parker in his Afterword,

Change of what?

BSs in general (focuses on education, but deals also with research)

Chapter

3. Alajoutsijärvi, Juusola & Kettunen “Business schools in their ideological prison: Why sustainability challenge is our next legitimacy crisis”

BSs support capitalism, in terms of profit maximation and continuous growth, something which most faculty members are more or less unaware of

What’s wrong there? These core beliefs are destructive for the nature, climate and human societies and thus not compatible with “sustainability”; efforts to address sustainability is merely “greenwashing”

Why?

BSs need to make their current core beliefs visible in teaching and research, and to critically reflect upon them, thereby appear more “academic” and, thus, make room for alternative ideological foundations for business studies

What needs to be done?

Table 1.1 Changes that need to be made at BSs, according to the contributors—an overview of the chapters in Parts II–IV and Epilogue

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Change of what?

BSs in general, with a bigger focus on BS education than BS research

BSs in general

Chapter

4. Solitander “The reflexive impotence and neoliberal neurosis of the responsible business school”

5. Rundshagen “Business school burnout: Endangering legitimacy on pathological pathways”

Many BSs per se as well as the people who inhabit them—students as well as employees—are not well, and one can even speak of pathology

Even if CSR and the like are taught at BSs, the education does not really make the world more sustainable

What’s wrong there? A deep belief in “conscious capitalism” prevents imagining real systemic change and, thus, the “responsible turn” institutionalizes that “we are doing something”, the effects of such efforts are the opposite of the ones that were intended Many—both BSs as such and the people there—suffer from depression, insomnia and burnout, something which undermines BSs’ legitimacy

Why?

(continued)

BSs need to heal, through a variety of measures that need to be taken to ease up the conditions BSs and—especially—their people live under

BSs—and the employees especially—need to radically reimagine capitalism, through what is humanly (rather than pragmatically) possible to organize as response to crises threatening humanity itself

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Change of what?

Deals mainly with BS education, but focus almost equally as much with BS research

Chapter

6. Howieson and & Robson “The business school in ruins: Navigating the multi-stakeholder landscape of contemporary management scholarship”

Table 1.1 (continued) BS education (and also research) is not sufficiently relevant for practice, focuses too heavily on profit maximization and addresses sustainability issues in a too irrelevant way

What’s wrong there? This is due to the several conflicting demands that BSs of today have to live with, such as being lucrative for their owners, being relevant for practice and living up to demands of academic rigor; BSs try to live up to all the demands, which often leads to living up to none

Why?

BSs need to become better at analyzing their stakeholders with their dividing demands, and to decide on and install a strategy for which stakeholder’s/stakeholders’ demands to focus upon; for many BSs, a regional focus would be relevant, as well as establishing relationships with practitioners and avoid publishing as the core faculty activity, whilst instead focus on research and education relevant for practice

What needs to be done?

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Change of what?

BSs in general, with a bigger focus on BS research than BS education

Chapter

7. Yarrow & Davies “Delegitimizing women management scholars’ underrepresentation in the research impact agenda”

Whilst BSs preach equality, women are underrepresented in BS the research impact agenda

What’s wrong there? This hypocrisy may further contribute to, and exacerbate inequality in society, because, for instance, due to lack of female professorial role models

Why?

(continued)

BSs need to reduce discrepancies between symbolic and substantive institutional legitimacy, thus, include, promote, and treat equally women management scholars and their scholarly contributions, through measures such as proactively implementing decent work and gender equality policies and practices, and embedding gender equity in research activities, such as impact

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Change of what?

Internationalization strategies of BSs

Chapter

8. Engwall & Wedlin “The myth of the global market for business education”

Table 1.1 (continued) It is a myth that all BSs compete on a global market

What’s wrong there? Most students are recruited nationally and will work in their home country and would therefore benefit from learning the business concepts in their mother tongue and acquire knowledge about domestic conditions

Why?

BS deans should view internationalization beyond rankings and accreditations by preparing their students for the globalized world by means of language and culture studies

What needs to be done?

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Change of what?

BS education

BS education and research

Chapter

9. Bausch “On how intercultural management education can increase the societal legitimacy of business schools”

10. Hawawini “On the dilemmatic legitimacy of business schools: The barbell syndrome and the dominance of business degrees”

Not all BSs are good at dealing with conflicting demands— “dilemmatic issues”—such as (and especially) practical relevance and academic rigor

Many BS curricula are outdated and do not address the requirements of the new world order

What’s wrong there?

There are several such conflicting demands on BSs

The world has changed and is now characterized by volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and agility, which call for leaders who embody rationality, emotions, and social relationships in behavior

Why?

(continued)

BSs need to start focusing their teaching on Intercultural Management—a subject focusing on the interactions and processes between individuals and organizations around the world—, which could help BSs to combine a profit-oriented with a social & humanist view, thereby strengthening their societal legitimacy, as well as offering enlightenment to the students, thus helping to fulfil the Humboldtian ideal of higher education Each BS needs a strategy as to how to handle such dilemmas; BSs also need to focus on educating future leaders who will change the world for the better

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Change of what?

BS education

Chapter

11. Sidani “How business schools can graduate business citizens”

Table 1.1 (continued) 1. Ethical underpinnings (if any) are often decoupled from the business theories and approaches taught; 2. Inability among BSs to tackle educational needs within their own contexts

What’s wrong there? The future managers, who BSs educate, will get decoupled from moral obligations

Why? BSs must, instead of “profit-seeking managers”, educate “business citizens”, who understands business concepts and how to operate a business under various, often conflicting, competitive, societal, environmental, ethical demands—a stakeholder-minded individual; one way to achieve this is through courses in humanities, increased inter-disciplinarity and a focus on developing moral judgement as well as on “business character” (“building the whole individual”)

What needs to be done?

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Change of what?

Business and Management Education in Australian Public Universities

BS research, but addresses also education

Chapter

12. Hogan, Charles & Kortt “The market’s filthy lesson: Disruption for business and management education in Australian public universities”

13. Currie “How business schools address grand societal challenges through research: Personal reflections and a call to arms”

BSs privilege theory development; many BS faculty are too attached to and focused on theory and intellectualism

The education offered at public BSs is too often rather irrelevant for practice

What’s wrong there? BSs at many Australian public universities are too disconnected from businesses and the working life, and too occupied with theory building Far from all such theories and intellectualism are relevant for practice

Why?

(continued)

BSs need to design and offer incentives for BS researchers to engage in interdisciplinary research, to be able to successfully address grand societal challenges, such as financial crises, climate changes, the gap between rich and poor etc

Public BSs should make an effort to increase relevance for practice, by measures such as offering more vocationally-oriented education, with an emphasis on skills development, and specializing in accordance with the needs of industry within the region they are located

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Change of what?

BS education

BSs, mainly the education they offer

Chapter

14. Brennan “Compared to what? A realist defense of business school”

Parker “Afterword: After the business school”

Table 1.1 (continued) A lot is wrong—especially concerning lack of academic rigor and practical relevance; then again, nothing is wrong BSs contribute to maintaining societal inequalities

What’s wrong there? BS education is as bad as liberal arts education, and nothing much can be done about it BSs teach managerialism, which produces inequality, systematic exclusion and an ecological and climate crisis

Why?

BSs need to be shut down or—alternatively—transform into “schools for organizing”

Nothing

What needs to be done?

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3. Alajoutsijärvi, Juusola & Kettunen “Business schools in their ideological prison: Why sustainability challenge is our next legitimacy crisis” 4. Solitander “The reflexive impotence and neoliberal neurosis of the responsible business school”

Chapter BSs will face enormous legitimacy challenges

The self-deception will continue and, thus, BSs will not contribute to any sustainable transformation in its true sense

BSs would contribute to true organizing for radical transformation

What if no changes are made?

Sustainable, responsible and ethical BSs

What will the result be?

Demands on BSs to teach for a sustainable world, but also an inner will among BSs to do so; incentives for BS scholars to reimagine and resist are small, incentives for them to uphold capitalism are big

The choice of BSs to prioritize the interest of business management, instead of higher professional aims

Origin of problem

(continued)

Self-deception by harmony perspective

Ideological prison

Keyterm

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5. Rundshagen “Business school burnout: Endangering legitimacy on pathological pathways”

Chapter

Table 1.1 (continued)

BSs and their people would recover and get healthier

What will the result be? BSs will stay unhealthy and, thus, less legitimate

What if no changes are made? A time of high economic pressure and pressure on people; lots of (unrealistic) expectations on both BSs and the people within them; toxic leaders who themselves eagerly compete (and drive employees to compete) in, e.g., rankings and accreditations

Origin of problem

Pathological performance-orientation

Keyterm

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6. Howieson & Robson “The business school in ruins: Navigating the multi-stakeholder landscape of contemporary management scholarship”

Chapter

Increased legitimacy and survival

What will the result be? BSs would lose their legitimacy, in terms of a declined influence on future business and business leaders, as well as on the treatment of the grand societal challenges; ultimately, BSs will, if they fail to satisfy anyone, face ruination

What if no changes are made? BSs, being cash cows for their parent universities, have become an industry; a reduction in public funding;

Origin of problem

(continued)

Blurring of priorities

Keyterm

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BSs will become more legitimate in a substantive, not hypocritical sense

Business education will be more relevant for the domestic as well as the international market

BS education will gain increased societal legitimacy

8. Engwall & Wedlin “The myth of the global market for business education”

9. Bausch “On how intercultural management education can increase the societal legitimacy of business schools”

What will the result be?

7. Yarrow & Davies “Delegitimizing women management scholars’ underrepresentation in the research impact agenda”

Chapter

Table 1.1 (continued)

BS education will be less societally legitimate

Less relevant business education

BSs will become less legitimate as this hypocrisy starts to be revealed and documented

What if no changes are made? Traditions, deeply engrained gender inequity and vertical gender segregation; hypocrisy stems from that BSs have to address the demands on them to foster equality Rankings and accreditations and the assumption that higher education is a global activity, where faculty, students, and alumni are perfectly mobile Societal changes that BSs have been too slow to respond to, due to inertia

Origin of problem

Homo sociooeconomicus

Home markets

Hypocrisy

Keyterm

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10. Hawawini “On the dilemmatic legitimacy of business schools: The barbell syndrome and the dominance of business degrees”

Chapter

BSs will become even more legitimate than they already are

What will the result be? As long as BSs retain their resilient character and their ability to adapt to continuous changes, BSs will do pretty fine even without any strategy for handling conflicting dilemmas

What if no changes are made? At least partly, the strong focus on rankings and accreditations can be blamed, because it has taken from BSs balance when it comes to conflicting dilemmas

Origin of problem

(continued)

The barbell syndrome

Keyterm

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11. Sidani “How business schools can graduate business citizens”

Chapter

Table 1.1 (continued)

If instead educating “business citizens” BSs will be relevant for generations to come; schools of business need to reemphasize impact and include also community engagement, and interaction with a wider set of stakeholders, helping to bridge societal gaps; business citizens understand the context in which they are going to operate, and act accordingly

What will the result be? BS education will become less relevant

What if no changes are made? A traditional disciplinary business focus, along with globalization, especially international competition (rankings, accreditations etc.), which makes BSs disconnected from their contexts

Origin of problem Business citizens

Keyterm

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BSs at public Australian Universities will re-gain their legitimacy

BS research (and education) will gain increased practical relevance and, thus, legitimacy

12. Hogan, Charles & Kortt “The market’s filthy lesson: Disruption for business and management education in Australian public universities”

13. Currie “How business schools address grand societal challenges through research: Personal reflections and a call to arms”

Chapter

What will the result be?

BS research (and education) will remain less practically relevant, thus, BSs will not increase their legitimacy

BSs at public Australian Universities may run the risk of becoming extinct

What if no changes are made? The focus on international markets has brought a focus on international accreditations and rankings, which focus on academic research of less relevance for practice The tradition within BSs to focus on the interest of shareholders at the expense of other stakeholders

Origin of problem

(continued)

Change-makers

Vocationally-oriented education

Keyterm

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N/A

Higher education would be much more academic and would not help to maintain inequality or planetary existential threats; their owners would lose huge amounts of income

Parker “Afterword: After the business school”

What will the result be?

14. Brennan “Compared to what? A realist defense of business school”

Chapter

Table 1.1 (continued)

BSs would continue to maintain inequality and be cash cows for their owners who are often universities

N/A

What if no changes are made? The background is that we know very little about how to educate people in a way so that they actually learn much from it Financial interests

Origin of problem

Shut them down

Learning-less education

Keyterm

34 R. Koris and A. Örtenblad

3. Alajoutsijärvi, Juusola & Kettunen “Business schools in their ideological prison: Why sustainability challenge is our next legitimacy crisis” 4. Solitander “The reflexive impotence and neoliberal neurosis of the responsible business school” 5. Rundshagen “Business school burnout: Endangering legitimacy on pathological pathways”

Chapter

X

X

X

Sustainability

Internationalization

Main theme in focus

x

x

Practical relevance vs. academic rigor

x

Equality

x

(continued)

Lucrativeness

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6. Howieson and & Robson “The business school in ruins: Navigating the multi-stakeholder landscape of contemporary management scholarship” 7. Yarrow & Davies “Delegitimizing women management scholars’ underrepresentation in the research impact agenda” 8. Engwall & Wedlin “The myth of the global market for business education” 9. Bausch “On how intercultural management education can increase the societal legitimacy of business schools”

Chapter

Table 1.1 (continued)

x

x

Sustainability

X

X

x

Internationalization

Main theme in focus

x

X

Practical relevance vs. academic rigor

X

Equality x

Lucrativeness

36 R. Koris and A. Örtenblad

10. Hawawini “On the dilemmatic legitimacy of business schools: The barbell syndrome and the dominance of business degrees” 11. Sidani “How business schools can graduate business citizens” 12. Hogan, Charles & Kortt “The market’s filthy lesson: Disruption for business and management education in Australian public universities” 13. Currie “How business schools address grand societal challenges through research: Personal reflections and a call to arms” 14. Brennan “Compared to what? A realist defense of business school”

Chapter

x

x

X

x

Internationalization

X

x

Sustainability

Main theme in focus

X

X

X

X

Practical relevance vs. academic rigor Equality

(continued)

Lucrativeness

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x

Sustainability

Internationalization

Main theme in focus

x

Practical relevance vs. academic rigor X

Equality X

Lucrativeness

Clarifications: “BSs” = business schools “Change of what?”: the “object” that is dealt with “What’s wrong there?”: a brief explanation of the main problem/s at BSs, in the chapter at stake “Why?”: a brief justification of/background as to why this is a problem “What needs to be done?”: suggested measures in the chapter “What will the result be?”: the ideal BS, according to the author/s “What if no changes are made?”: gives an idea of what would follow unless measures are taken “Origin of problem”: a brief explanation of why this situation emerged in the first place “Keyterm”: a word or brief term that according to the editors characterizes the chapter, the word/term is either fetched from the text or the editors’ take on what is focused within the chapter “Main theme in focus”: offers an indication of which theme/s (not completely mutually exclusive) dealt with in the chapter at stake—a larger, bolded “X” means that the theme is indeed being focused, whilst a smaller “x” means that “this is also addressed” The chapter connects to a debate, which mainly focuses on, if marked as “Sustainability”: whether to focus on environmental issues and decent work conditions or an exclusive focus on profit maximization Internationalization”: whether to focus on a global market or a more international or even local or regional market “Practical relevance vs. academic rigor”: whether to focus on academic rigor, academic theory and critical thinking, or rather on practical relevance “Equality”: whether (and to which extent) it is important to treat and offer people the same or not “Lucrativeness”: to which extent it is important that BSs generate money for their owners or if other purposes should be prioritized Source Authors

Parker “Afterword: After the business school”

Chapter

Table 1.1 (continued)

38 R. Koris and A. Örtenblad

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39

“After the business school”, the alternative purposes are suggested by many others. For example, Lars Engwall and Linda Wedlin in Chapter 8, “The myth of the global market for business education” speak for national relevance by dismantling the much-professed global focus. The authors argue that since most students are likely to be employed on their home markets, they would benefit far more from knowledge about the domestic environment than the global marketplace. Both Brian Howieson with Ian Robson, in “The business school in ruins: Navigating the multi-stakeholder landscape of contemporary management scholarship”, Chapter 6 in this volume and Owen Hogan with Michael B. Charles, and Michael A. Kortt, in their Chapter 12, “The market’s filthy lesson: Disruption for business and management education in Australian public universities”, promote practical relevance. While the former argue that business schools should carefully analyze their stakeholders with the purpose of deciding which stakeholder demands to focus on more, the latter suggest that business schools (in Australia) would do well to offer more vocationally-oriented education relevant to the region the business school is located in. Emily Yarrow and Julie Davies in Chapter 7, “Delegitimizing women management scholars’ underrepresentation in the research impact agenda”, speak for equality and claim that although the business schools claim to subscribe to the UN sustainable development goals, they are not walking the talk, and Volker Rundshagen in his Chapter 5, “Business school burnout: Endangering legitimacy on pathological pathways”, demonstrates how during times when we are the wealthiest and best-off, we are also more ill than ever before, and suggests that only when business schools start placing well-being at the center of organizations will they succeed in turning out healthy graduates. Concerning the latter of the two popular themes (rankings and accreditation), the most radically oriented authors regard those as the foundation for the problems that business schools of today experience (see, e.g., Rundshagen, Chapter 5 in this volume). Also Lard Engwall and Linda Wedlin claim in Chapter 8 of this volume that accreditations are, to a large extent, to be blamed for the business schools teaching the global rather than the domestic perspective, whereas it is the two authors’ opinion that today “the domestic” should be prioritized over “the global”. Others maintain a somewhat less radical stance by saying

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that the future role of accreditation bodies should be to both helping business schools gain insight about the current problems and stimulate the establishment of relations and cooperation between business schools and practitioners (see Brian Howieson and Ian Robson, Chapter 6 in this volume, “The business school in Ruins: Navigating the multi-stakeholder landscape of contemporary management scholarship”), and that rankings and accreditations should be used for proper benchmarking, application of best practices, support, and guidance, but strategizing around rankings would yield good public relations and short-term reputation, rather than good education (see Yusuf Sidani, Chapter 11 in this volume, “How business schools can graduate business citizens”). Yet others admit that rankings and accreditations also have benefits. For instance, Madeleine Bausch in Chapter 9, “On how intercultural management education can increase the societal legitimacy of business schools”, claims that rankings and accreditations can contribute to attracting outstanding academics to business schools. Gabriel Hawawini in Chapter 10 of this book also suggests that rankings and accreditations could help deal effectively with what he calls the issues of the “barbell syndrome”. The theme of (not) abandoning the capitalist mindset in the business school features primarily in the chapters in Part II of the book, “Attacking status quo”, and, as expected, stands rather skeptical in terms of this mindset’s content, application, and impact as well as a prioritized value guiding business schools. This is especially true for Chapter 3, “Business schools in their ideological prison: Why sustainability challenge is our next legitimacy crisis”, authored by Kimmo Alajoutsijärvi, Katariina Juusola, and Kerttu Kettunen, who state that the core beliefs of capitalism are destructive for nature, climate, and human societies, and claim that in order for sustainability to become more than a window-dressing question, business schools should create a platform where alternative ideological foundations could emerge and flourish among business students. Additionally, Nikodemus Solitander in Chapter 4, “The reflexive impotence and neoliberal neurosis of the responsible business school”, agrees that a strong belief in the capitalist mindset hampers systemic change, and that despite CSR and the like are taught at business schools, business education will not make the world more sustainable unless they radically reimagine capitalism.

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However, among the chapters that (implicitly) defend the capitalist mindset are those by Graeme Currie in Chapter 13, “How business schools address grand societal challenges through research: Personal reflections and a call to arms”, where he argues that business schools should move farther away from the theory development the taken-forgranted intellectualism and, instead, concentrate on practical relevance to increase the business school’s legitimacy. Also Yusuf Sidani in Chapter 11, “How business schools can graduate business citizens”, suggests that there is hardly any school which is better suited than the business school to educate businesspeople, but suggests that instead of educating the customary businessmen and businesswomen, business schools should, through developing their moral character, educate “business citizens”, who would still be competent at business issues. Also Gabriel Hawawini maintains in Chapter 10 that business schools should remain the main suppliers of business education as long as they retain their resilient character and ability to adapt to changes in the economic and social environment and are effectively able to deal with the issues of the “barbell syndrome” within the business school. It must be said, however, that even though the “classical” capitalist mindset is not necessarily refuted within Chapters 10, 11, and 13, the authors are of the opinion that certain “tweaks” are in order for the business school to (re)gain its legitimacy. A theme which has been touched upon in most chapters is that of the conflicting stakeholder issues and the subsequent problems. More strongly, however, than in others, this theme features in Brian Howieson’s and Ian Robson’s Chapter 6 (but see also Gabriel Hawawini, Chapter 10 in this volume), where they claim that the burden of trying to satisfy many stakeholders’ often conflicting demands is “mission impossible”, and that business schools should instead embrace an impact agenda, supported by reciprocal relationships with practitioners. Hogan, Charles, and Kortt in Chapter 12 similarly maintain that if business schools provided more specialist education in accordance with the needs of a particular industry within the region where the business school is located, it would clearly contribute not only to the job readiness of its alumni, but also to the industry’s employment requirements, thus serving clearly the needs of at least two stakeholders instead of everybody and, thus, nobody. Madeleine

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Bausch, however, while citing Starkey et al. (2004) in Chapter 9, maintains that business schools are true “agoras” where different stakeholders not only interact, but also learn from each other. At this point, we arrive at Part IV of the book (“Defending status quo”), which, as is evident already from the Table of Contents, contains only one (!) chapter (Jason Brennan, Chapter 14 in this volume, “Compared to what? A realist defense of business school”) where the author speaks, to an extent, in defense of the business school and its teaching, or at least defends the status quo relative to the viewpoints of the authors in previous chapters in this volume. We write “to an extent” because Brennan does not necessarily disagree with the critique on business school legitimacy, (In fact, he states that “Critics’ complaints about business school are correct”.) but he does maintain that business education is no worse than the idealized liberal arts education. Since we were reluctant to write a customary conclusion to the book (after all, the readers are meant to draw their own conclusions on all the chapters on business school legitimacy in this book), the finishing words appear in an Afterword, authored by Martin Parker, an eloquent and vocal author and/or editor of books such as Shut Down the Business School (Parker 2018), Anarchism, Organization and Management (Parker et al. 2020), and Life After COVID-19 : The Other Side of Crisis (Parker 2020). In it, Martin Parker explores what it might mean to live after business schools, what would happen if critics had their way and the business school disappeared, whether arguments against closure suggest that we are in need of knowledge disseminated by the business school or whether the arguments are primarily financial, and what might replace the business school were it to really become extinct.

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2 (De)Legitimacy of Managerialism Within Business Schools Katariina Juusola

This chapter reviews the historical development of B-schools and how they have negotiated their legitimacy under various eras, how managerialism has been incrementally incorporated into B-schools and how managerialism now is going through its own legitimacy crisis. The concept of organizational legitimacy is used as an analytical framework in discussing this historical change across three different eras of universities and B-schools. These eras are understood to build cumulatively; that new management models and philosophies establish themselves gradually and that the process involves struggle and debate and that different forms of administration coexist (see also Andersen and Pors 2017; Keulen and Kroeze 2014). To build the historical development K. Juusola (B) College of Business Administration, Ajman University, Ajman, UAE e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. Örtenblad and R. Koris (eds.), Debating Business School Legitimacy, Palgrave Debates in Business and Management, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-12725-0_2

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trajectory of expansion of management in B-schools, I utilize periodization technique based on metaphors (Jordanova 2000) that characterize institutional arrangements in different eras. The metaphors attached to different ideal constructions of B-schools are called the modern university, multiversity, and managerial university, each of which have their own underlying constructions of organizational legitimacy. The chapter is structured as follows: first, it introduces the controversial concept of managerialism. Then, it discusses the concept of legitimacy and the historical construction of legitimacy in business schools in different university eras, how managerialism has been incorporated into the system and what are its consequences. Lastly, it discusses signs of delegitimacy of managerialism inside and outside the academia in the light of recent global trends in business schools and societies.

Introduction to Managerialism During the past decades, business schools (B-schools) have been under criticism for various reasons (Alajoutsijärvi et al. 2015). In societies where research universities and their B-schools receive some funding through taxpayers, but where education is nowadays viewed more as a private good rather than public good, judgments of institutions’ legitimacy and acceptable criteria for evaluating it have changed dramatically and become increasingly debated (e.g., Ball 2012; Giroux 2002; Kwiek 2006; Slaughter and Leslie 1997). Part of this critique comes from B-schools’ internal stakeholders, namely the academics, who have questioned the way how universities and B-schools’ operate and are managed (Locke and Spender 2011). This much debated new governance system and ethos is called managerialism. Managerialism is an ideology that views all types of organizations as subjects to be managed through a common set of managerial practices that aim toward profit maximization and cost-efficiency. It places little value in experience, skills, or sensitivity to the organization’s core business according to an idea that “there is little difference in the skills required to run an advertising agency, an oil rig, or a university” (Klikauer 2015,

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p. 1104). Thus, managerialism sees no difference in running professional organizations that have unique characteristics, missions, resources, organizational cultures, and employees’ expertise. This, in turn, is at odds with theories on organizational legitimacy that acknowledges that any organization is subject to evaluations from multiple stakeholders about its “right to exist” (e.g., Aldrich and Fiol 1994; Bitektine 2011; DiMaggio and Powell 1983; Meyer and Rowan 1977; Suchman 1995). It is peculiar how managerialism as a very narrow-minded management ideology has been so successful in legitimizing itself as a dominant ideology in B-schools, their respective universities, and entire societies. Thus, it is worth asking, how did we get here? The following chapter will review the historical development of business schools and how they have negotiated their legitimacy under different eras.

Organizational Legitimacy and Historical Development of B-Schools Legitimacy Theory and Legitimacy in B-Schools Organizational legitimacy is understood here as “a generalized perception or assumption that the actions of an entity are desirable, proper, or appropriate within some socially constructed system of norms, values, beliefs, and definitions” (Suchman 1995, p. 574). A very basic expectation for legitimacy is that the organization acts within the norms of the society (Dube and Maroun 2017), but it should also go beyond mere compliance and achieve wider stakeholder endorsement by engaging in activities deemed desirable (Bitektine 2011). This can be a daunting task, especially for organizations such as academic institutions with a diverse set of stakeholders, which often have conflicting expectations (Alajoutsijärvi et al. 2015). Because of this, building and maintaining legitimacy can be paradoxical in nature where an attempt to build or maintain legitimacy can have an opposite effect that delegitimizes the organization or some aspect of it in the eyes of certain stakeholders (Smith and Lewis 2011; Sonpar et al. 2010).

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Organizational legitimacy is manifested in a set of concrete practices in organizations as well as in certain ideals of organizational structures and management styles. Each era of management thought has had its own ideals underlying desirable organizational structures, management styles as well as different judgments of organizational effectiveness (Cameron 2015). Similarly, the expectations of the constituencies on what kind of goals different types of organizations should pursue tend to change over time and organizations must adapt themselves to such changes in order to maintain their legitimacy (Suchman 1995). Such challenges and tensions have also pressured universities and B-schools throughout their existence along with the expansion of management and their changing role in the society, particularly when universities have become attached to national competitiveness and innovation, and thus linked to socioeconomic development and building of knowledge economies (Giroux 2002; Grubb and Lazerson 2005; Shore and Wright 1999; Washburn 2008). Universities’ and B-schools’ legitimacy-building requires that they pursue multiple goals to meet the criteria of diverse stakeholder groups with often conflicting and changing expectations of what is desirable, proper, and appropriate (Cameron 1978, 2017). In his seminal work for assessing universities’ effectiveness criteria, Cameron (1978) introduced nine specific criteria. These can be further narrowed down to three different clusters: organizational goals (including organizational health of internal processes and culture, ability to acquire resources, system openness, and community interaction), goals for faculty and administrative staff interface (including job satisfaction, professional development, and quality), and goals for student interface (student satisfaction and their academic, career and personal development). More recently, achieving specific operational goals (especially strives for cost-efficiency) and reputational goals (namely improving prestige and image through ranking position and pursuing for international accreditations) seem to have become more important goals (e.g., Bok 2003; Slaughter and Leslie 1997; Wedlin 2011). Thus, B-schools aim to serve very diverse goals, and the priorities of different goals have changed fundamentally throughout the history of expansion, which has consequently had its ramifications

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on organizational legitimacy and what precisely is desirable, proper, or appropriate and for whom. These aspects will be discussed next.

Historical Expansion of Managerialism in B-Schools From Modern University to Multiversity During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when the first B-schools became part of universities in Europe and the United States, the academia was going through an ideological change: While still being influenced by the prevailing ideals for the modern university influenced by the ideas of Immanuel Kant and the German Humboldtian model, there were calls for a new type of university model already in the late eighteenth century. The modern university, according to Kant’s vision, sought its legitimacy by aiming to serve the interests of emerging nation states by producing new valuable knowledge and educating enlightened, elite citizens. Hence, the legitimacy-building followed a pragmatic legitimacy approach (Suchman 1995) where universities saw their role as servants of the needs of the society and nations. Kant’s vision was taken further in the German Humboldtian model in the early nineteenth century, which became manifested in the University of Berlin. According to Humboldt, ideal universities were to pursue and cultivate knowledge and science in broad category of liberal education subjects, and serve as producers and custodians of culture (Bahti 1987; Kwiek 2006; Starkey and Tempest 2005). For this model to be effective, it required autonomy from the state (although being funded by it) and placing the faculty and academic freedom to the center of its philosophy (Kwiek 2006). Within this model, faculty members had considerable authority over the matters of their respective departments and institutions (Kwiek 2006). This model was considered ideal for serving the needs of the rising nation-state and the society as its main constituency, and it was keenly adopted by emerging research universities in Europe and the United States (Augier and March 2011).

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However, the needs of the rapidly industrializing nations on both sides of the Atlantic called for a new purpose for universities, and the old university models were becoming obsolete (Kerr 2001). This resulted in expanding access to higher education and adding more professional training in universities along with their traditional role as cultural centers and research institutes (Kerr 2001). Kant also promoted inclusion of modern disciplines such as law and medicine seeking “truth” in modern university, which made a significant difference for the traditional role of philosophy exercising “reasoning” as the core discipline of universities (Bahti 1987). Thus, Kant conceptualized the purpose of higher education more pragmatically compared to earlier classical education model in terms of disciplines. From legitimacy theory perspective, such bold move can be understood as a strategy for building exchangebased legitimacy (Suchman 1995) in which one is seeking legitimacy through engaging practices that are expected to bring positive benefits to particular constituents that would grant them support. After all, during the same time period, the fields of Medicine and Law were going through significant professionalization (Elvbakken and Ludvigsen 2016; Konefsky and Schlegel 1981). Inclusion of such disciplines into modern university model aimed to serve the nations and the need for professionals in these fields for enhancing expertise, technology, science, and scholarship (Kerr 2001; Washburn 2008). Furthermore, as more professional disciplines, including B-schools, became part of universities, it established a new role of the university in society, the idea of which Kerr (2001) addresses as multiversity. Along with the era of multiversity, universities built their legitimacy by meeting the needs of increasingly complex web of stakeholders. Simultaneously, universities grew in number and in size, and consequently became more complex and expensive to run (Kerr 2001; Washburn 2008). While faculty members still enjoyed considerable power within their departments, which manifested, for example, in deciding on appointments of administrators, faculty members, committees, and control over instruction, the curricula, and examinations (Gerber 2014; Kerr 2001), in other matters, such as long-range planning, budgeting, and in appointing top administrative personnel, decisions were typically made together with faculty and the administration (Gerber 2014). Thus,

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universities started to turn into “administered universities” (Klikauer 2013), which slowly brought in the idea of more “managed” institutions. From legitimacy theory perspective, this change aligns with the idea of building procedural legitimacy, which involves adoption of certain socially accepted techniques and procedures (i.e., professional management) that signal good practice (Suchman 1995). This move was also legitimized through discourses according to which to governance structures had to be modernized as academic institutions began to be viewed as directly contributing to socioeconomic development and the competitiveness of nations (Khurana 2007; Washburn 2008), hence playing a more significant role than merely that of serving the public good. Thus, new professional schools within universities aligned their mission accordingly. For B-schools, this meant changing their original mission of serving the public good to aligned more to an attempt to socialize managers to the art and science of managing organizations efficiently (Khurana 2007). The same ideas then became increasingly accepted as a normative guideline in most organizations, whether private or public. The golden age of B-schools (1950s–1970s) institutionalized the ideal type of B-schools based on the leading American research-based institutions as role model (Khurana 2007). Achieving this kind of structural legitimacy for B-schools (evaluations of institution’s structure and its ability to perform certain types of work in a superior way) was not without struggles, but eventually B-schools have become taken-for-granted entities in educating businessmen and administrators (Alajoutsijärvi et al. 2015). An unquestionable sign of successful legitimacy-building is the mere fact that B-schools have become one of the largest and most influential disciplines in most universities, which implies achieving the most advanced form of legitimacy, the cognitive legitimacy. Suchman (1995) describes that this level of legitimacy makes organizations so important that other alternative forms even become unthinkable. Moreover, B-schools were able to cement their legitimacy also through another legitimacy-building strategy known as influence-based legitimacy in which the organization aims to involve some of its constituents into policy-making (Suchman 1995) by taking part in developing and spreading political agendas underpinning Western societies and their

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socioeconomic discourse (Alajoutsijärvi et al. 2015; Augier and March 2011; Djelic and Amdam 2007; Kipping et al. 2004). B-schools also legitimized themselves within their societies by adapting themselves to the changing needs, goals, and expectations of their constituencies, which signals a sign of building dispositional legitimacy that aims to align an institution according to some of its evaluators’ values to indicate that it has their best interest at heart (Suchman 1995). For example, the scientific base of B-schools in the United States and Europe was based on different subjects and theories because the role of managers in each society was considerably different, which manifested in different sets of core knowledge and curricula (Engwall 2007; Khurana 2007; Kieser 2004; Kipping et al. 2004).

From Multiversity to Managerial University Since the 1990s, the higher education sector started to gain economic importance as it became linked to the societies movement toward building “a knowledge economy” which places greater reliance on developing one’s intellectual capabilities as well as emergence of new industries centering around knowledge-intensive activities (Powell and Snellman 2004). Universities and their B-schools are considered to play a crucial role in such development (Olssen and Peters 2005). However, as universities and other public sector institutions had faceds serious budgetary problems since 1970, it legitimized the idea that universities (and the entire public sector) must be further developed into corporate-like institutions that are efficiently evaluated and audited and made accountable for their performance. The new management “remedies” included the New Public Management or new managerialism principles, which involved applying managerial techniques such as performance measurements and centralized decision-making similar to the corporate world to public sector institutions’ governance logic (Deem and Brehony 2005; Ginsberg 2011). Application of such practices was considered to lead into greater cost-efficiency without negative side-effects on institutions’ ability to perform their expected roles in the society (Crouch 2011; Peters

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2013). These changes initiated the birth of the managerial university (Klikauer 2013). For B-schools and universities’ internal stakeholders, namely for the academics, this meant becoming increasingly managed by new managerial authorities, whose job is to monitor and measure academics’ performance by seeking more cost-efficient practices, managing institutions with less resources, and increasing productivity (Gerber 2014; Ginsberg 2011; Khurana 2007; Parker 2014). Adoption of performance measurements were brought in with elaborate promises to improve legitimate goals such as institutional efficiency, transparency, and customer orientation, which were considered to be lacking from traditional shared governance model where academics held considerable decision-making power (Gerber 2014; Wedlin 2011). The initial ideas of managerialism applied to education, at least in theory, aimed to serve higher aims through an attempt to making access to higher education more available and affordable when universities were managed more efficiently. Since then, managerialism has slowly delegitimized the former principles of academic collegiality, professionalism, as well as faculty control over their most important professional functions in teaching and research (Donoghue 2008; Ginsberg 2011; Klikauer 2013). Nowadays faculty often seems to play only a support role in their organizations whereas administration has been placed in the center (Tuchman 2009). This shift has intensified globally as most academic institutions have become motivated to justify their legitimacy in the new era of global competition through continuous efforts in improving their image and prestige in national and global markets to prove their worthiness, “excellence” and, hence, quality (Peters 2013). Consequently, new forms of non-coercive governance, namely international accreditation bodies and global rankings, have become rule-like features in higher education governance and in measuring institutions’ value and legitimacy in the market (Butler and Spoelstra 2012; Peters 2013; Wedlin 2011). Perceived performance through these external bodies’ evaluation in turn affects institutions’ funding streams and pecking order in national and global education markets, which has turned into costly prestige hypercompetition among B-schools, triggering a need for even more efficient management practices (Starkey and Tiratsoo 2007), which further

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marginalizes the interests of many of the stakeholders. As a result, academic job market is witnessing an increasing “gig economy” contracts, characterized by short-term duration and insecurity, the worsening of the overall conditions for teaching and research, and depriving academics from some of their former benefits such as pension schemes (Bergfeld 2018). Similar development is also witnessed outside academia (Wood et al. 2019). Simultaneously, as the main mission of most universities is to become highly ranked institutions while becoming more lean organizations, they have compromised their intellectual base required for educating students to become effective global citizens with a set of skills that employers and societies need, and also changed the basis of their purpose within the serving society (Trank and Rynes 2003).

Signals of (De)Legitimacy of Managerialism This chapter aimed to review the historical development of business schools and how they have negotiated their legitimacy under different eras. As discussed earlier, achieving legitimacy requires that the actions of an entity are desirable, proper, or appropriate within some socially constructed system of norms, values, beliefs, and definitions. While managerialism is perhaps an inevitable byproduct of B-schools’ modernization discourse and practices, it has been criticized for causing tensions and conflicts in satisfying multiple stakeholders’ needs. Business schools definitely resemble corporations more, but their wider purpose in the society is a more challenging aspect to address. For example, how can managerialism enable academic institutions in their expected role as contributors to building of knowledge economies that requires effective knowledge creation and sharing, development of human capital and skills and competencies? Prestige and organizational “excellence” hardly materialize into such assets or help in fulfilling more diverse set of goals. Yet, because managerialism has been so successful in legitimizing its discourse throughout societies and institutions, it has received a level of takenfor-grantedness and, hence, has been difficult to challenge (Alvesson and Spicer 2016; Klikauer 2015).

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However, currently, we are witnessing certain counter-movements against managerialism in many societies. Academic institutions as well as corporations have become under more criticism than ever, as internal and external stakeholders have started to question the ideology of managerialism and its practices. Both academic institutions and corporations are criticized for the same reasons: for their relentless efforts to maximize the goals of managerialism, namely control, efficiency, profitability, and prestige, all of which are interests of a few. Recently, a trend called the Great Resignation, initiated by the COVID-19 pandemic, can be understood as a signal of resistance toward managerialism as people have started to requestion their managerialist careers, former values, and ways of life, and started to value more empathetic and supportive working culture, wellbeing, inclusiveness, and empowerment (Cook 2021). A recent survey by McKinsey reported that on top of the millions of professionals who quit their jobs recently and shifted for something else, up to 40% of workers who still remain in their current jobs have reported to be “somewhat likely” to leave their job in the near future, and 64% of the surveyed stated to be ready to leave their jobs even without having a new job lined up (De Smet et al. 2021). The main reasons for leaving were a feeling of lack of being valued by their organizations or by their managers and because of lack of a sense of “belonging” at the organization (De Smet et al. 2021). Managers are also resigning at a greater speed than ever, for similar reasons, as the pressures under which managers work in managerialist organizations has become more challenging and less rewarding. The rate of managers resigning has doubled compared to other employee categories, which is an indication that becoming a manager is no longer such a lucrative career option. In academia, before the Great Resignation, the criticism against managerialism went somewhat unchallenged despite critical studies on managerial ideology (e.g., Klikauer 2013, 2015) and on managerial universities and B-schools (e.g., Locke and Spender 2011; Parker 2014). Even more overt resistance of managerialism, such as academic union strikes in the UK (Bergfeld 2018) made little difference in challenging managerial universities. Managerialism has also caused changes to Bschool faculty demographics as academic careers have become less attractive particularly for females and young academics because of increasing

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pressures stemming from managerialism and simultaneous erosion of meaningfulness in academic jobs (Bristow et al. 2017, 2019; De Vita and Case 2016; Saunderson 2002; Thomas and Davies 2005; Verbos and Dykstra 2014; see also Rundshagen, Chapter 5 in this volume; Yarrow and Davies, Chapter 7 in this volume). This is a significant cause of concern for the future of academia when considering that in many societies as many as 40% of the academics are achieving their retirement age shortly (Bonawitz and Andel 2009). These examples illustrate how managerialism is increasingly become questioned as an appropriate organizational guideline for B-schools, which signal that its practices are starting to become delegitimized in some aspects. Thus, it calls for forming new, alternative post-managerial organizational models to be embedded in B-schools. Such model is expected to make B-schools more inclusive, serving multiple goals in the society and acknowledging the needs of its diverse set of stakeholders. Bschools should also question the ideologies that they teach and preach, as future professionals inside and outside academia are less likely willing to become obedient servants of managerialism. Hence, B-schools need to develop a new set of organizational activities that are desirable, proper, and appropriate in order to maintain their legitimacy and to ensure their lifeline in educating future managers.

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Part II Attacking Status Quo

3 Business Schools in Their Ideological Prison: Why Sustainability Challenge Is Our Next Legitimacy Crisis Kimmo Alajoutsijärvi, Katariina Juusola, and Kerttu Kettunen

Business Schools’ Legitimacy Crises Business schools have lived through many legitimacy struggles. In the early days, the problem was that business schools were not scientific enough (Alajoutsijärvi et al. 2015; Locke and Spender 2011). After that, they became too theoretical—and irrelevant (Bennis and O’Toole 2005; Locke 1996; Mintzberg 2004; Pfeffer and Fong 2002; Starkey and Madan 2001). Soon, it was realized that business schools were relevant K. Alajoutsijärvi (B) · K. Kettunen Grimstad, Norway e-mail: [email protected] K. Kettunen e-mail: [email protected] K. Juusola College of Bussiness Administration, Ajman, UAE

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. Örtenblad and R. Koris (eds.), Debating Business School Legitimacy, Palgrave Debates in Business and Management, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-12725-0_3

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and impactful after all, but irresponsible and unethical (Ghoshal 2005; Podolny 2009). Now, new legitimacy problems are arising from the lack of institutionalized self-corrective mechanisms that would enable the renewal of business schools from the inside (Ergene et al. 2021; Parker 2018). What worries us now is business schools’ ideological discrepancy with the ideas of sustainability, the ideology that prevail companies, societies, and world order in this decade and beyond. Granted, business schools have been actively rewriting their mission statements in line with the United Nation’s (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) over the past few years (see also Yarrow and Davies, Chapter 7 in this volume). The unpleasant truth is that the core beliefs of business schools—profit maximation and continuous growth—are destructive for the nature and climate as well as to human societies as they produce and reproduce asymmetrical wealth distribution within and between societies (Barter 2016; Ergene et al. 2021). Consequently, even the most genuine attempts toward responsible and ethical business schools threaten to fall flat and turn into shallow, greenwashing type of publicity stunts. The problem is that the promotion of profit maximation and endless consumption-based idea of economic growth by business schools matches poorly with the expert statements on how to solve the sustainability crisis. Despite decades of debate on the legitimacy of business schools have elapsed, the fundamental question on the value of business schools to the society lingers (see also Howieson and Robson, Chapter 6 in this volume). Some have argued that the only viable solution left is to bulldoze business schools (Parker 2018). In this chapter, we aim to stimulate the debate by discussing the ideological foundations of management studies and education (Juusola et al. 2015; Klikauer 2013; Locke and Spender 2011; Parker 2018). We argue that by continuing to promote ideologies that are destructive for the globe (Ergene et al. 2021), business schools may soon be standing on the brink of their biggest legitimacy threat so far: being a part of ecological problems, not solutions. In this chapter, we suggest that business schools should critically study and reflect the ideologies that they implicitly promote. By making the prevailing ideologies visible in teaching and research, we argue, business

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schools can strengthen their role as academic institutions and make room for alternative ideological foundations for business studies.

Business School Capitalism and Sustainability Part of the reason why business schools have stayed on the course of victory for so long is that they have successfully been able to ride the wave of three winning ideologies of the modern, Western economic system. Alajoutsijärvi et al. (2015) have argued that business schools have so far “solved” legitimacy challenges by three interrelated transitions: scientification, politicization, and corporatization. As an outcome, the ideology of business school capitalism has emerged. It consists of three ideological ingredients of neoliberalism, shareholderism, and managerialism. Although presented often as a neutral, purely rational world order, business school capitalism is an ideology, which leads to the next legitimacy crisis: business schools’ inability to engage in the global ideology of sustainability. We define business school capitalism as a stable set of arguments and beliefs that offer legitimacy to business schools, students, scholars, consultants, and practicing managers. This ideology delineates its own image of managerial work, its surrounding context, and the world. The legitimacy of the ideology stems from those who interact with the abovementioned groups and acknowledge business school ideology the right way to act and preach (see also Solitander, Chapter 4 in this volume). However, it does not prevent critical voices and counterarguments coming from the outside of its realm. Business school capitalism has become deeply embedded in educational agendas and institutional structures of business schools—the ideological strength of business school capitalism lies in its image as an anti-ideology: Business school scholars seem to think of themselves as nonideological pragmatists who lean on science, logic, evidence, and reason. Similar to managerialism, business school capitalism spreads as a “value-free, objective, engineering-like science” (Klikauer 2013, p. 152). The ideology is seemingly hidden or implicit for most managers, journalists, regulators, and scholars themselves. They are particularly

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invisible to young students, who become unnoticeably indoctrinated into business school capitalism during their studies. Many business school faculty members are also blind-sighted to this “hidden curricula” as it is not openly discussed that the educational content and concepts applied in research and teaching are ideologically laden (Ghoshal 2005). In contrast, for most of our colleagues (and critics) in other social sciences and humanities, business schools appear as explicitly promoting capitalism and its related ideologies. At the same time, management research and teaching tend to focus on publicly listed corporations, wannabe-soon-rich entrepreneurs, and market-based transactions, whereas other organizational forms such as co-ops, non-profits, voluntary, and public organizations are not in focus. Despite explicit mission statements that underline business schools’ societal purpose, institutions represent and promote the agendas of a very few powerful groups in society: business owners and managers. The voices of weaker groups—labor force, unemployed, exploited, and marginalized—are silenced (Parker 2018). Business school capitalism has become a mantra that limits our ability to think outside its premises and field of interests. Today, sustainability is taking a new dominant position in the world order (Baptista 2014). Sustainability is demanded from actors in all spheres of social life, including business and finance. From a contemporary perspective, neoliberalism, shareholderism, and managerialism have produced severe societal and ecological problems. We claim that the ability of business schools to engage in sustainable development has been limited to most sustainability activities resembling merely window-dressing. As a part of this greenwashing, many business schools have re-written their mission statements and study-program learning goals along with the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development signed by all the United Nations member states. However, considering the above-described ideological foundations of business schools, much more profound legitimacy work (Lefsrud et al. 2020) is likely to be needed for the business schools to justify their appropriateness and purpose of existence in the era of sustainability.

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Institutionalization of Business School Capitalism The original purpose of university-based business schools was to enhance professionalism by placing business education on par with the professional schools of medicine, law, and engineering. An important part of this agenda was the foundation of “business science” backed by academic research and evidence-based knowledge. However, as we have learned from the histories of business school institutions (Khurana 2007; Locke and Spender 2011), building the scholarly foundations for management education was everything but a simple and quick process. In responding to numerous institutional pressures resulting from intra-academia power struggles, political ideologies, governments, foundations, employers, and neighboring academic disciplines (particularly economics), business schools ended up pragmatically amalgamating disciplines that seemingly had a common interest in business management, but which in reality differed substantially in their approach for instance to the priorities of the firm and its stakeholders. As a byproduct, business schools also imported the hidden thought structures of these disciplines, which eventually replaced the higher professional aims. As an outcome, business schools grew into ideologically laden institutions that promote business school capitalism, and are legitimized to do so by the growth of the corporate sector in society and multidisciplinary universities that have reaped enormous benefits through the financial success of their business schools (Heninz 2011; Khurana 2007). Approaches to ideologies seem to have two general conceptions: one that emphasizes its distortion dimensions and another which views it in a more constructive light (Marion 2006). The latter approach, developed by anthropologist Dumont (1977), is a positive version of understanding ideologies. In this conviction, ideologies are considered as necessary to common frameworks, creating the same intellectual heritage and a set of beliefs integrated into the institutions, actions, and reality. The former approach, however, relates ideologies to “false consciousness”: Ideology is a selected collection of ideas, a unilateral perspective on reality, and a set of practices that begin to dominate the social thinking of true believers (Klikauer 2013). Thus, ideologies may become “blind” and subject to

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distortions as any other one-sided explanation (Hall 1986). The danger of ideologies lies in that they disturb and obstruct the understanding of complex reality. Ideologies stop asking fundamental questions, as they aim to legitimize both the goals and means that they are driving (Klikauer 2013). The main function of ideology is to reproduce its existence and expand, which typically occurs through powerful institutions such as governments, political parties, and educational institutions. Furthermore, the public media cultivates and spreads belief systems in the wider society while the various kinds of social media platforms have tendency to develop isolated groups with their own belief systems. In management education, business school capitalism with its three core ideological building blocks has managed to create and reproduce a social order that is taken for granted within educational institutions and in their wider societal context including higher education policy (Spring 2015). The function of business school capitalism, for instance, is to help businesspeople to maintain their ability to meet the demands in their occupation and jurisdiction. In order to understand business school capitalism, it is necessary to acknowledge its historical roots and ideological foundations of neoliberalism, shareholderism, and managerialism.

Neoliberalism Out of the three roots of business school capitalism, neoliberalism is probably the haziest, lacking a clear all-encompassing definition (Crouch 2011, 2013). To understand neoliberalism, one needs to understand its ideological predecessors. Neoliberalism became a dominant ideology when Keynesian economics, so-called government demand management and welfare state initiatives entered their own crisis in the 1970s resulting to high inflation in Global North (Campbell and Pedersen 2001; Crouch 2011; Smith 2010). Before that, since early twentieth century, different versions of Keynesian economic model were practiced in various Western countries. The Keynesian policy included active government interventions to manage aggregate demand in order to address or prevent economic recessions. In practice, the policy increased

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government expenditures. Due to the proven vulnerability to inflation, policymakers were persuaded by neoliberal economists to abandon Keynesianism and replace it with free market ideology (Smith 2010). In that sense, neoliberalism emerged from the ashes of the Keynesian policy’s failures. The focus of neoliberalism is on economics, society, and politics (Klikauer 2013). Its pillars are individual freedom and customer choice, promotion of perfect competition, and deregulation of the markets from state control. It promotes the creation of new policies and structures that ensure freely acting corporations and industries but improve also the public sector through privatization (Monbiot 2016; Olssen and Peters 2005). Neoliberalist ideology supports a society of individuals in which market relations and individualistic consumer decisions prevail. Citizens are perceived as well-informed consumers who, through the price mechanism and laws of supply and demand, reward the best producers and punish the weak ones. Thus, neoliberalism aimed at social well-being and consumer democracy, where the state and regulations are a threat to freedom and private ownership (Locke and Spender 2011; Marglin 2008). Although theories based on neoliberalism can hardly explain, let alone predict, social changes or economic disruptions, they have become a valid argument for political decision-making across the Western world (Crouch 2011; Kotz 2015). For example, when there are problems with public services, the answer is their privatization. One of the often-ignored enablers of success for neoliberalism is that it was applied in the 1980s during a period of many new technological innovations and internationalization (Morrow and Torres 2000). The world economies were in growth phase, with and without neoliberalism. However, in the public discourse, neoliberalism became associated to the successful period of growth, which further legitimized its practices and promoted its spread.

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Shareholderism Neoliberalism alone was not sufficient to fix the numerous problems that emerged from the 1970s economic crisis. One of the culprits was identified as the business elite, which was considered not sufficiently diligent in acting along with the interests of shareholders. This gave rise to the theories of finance aligned with an ideology what we call shareholderism. In shareholderism, business owners are prioritized over all other stakeholder groups. This view was justified by the argument that shareholders are the most important group in the society as it carries business risks and creates wealth through investments. For this reason, business executives are subordinates to shareholders, i.e., agents who must strive to maximize the wealth of their principals. While both neoliberalism and shareholderism were originally sought as remedies for “fixing” private sector corporations, they have been applied to public organizations as well. This was fostered by a belief that private companies are agile, efficient, customer-oriented entities and pillars of societal well-being, while public organizations are inefficient, bureaucratic, slow to change, and unresponsive for customer needs (Crouch 2011). However, such claims are neither intellectually convincing nor empirically true (Bozeman and Bretschneider 1994). Such arguments ignore, for instance, the fact that both private companies and public sector organizations are in fact very heterogeneous groups of organizations (Bozeman 1987; Crouch 2011). The rise of neoliberalism and shareholderism did not occur without criticism and alternative approaches being presented among ecological economists in the 1970s and 1980s. The most well-known contesting approaches were presented by the Club of Rome, which created broad public attention with its report “The Limits to Growth,” published in 1972 just before the 1973 oil crisis. The report went on to sell 30 million copies in more than 30 languages, making it the best-selling environmental book in history (Caradonna 2014). The theoretical approach of the book and many similar ones (e.g., Mishan 1997; Pirages 1977; United Nations 1987—the so-called Brundtland Report) represent political economics, which is sometimes referred to as a speculative cousin of

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economics by neoliberalists, despite of being much older than neoliberal economics (Caradonna 2014). Ironically, while business schools have been criticized for not producing relevant, applicable management theories, their role in shaping business and political discourses is undisputed. Business has always interfered with politics, but so have business schools and their ideologies. Professors Milton Friedman, Michael Jensen, and William Meckling were particularly productive and influential scholars behind shareholderism, and developed implementable theories. Friedman was a well-known political economist, a celebrity professor of his time, and an advisor to Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. Friedman made neoliberalism well-known and popular, while Jensen and Meckling developed theoretical justifications for free markets’ ability to solve the problems of businesses and society. For business school capitalism, especially noteworthy was the ability of the agent-principal theory to transform the previously more balanced power relations between the different stakeholders of a firm into the idea of shareholder primacy. This, in turn, authorized the top management within firms: It became top management’s duty, as agents of the shareowners to maximize shareholder wealth. According to Friedman (1970), this was the sole social responsibility of an organization. The seemingly symbiotic relationship between the shareholders and managers was natural as their interests were undeniably aligned in both parties seeking to maximize their own self-interested gains.

Managerialism Managerialism has its roots in F. W. Taylor’s ideas and practices of scientific management . Its original aim was efficiency and rationalization of industrial production, and the division of work between “the brain” and “the brawn” (Clegg 2014; Khurana 2007; Klikauer 2013; Locke and Spender 2011). Neoliberalism and shareholderism have had a prevalent influence in public policy and the financial sector, promoting deregulation, globalization, free trade, and weakening trade unions (Hood 1991). Many of the related reforms, however, have increased the power

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of management in organizations and boosted the ideology of managerialism. The central doctrine of managerialism is decontextualization of managerial work from its historical, industrial, and organizational conditions. In this line of thinking, it is not primarily necessary to know the details of a particular company and its industry to manage it successfully. Bluntly, all you need in business are generic management concepts and skills by which you can optimize the performance of the company. For instance, industry-specific experience is secondary (Locke and Spender 2011). Thus, managerialism emphasizes similarities between organizations, industries, and markets and thus they can and should be subjected to similar universal management concepts, practices, and methods (Christensen and Lægreid 2001; Klikauer 2013). Consequently, managerialism tends to produce normative knowledge for the use of managers but not knowledge about the actual behavior of managers (Mintzberg 2004). Managerialism suffers from the same blindness that ideologies arguably do. Although possibly unintended by Taylor himself, scientific management had profound implications on the hierarchical structuration of organizations. Scientific management allowed managerial authority to emerge and legitimized it (Khurana 2007). This created markets for business schools that started to cater for the needs of business firms by educating managers equipped with the suitable mentality and toolkit for managing all kinds of organizations (Alajoutsijärvi et al. 2018; Parker 2018).

Ingredients of Business School Capitalism Interestingly, despite somewhat contradictory, the three above-presented ideologies happily coexist in most business schools. This is enabled by the disciplinary silos, where each ideology has made itself home where it can be practiced and promoted without much questioning from outside. Economists, for instance, believe first and foremost in neoliberalism, finance scholars in shareholderism, and management scholars in managerialism. The core audiences of these disciplines differ as well: politicians/regulators, bankers/investors, and future managers/practicing

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managers, respectively. The three ideologies share the common central belief that the social order that they promote is right and desirable. However, whereas neoliberalism claims to be a democratic ideology for the many by promoting consumer society, the core beliefs of both shareholderism and managerialism claim primacy of certain group of stakeholders (business owners or management) above all others. When it comes to environmental issues, all three ideologies that amalgamate in business school capitalism foster a perception of “external environment,” which is full of economic opportunities and threats. Thus, environment is conceptualized as something that needs to be “managed,” and “taken advantage of ” for the sake of consumption-based economic growth. In other words, none of the three ideologies views organizations and organizing as embedded agents and activities in the broader context and environment that should be protected from any shortterm interests (Barter 2016; Ergene et al. 2021). Instead, neoliberalism, shareholderism, and managerialism reduce environment into something that has primarily utilitarian, not intrinsic value (Jones 2012). Consequently, sustainability is typically seen through the lenses of supply and demand, logic of markets, and wealth accumulation that determine the future of the nature, as opposed to rethinking the markets and production processes as symbiotic parts of the nature (Shiva 1991). What is more, business school capitalism does not count true costs (Rees 2019) by excluding collateral damages to ecosystems, human communities, or health caused by production and logistics. Neither the three core ideologies nor business school capitalism questions their role in responding to the global sustainability challenges. When promoted together by business schools, these ideologies have created a world order that has subjugated all kinds of organizations and societies into servants of their goals through specific management techniques and institutional agendas. In promoting one-sided views, these ideologies ignore all other possible forms of organizations and organizing as well as radical theories and world views, which have now been witnessed to manifest in the sustainability debate. Quite the contrary, the fundamental objective of business school capitalism is to increase consumer demand, shareholder wealth, and economic growth

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without worrying too much about climate change, sea-level rise, species extinction, or ocean acidification. Table 3.1 summarizes and compares the key features and assumptions of neoliberalism, shareholderism, and managerialism that have coexisted and led to the legitimization of business school capitalism. Table 3.1 The ideological basis of business school capitalism Perspective Central belief

Central goal

About

Neoliberalism

Shareholderism

Managerialism

Broad macro scope Free markets and perfect competition create optimal well-being to serve democracy and common good

Targeted scope

Narrow scope

Shareholders are homogeneous and maximize shareholder value; shareholders of listed companies own corporations; shareholders carry the largest risks Shareholder primacy

The performance of all organizations can be optimized by the application of generic management theories and skills

Stock markets and shareholders Milton Friedman, Michael C. Jensen, William H. Meckling Corporate managers’ only legitimate job is to maximize the wealth of shareholders by every means possible without violating laws

Organizations and managers

Privatization of public sector and deregulation of markets Politics and economy

Prominent formulators

Milton Friedman, Gary Becker, Friedrich Hayek

Motto

The government is not a solution, the government is a problem; there is not a such thing like society

Managerial organization and control

Frederic Taylor, Henri Fayol

All organizations should be managed by managers and subjugated to performance audits

(continued)

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Table 3.1 (continued) Neoliberalism

Shareholderism

Managerialism

Major discipline Major theory

Economics

Finance

Efficient market theory

Principal-agent model

Favored by

Right-wing politicians and neoliberal economists

Well-known critics

The Club of Rome; Ezra J. Mishan, Colin Crouch Since efficient markets and perfect competition are almost impossible to achieve, why they should be over-arching goals in politics and societies Environment is understood as a resource to be used for economic growth and “a huge dumping ground for pollution” Polity and business are separate, externalities, potential costs, sustainability demands may slow-down economic growth

Finance scholars, financial institutions, and right-wing politicians Lynn Stout, Martin Parker

Management and marketing Scientific management and its followers Management and marketing scholars, consultants, and corporate executives Herbert Simon, Robert Locke, Thomas Klikauer

Arguments against

Environment

Sustainability and environment

Source Authors

“Shareholder” is an artificial and highly misleading construct. Shareholderism harms investors, corporations, and the public

Managerialism is one-dimensional, anti-democratic and authoritarian ideology, not a science

Environment is understood as a resource to be used for shareholder wealth maximization

Environment forms basis for SWOT analysis. It is understood as a resource to be used for business profitability

Sustainability is seen as an opportunity to increase shareholder value through “greening” and other practices that can increase profitability

Sustainability is seen only as a subcategory of the business/marketing environment with certain opportunities and threats

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Business Schools as Imprisoned by Their Ideological Success Sustainability as the New Ideological Bandwagon As argued in this debating piece business schools have been highly successful in their amalgamation of the post-World War II risen ideologies of neoliberalism, shareholderism, and managerialism as a part of their institutional agendas. Due to the ideological success recipe of business school capitalism, perhaps, business schools have been less enthusiastic about truly embracing the new and emerging societal and political demands on sustainability (see also Solitander, Chapter 4 in this volume). What has so far happened in business schools are rather cosmetic and marginalized attempts to add courses and modules on sustainability in the curricula, hire a professor or two to take care of the “sustainability thing,” and rewriting the institutional missions, marketing materials, and learning objectives to explicitly address the UN’s SDGs. What has not happened, is the initiation of a deeper ideological selfreflection and change toward addressing sustainability, as core ethos that dominates both the explicit and implicit curricula is still focused on educating the students on the following, ideology-laden, core “truths”: . Perfect markets should be the overarching goal of the society (e.g., Crouch 2011; Heninz 2011); . The purpose of a firm is to maximize shareholder wealth (e.g., Smith 2010; Stout 2012); . Managers have the right and capability to lead all kinds of organizations and all obstacles of their leadership should be removed (e.g., Klikauer 2013; Locke and Spender 2011); . The environment of the firm is a separate, bounded, independently given entity to be exploited for economic growth and for the wealth of shareholders and executives (Ergene et al. 2021). Sustainability, however, is an ideology, too, and a clearly articulated ecological philosophy. As an increasingly popular academic subject

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within other higher education fields, it has a plethora of journals, theories, frameworks, and models (not to mention funding instruments) as means of studying, publishing, and advancing its agenda (Caradonna 2014). As a result, an increasing number of higher education institutions have started programs in ecological economics and sustainability. Meanwhile, many firms have started to develop business practices embracing sustainable development and circular economy, since cutting waste and increasing energy efficiency saves money and resources. Furthermore, a growing number of customers desire solutions, products, and services that are genuinely sustainable. Of course, there are still companies that do this primarily for window-dressing and greenwashing, but in the era of increased transparency and authenticity enabled and promoted for instance by social media, that is a risky strategy prone to canceling culture. In our view, there would still be room for business schools and scholars in the sustainability bandwagon: Growth of what and for whom? At what costs and paid by whom? How can nature, society, and economy be combined into one single system to be studied comprehensively (see also Currie, Chapter 13 in this volume)? Should the overarching goal of the society be the well-being and happiness people instead of growth and wealth (see also Rundshagen, Chapter 5 in this volume)?

Ways Out of the Ideological Prison But what can business schools do to break their ideological enclaves to truly immerse themselves in the next big and possibly winning ideology of sustainability? We suggest three remedies.

Renewed Identity as a Critical, Business, and Economy Focused Social Science Business schools need to seriously question their theories on markets and profitability. Any fundamental solution to sustainability challenge requires acknowledging the discrepancy of market-based ideals and socioecological well-being, to not reproduce the illusion that we can “manage”

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unlimited economic growth while managing the natural environment and creating equitable societies (Ergene et al. 2021). To renew their societal contract (legitimacy) on educating the future generations of managers, business schools should seek to rediscover their identities as argumentative social sciences and critical observers of mega trends impacting economy and business (as opposed to blind-sighted promoters of ideology-hiding “truths”).

Ambitious Theory Development Let’s face it: For several decades, business schools have not (needed to) come up with a serious alternative theory of economic thought that would offer a more fertile ground for driving the sustainability movement (Monbiot 2016). It is not sufficient just to critique or superficially fix broken theories (e.g., conscious capitalism), as such theories are still underpinned by the goals of business school capitalism, albeit the higher aim of “doing better by doing good” (O’Toole and Vogel 2011). A fundamentally novel theory with a different epistemology should be created and adopted as a driving philosophy of business schools. A theory that would go beyond the simple managerial box-ticking exercise of aligning course curricula to sustainable development goals and breaking the disciplinary silos and reforming what and how we teach, placing sustainable development (both environmental and social) into the core.

Educating Students on Multifaceted Reality Finally, teaching, research, and community engagement of business schools should return to a multifaceted conception of reality. This could include more multidisciplinary research, as well as empowering students, faculty, staff, and the surrounding community as active agents in driving sustainability within and outside academia. The solutions needed for the sustainability movement to happen require serious actions in all aspects of society—actions that are unlikely to be taken unless a serious change of mindsets of future generations.

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Business schools have earned their legitimacy by successfully adopting and spreading the dominant and legitimate ideologies on economy, finance, business, and management. Now, the world is changing, and the question remains: Are business schools up for the sustainability challenge to renegotiate their future legitimacy?

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4 The Reflexive Impotence and Neoliberal Neurosis of the Responsible Business School Nikodemus Solitander

Introduction This chapter is an insert into the debate about the ethico-moral legitimacy crisis of business schools and is sympathetic to the critique calling for transformation of the curriculum in face of this crisis (cf. Khurana 2007; Parker 2018). It argues that the curricular response that acknowledges this crisis is generally both reactive and reactionary, and repeatedly fails to engage with the needs of systemic change. In doing so the chapter follows the rise and mainstreaming of curricular elements such as CSR, responsible leadership, business ethics, corporate sustainability, and larger notions such as Responsible Management Education (RME) (here labeled as the “responsible-turn” of business schools)—arguing that what these elements and their progressive faculty N. Solitander (B) Hanken School of Economics, Helsinki, Finland e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. Örtenblad and R. Koris (eds.), Debating Business School Legitimacy, Palgrave Debates in Business and Management, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-12725-0_4

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interlocutors have in common, is an understanding that capitalism is not working “as intended,” that transformative change is needed, and that business schools have a role in ensuring that such understandings are rooted in the future captains of industry, managers, and consumers (cf. Dyllick 2015). Business schools are concerned with reflexivity around business ontologies, and they play a central role in (re)producing both the history and future of business. They are in the position to respond to some of the most serious social and ecological crises facing humankind by radically reimagining how business could work. Yet they are not doing that because they are more vested in sustaining the existing order than changing it. The chapter maintains that progressive faculty are constrained above all by their explicit and implicit commitment to addressing the crises through restoring capitalism to a fictitious past rather than to a project that would take seriously the need for radically transforming capitalism toward a (utopian) future. While curricular elements of the responsible turn (such as CSR) allow for reflexivity around malfunctions and contradictions of a business ontology (Cunliffe 2016), these concepts also ensure that the fundamental assumptions about nature of business remain untouched (Millar and Price 2018). The curricular elements of the responsible turn convey an aspirational desire (cf. Christensen et al. 2013) to reform the existing business ontology to protect it from its own destruction. But this desire, even in its most aspirational form, cannot allow for fundamentally altering the institutionalized social order that maintains and demands such an ontology. The fantasy of fundamental transformation is increasingly about refurbishing capitalism to the vestiges of both a fictitious, prestigious past, and an equally fictitious but “pragmatic” future. In this chapter, I draw on the notions of “reflexive impotence” (Fisher 2009) and “neoliberal neurosis” (Wilson 2014, 2016), to make sense of the tensions caused by the responsible turn of business schools. As previous research has shown (Koris et al. 2017), business school students often understand that there is an increased societal need to ensure that business organizations promote values beyond the economic growth and profit maximization. At the same time, educators and students are constrained by capitalist realism (Fisher 2009), which makes it clear that substantial transformation of the structure and operation of the economy

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is not possible. I argue that when the responsible turn gives voice in the curriculum to an alternative imagination that does not increase what is portrayed as damaging temporal malfunctions capitalism, it only serves to intensify the very contradictions the progressive educators are struggling to contain. While the chapter’s focus is particularly on the responsible turn of business schools, it does not deny the prevalence and even overrepresentation of faculty and curricular elements that either outright deny the link between capitalism and social inequalities/ecological crises, or even embrace this link. But following Wilson (2016), I maintain that the responsible turn will prove a more resilient obstacle for achieving systemic change in the long term because it seems to acknowledge the malfunctions of capitalism that are increasingly visible. In the chapter, I will mostly illustrate my arguments with CSR as a curricular insert symptomatic for the responsible turn of business schools, but similar illustrations using other concepts, such as responsible leadership, corporate citizenship, could be made. I will reflect on the responsible turn of the curriculum as a reaction to questions of business schools’ social value, particularly in the uprun and aftermath of the 2007–2009 financial crisis. I illustrate the stages of the responsible turn through some key mainstream texts in CSR and through critical- and self-reflexivity (Cunliffe 2016), drawing on over 20 years of experience of teaching CSR in a Nordic business school context. The chapter is structured as follows: First I outline the historical business school hesitancy to engage with one particular curricular element—CSR, illustrating the reactive nature of the responsible turn, I then outline the effects of how the eventual uptake has led to the increased prevalence of reflexive impotence and neoliberal neurosis, among progressive faculty and students, resulting in reactionary commitments to change. I end the chapter with reflections on the seeds of alternative paths for transformative change at business schools in face of the crises threatening humanity itself.

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The Slow Turn of Responsible Management Education For students to make sense of the link between capitalism and ecological or social crises, they need to engage with certain vocabularies that legitimizes such discussions in the business school context. CSR is one such vocabulary, and arguably the most mainstreamed one. I will show how CSR was initially shunned in the business school curriculum because it seemed to convey both an idea that capitalism was failing, and acknowledge desires to reform the existing market order, only to later being embraced as a cornerstone for the responsible turn of business schools— because while it allowed for the possibility that capitalism was failing, it maintained that no fundamental changes are needed. The early 2000s were interesting times to experience as faculty at an independent business school in the Nordic region. In terms of internal organizing, like many other Nordic business schools, my own employer increasingly leaned on Anglo-Saxon literature in the curriculum while organizationally beginning a strategic managerialization/corporatization of the university (cf. Engwall 2007; Juusola et al. 2015, see also Juusola, Chapter 2 in this volume) and clinging on to an arguably vague Humboldtian ideal of education with an emphasis on academic freedom for both faculty/students and comprehensive general knowledge—which was increasingly discredited in Anglo-Saxon literature and praxis. In relation to the curriculum, there were other external pressures mounting: Between 1985 and 1995 multinational firms had gone through a perceived legitimacy crisis, sparked by media and public furor over a number of spectacular acts of corporate violence (cf. Exxon Valdez, Union Carbide and Bhopal, Shell and the killing of Ken Saro Wiwa, Nike, and child labor), which had led to the advent of CSR as the controlled “corporate response” to its own actions (Banerjee 2008; Fougère and Solitander 2009). Yet business schools were comparatively slow to absorb into the curriculum the reactive politics of CSR, which had started to seep into the management jargon and praxis by the late 1990s. In the early 2000s, it was not uncommon to hear senior professors deem CSR a management fad” (cf. Stern 2009). This was at times surprising as business school professors were arguably increasingly

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competent in replicating the management fads parroted by impassioned captains of industry who peddled increasingly enticing and grandiose concepts (Alvesson 2013; Parker 2018), building on a rationality “in which it is simply obvious that everything in society, including healthcare and education, should be run as a business” (Fisher 2009, p. 17). It can also be seen as surprising since this business rationality remains intact in the CSR discourse (Cederström and Marinetto 2013). For any management scholars, the hesitancy was more about an uncertainty if CSR was an acknowledgment of the moral (and political) critique of capitalism. In other words, the questions faculty mulled over was if teaching CSR would constitute an acknowledgment of the “failure” of a variety of neoliberal policies and theories, manifested in effects ranging from unchecked social and environmental “externalities” to the increased economization of society itself (Brown 2015). Another reason for a slow uptake of CSR was that the 1990s constituted more of a legitimacy crisis for business rather than for business schools. Mainstream media showed little interest in interrogating up the ontological connections between social conflicts and environmental disasters and the business school curriculum. This started to change in the early 2000s, largely through the WorldCom and Enron scandals, when mainstream probusiness media started to ask questions about the relation between what was taught at business schools and social crises with headlines such as “Are business schools failing the world?” (Holstein 2005). Such articles, alongside researchers such as Khurana (2007), reiterated the idea that there is a fundamental flaw in the business ontology that is being taught, one that maintains inequalities and creates social and environmental crises—but maintained that it is a temporal glitch—and that by looking to the past we will find the “true” business school, one that stands for moral reasoning and social progress. While the responsible turn had a slow start, the 2007–2009 financial crisis proved the most effective threat to the legitimacy of business schools to date (Giacalone and Wargo 2009). In the crisis business schools saw an opportunity to both appropriate the critique and return both capitalism itself and business schools to an imagined “true” state of the past:

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What has happened recently is not intrinsic to capitalism; it is a damaging malfunction that must be put right… by prudent pragmatism… that fit our current context. (Collier 2018)

Producing a fictitious, prestigious past of both capitalism and business schools is an essential but often overlooked part of the responsible turn. In true reactionary fashion, by pointing to the past, it is shown how systemic transformation does not need to be radical and—above all— how responsible capitalism and by extension the responsible turn of management education are not utopian projects. Instead, they are positioned as prudently pragmatic. The business school curriculum is above all about keeping market society as the natural order of the social world: The aim is not to create a world that never existed, but rather to liberate a pre-existing reality of “spontaneous market forces” …[this project is] “pragmatic” and “non-ideological”, in contrast to the failed utopian ideologies of the past. (Wilson 2016, p. 595)

But for the business school curriculum, recognizing the damaging malfunction of capitalism would also necessitate naming capitalism. As Kociatkiewicz et al. (2021, p. 311) point out, the inability to properly name capitalism is something that defined the business school: [capitalism] informs the curriculum but does not feature in syllabi or the learning outcomes… it lurks in our peripheral vision—it is the unsaid, the missing word in the course names. The invisible “Capitalist” in “Capitalist Introduction to Economics”, “Capitalist Strategic Management” and in “Capitalist Management Finance”. It is speaking but not spoken of.

Similarly, situating CSR in an ideological critique of capitalism would not only acknowledge the (possibility) of such curricular failure and blind spots, but would also necessitate naming capitalism as one political economy (among many). Such naming would be problematic insofar as it would open up the mere possibility that there are other imaginations to the hegemony. The non-naming of capitalism also means that the business school curriculum does typically not engage with links between the political economic system and global structural problems, such as climate

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change, racial capitalism, inequalities, or even the financial meltdowns. Instead, it “tells the story of the rise of management and business as if it were the result of inevitable laws of profit, efficiency, human nature and so on” (Parker 2020, p. 1113). This ties to a core element of the hidden curriculum of business schools, which Fisher (2009, p. 2) refers to as “capitalist realism”: “the widespread sense that not only is capitalism the only viable political and economic system, but also that it is now impossible even to imagine a coherent alternative to it.” Business schools are key actors in reproducing what counts as “realistic” and what are the absolute limits of (moral) imagination. The limits are clear, as Parker (2018, p. 35) points out: in business schools “capitalism is assumed to be the end of history, an economic model which has trumped all the others, and is now taught as science, rather than ideology.” Bringing me to the first posited feature of the responsible turn of business schools: reflexive impotence (Fisher 2009).

The Reflexive Impotence of Business School Faculty Fisher (2009, p. 21) introduces the concept of reflexive impotence in relation to the status of British students who recognize the “bad” aspects of capitalism such as global warming, racial capitalism, accumulation by dispossession, burnouts, and depression—“but more than that, they know they can’t do anything about it.” Fisher points out how this reflexivity is not merely an observation of facts but a self-fulfilling prophecy. I argue that reflexive impotence is a useful concept to understand the lack of curricular elements that would open up for discussions of more substantial changes to capitalism among progressive faculty. At a business school, it might be more descriptive of progressive faculty, rather than students, to be characterized through reflexive impotence. Academics are increasingly trained to maximize their self-interest “playing the game” of “publish or perish,” steered by increasingly by journal article productivity, boosting school rankings and “profitable

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products,” while recognizing limits and negative, and at times antithetical, aspects of such an approach to research and accompanied by an increased feeling of detachment and alienation from their own work (Alakavuklar et al. 2017, see also Rundshagen, Chapter 5 in this volume). Reflecting through my own experiences in academia on a both national and international levels for over two decades, I very rarely met progressive faculty who did not acknowledge the absurdity of this “game” and how it inhibits our own social value in negative ways—yet such reflections are almost always accompanied by a statement of powerlessness in relation to the systemic nature of the issue. The reflexive impotence of business school faculty is also replicated in our own research, as only 2.8% of articles in top management journal address global grand challenges, in which stands in stark contrast with management scholars’ interest in engaging with such challenges (Harley and Fleming 2021). At the same time, reflexive and critical scholars have shown that they are not impervious to actively reproducing capitalist realism through their own praxis, be it as reviewers or journal editors (Willmott 2022) or through the extraction of surplus value from PhD students/research assistants through domination (Cohen and Baruch 2021). While capitalist realism is at the core of teaching at business schools, the relation to reflexive impotence is different in terms of the student subject position in comparison with many other higher education institutions. Reflexive impotence asserts specific dependence of the working class/the precarity on financial class (Pearson and Martin 2016), the former being not well re-presented in business schools while the latter is the key output of business schools. Business school students are formed into the likeness of the captains of industry who suffer from what Wilson (2016) refers to as “neoliberal neurosis,” a condition I will outline in the following section.

The Neoliberal Neurosis of a CSR Curriculum To understand how questions on the necessity to fundamentally reimagine capitalism can be kept away at business schools, while at

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the same time acknowledging a variety of failings of capitalism and the increasingly visible effects of such failings, the concept of neoliberal neurosis is useful. In this section, I discuss how students through the responsible turn of business schools are made to understand these effects as external pathologies rather than internal contradictions. It is not by chance that the responsible turn was not accelerated by ecological disasters or human rights violations, but rather a financial crisis (cf. Wilson 2016). When the dissonance between the social fantasy of harmonious markets and the material symbolic symptoms of capital became so pervasive that the financial meltdown could not be explained simply by a “few bad apples” (cf. Enron and WorldCom scandals), CSR and related concepts became the face of a pragmatic “reimagination of capitalism.” As mentioned in the previous section, capitalism was largely invisible presence in the explicit business school curriculum throughout the 1990s and early 2000s. But now through the stark dissonance of the social fantasies and the symptoms of capital made visible through the crisis—the unspoken word made an entry into business school curricula. To illustrate, the aftermath of the financial crisis saw an uptick of Harvard Business Review articles, as well as bestselling management literature that put “capitalism” at the center of discourse: “Conscious capitalism is not an oxymoron” (Mackey and Sisodia 2013), “Global capitalism at risk: What are you doing about it?” (Bower et al. 2011), Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few (Reich 2015), Stakeholder Capitalism: A Global Economy That Works for Progress, People and Planet (Schwab 2021), and Reimagining Capitalism in a World on Fire (Henderson 2020). The invisible specter of capitalism (cf. Kociatkiewicz et al. 2021) was now summoned into the business school curriculum through a group of post-crisis interlocutors who were characterized by “neoliberal neurosis” (Wilson 2014, 2016). Drawing on the psychoanalytic social theory, Wilson (2014) sees neoliberal neurosis as the “intertwining of persistence and transformability” (p. 303) where individuals frenetically try to cope with recurrent negative symptoms of uneven capitalist development through engaging in frenetic disavowal to stop these symptoms from spreading. But since the neurotic neoliberal still believes in the fundamental social fantasy of harmonious markets, all these symptoms are

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understood as “external pathologies, rather than internal contradictions” (Wilson 2014, p. 311), these actions will preserve rather than transform the “necessarily violent foundation of capitalist social relations” (Wilson 2014, p. 311). This in turn will make each action of those suffering from neoliberal neurosis more frantic—as the world spirals toward even more extreme forms of social and ecological crises. Central neurotic actors involved are “reformed neoliberals,” such as John Mackey, Rebecca Henderson, Robert Reich, Klaus Schwab, and Jeffrey Sachs. These are often former architects of the business ontology of the 1990s, as economists or captains of the industry, who now re-presented themselves as reformers for a new humane capitalism—all while remaining wedded to neoliberal fundamentals and reactionary politics. What they have added to the celebratory win–win CSR discourse (cf. Porter and Kramer 2011), is expressing an explicit, but temporal, failure of capitalism. This discourse is also increasingly visible in business school curricula, and in some cases even convert into course names such as Henderson’s (2020) “Reimagining capitalism: Business and big problems” at Harvard Business School (President & Fellows of Harvard College 2022) and Sachs’ (2015) “Sustainable development: The post-capitalist order” at Harvard/MIT’s EdX MOOC platform (MOOC List 2022). These discursive interventions were timely, as it followed a variety of social crises. In quick succession #MeToo (Bhattacharya 2018), Black Lives Matter protests (Issar 2021), and the COVID-19 pandemic (Davis 2022) exposed how pervasively inequality follows intersections of class, race, and gender. The celebratory mood brought forward by the performativity of CSR felt like inadequate responses for many students, in face of the systemic nature of the crises. The future financial class was seemingly tethering on the edge of reflexive impotence. As one of my students reflected on their own career and experiences, upon returning to studies after a decade of management work: I believe many business students, including myself in my early 20s, believed that only values accepted in business are those taught at the business school, but do not necessarily share those values on personal level. This constant value conflict is very consuming and, in my opinion,

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a significant factor in the background of burn-outs or other work-related mental health issues. Business school [sic] does not make students greed [sic], but it makes them believe that in business life, they will have to be greed [sic].

Now that the capitalism was inserted into the explicit curriculum, the challenge became how to frame the “malfunction” not as “increasingly volatile and destructive force, which is spiraling beyond the bounds of social control and driving inexorably towards economic and ecological collapse” (Wilson 2016, p. 598) but as a temporal anomality in the history of capitalism. A popular theme in CSR texts assigned to MBA curricula is the social fantasy that capitalism was always—with the brief exception of a temporal malfunction approximately between 1970 and 2007—sustainable and humane: …a single-minded focus on profit maximization would seem to require firms not only jack up drug prices but also fish out the oceans, destabilize the climate, fight against anything that raise labor cost… Business was not always wired this way. Our obsession with shareholder value is relatively recent. (Henderson 2020) [conscious capitalism is the] only authentic form of capitalism. Other forms of doing business, including “crony capitalism,” are simply inauthentic versions of the real thing. As we witnessed during the global economic meltdown of 2008 and the Great Recession that followed, these false versions of capitalism cannot be sustained and are doomed to fail over the long term. (Mackey and Sisodia 2012, p. ix)

These claims of false versions of capitalism might echo the critique historically leveled at socialists who proclaim Stalinism and other authoritarian regimes as not representing “true” socialism, but there are important differences. Unlike socialism and communism, capitalism needs to be framed as non-ideological or “pragmatic” (see also Alajoutsijärvi et al., Chapter 3 in this volume), for the social fantasy to remain intact. Thus, the responsible turn with all its “post-capitalist” iterations presents market society as an absolute, pre-existing natural order, “immanent in the structures of the social world, rather than a social order to be

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constructed upon a pre-existing reality” (Wilson 2014, p. 302). The “authentic form” of capitalism is portrayed as pragmatic yet radical— often amounting to a kind of Nordic capitalism without the Nanny State and instead an equitable, harmonious partnership between socially responsible private firms and the government. It is a form of reactionary politics because it not only totally opposes radical politics and transformation but also regularly tries to reverse earlier reforms. Case of point is the possibility of “authentic capitalism” imagined in relation to the present time Nordic welfare states, which includes ignoring the histories of the establishment of this system but recasts them through the processes of neoliberalism that has been ongoing continually since the 1990s. Fisher (2009, p. 16) outlines how capitalist realism can only be threatened if it “is shown to be in some way inconsistent or untenable; if capitalism’s ‘realism’ turns out to be nothing of the sort.” Thus, in order for this “authentic” capitalism not to break with the story of a natural pre-existing order, it needs to be radically different but still the same (tenable, realistic, pragmatic). It forces the story about a systemic crisis to become a story of individuals and individual factors. This mostly bypasses the need for discussing more radical political solutions and systemic reorganization, instead transformation is to occur by enhancing the conditions of individual responsibility, and by hanging out an unlikely figure for the temporal failure of capitalism, homo oeconomicus, i.e., the Economic Man.

In Class with the Psychopathic Selfishness of Economic Man In this section, I will outline how through the responsible turn, business schools increasingly acknowledge the need for transformation of its own teachings and social effects, without having to open up for questions how capitalism itself would need to change significantly. Historically, there has been a presence in business school vocabulary for issues pertaining to ethics and (individual) social responsibilities of managers, which has proven well compatible with a business ontology: business ethics (Jones et al. 2005). Traditionally CSR and business ethics

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have remained apart both in terms of research and teaching, the former often attached to various fields of management related science, the latter to philosophy and theology—and while present as a field, its impact in the curriculum at large in business schools has been limited and remained mostly peripheral (Ciulla 2011). The last decade has seen how CSR managed to draw a more straightforward line between itself and the pervasive business rationality for managers and students than business ethics had historically managed. Arguably, there is, however, often a conflation between CSR and business ethics, which is partially rooted in the individualizing and responsibilizing (Siltaoja et al. 2015) aspects of CSR discourse (the solution: individual entrepreneurs, consumers, authentic business leaders, without the need for any kind of radical political solution or reorganization can get capitalism back on track) but also the more recently identified cause and failure of the business school curriculum, which Collier (2018) refers to as the “psychopathic selfishness of economic man.” This may sound like a radical critique of capitalism, but what hides behind it is anything but. Collier, like many other neurotic neoliberals, chooses to call out radical populists for positioning this failure on an ideological spectrum and for not providing clear remedies: charismatic leaders with remedies so obvious that they can be grasped instantly… once-discredited ideologies refurbished with impassioned leaders peddling enticing new remedies…from the radical left, Bernie Sanders, Jeremy Corbyn and Jean-Luc Mélenchon; from the nativists, Marine Le Pen…from the secessionists, Nigel Farage, Carles Puigdemont; and from the world of celebrity entertainers, Beppe Grillo and Donald Trump. (Collier 2018)

There is no room to reflect on the absurdity of the claim in relation to MBAs’ own attachment to a litany of charismatic leaders (Welch, Jobs, Holmes, Musk) that peddle enticing new remedies for a failed ideology. The failure of capitalism is only dangerous if capitalism’s realism turns out to be nothing of the sort—yet the enduring crises require semiotic sacrifices, which are economic man and Milton Friedman (see also Bausch, Chapter 9 in this volume). As Henderson (2020) outlines,

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Friedman’s ideas are now expendable because at the time of Friedman’s article in 1970, capitalism was not popular “and regarded with suspicion nearly everywhere” (Henderson 2020) and there was a “serious risk” (Henderson 2020) of communist takeovers. Today, as Henderson assures us, it’s OK to say in the classroom that markets are failing us—because capitalism is the only game in town, and we only need to turn back time to find the “true” essence of capitalism.

What Is to Be Done? This chapter has outlined, how in dealing with their own legitimacy crisis business schools have created a reactive and reactionary curricular response, here labeled the responsible turn, and how this has done little to break from increasingly volatile and destructive social and ecological crisis. If anything is to be suggested as path forward, we need to break with a non-ideological and pragmatist future and we need to acknowledge that there never was a golden age of capitalism. The challenge is to create a world that never existed. We are not living through a temporal external failure, but a systemic, internal failure. If we are to envision how radical transformation to the capitalist system is to occur, the lens needs to break with the past, and be increasingly utopian. If we start with reflexive impotence of faculty in face of capitalist realism, it is possible to optimistically assume that organizational scholars have the capacity to organize some form of resistance to their own destiny, and imagine how “capitalism’s ‘realism’ turns out to be nothing of the sort” (Fisher 2009, p. 16). We can look toward the increasing number of research on academic resistance (Parker 2020; Rintamäki and Alvesson 2022; Willmott 2022) and be more critically reflexive of our own replication of systems of domination in terms of labor exploitation and domination, actively and collectively resisting predatory journals, logics of accreditation, engaging in education strikes in contexts where such action is still imaginable. We can engage in (thought) experiments around schools of organizing, through future (Parker 2018) and past (Spicer et al. 2021). In terms of walking our students back from the brink of neoliberal neurosis, there is still room for exposing them to radically alternative imaginations

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of organizing society in new political ways, going beyond the confines of the safe space of critical management studies: from unionization and organizing the Women’s Strike (Bhattacharya 2018), to imagining the use of “war communism” or “salvage communism” to fight climate change (Malm 2020; Salvage Collective 2021) to radical reimaginations of finance as real utopia (beyond non-fungible tokens and blockchain) (Block and Hockett 2022) to utilizing the D-Econ database (D-Econ 2022) to give voice to economics scholars from underrepresented backgrounds committed to ideas of radical change. None of these would ensure a serious commitment to transformative change, but it would perhaps make it easier to imagine the end of capitalism rather than the end of the world.

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5 Business School Burnout: Endangering Legitimacy on Pathological Pathways Volker Rundshagen

Introduction In this chapter, I portray pathological pathways business school arguably pursues, which partly mirror distressing trends in society, the business world, and higher education policy. While this pursuit may happen inadvertently through largely inconsiderate mechanisms, I argue that such course of conduct nevertheless undermines the legitimacy of the institution. This contribution to the debate on business school legitimacy is inspired by the paradoxical observation that we have never been wealthier or better off, but have never felt as bad collectively in the Western world. Verhaeghe (2013) attributes this malaise essentially to a neoliberal transformation of society that has led to subjecting (almost) every aspect and area of life to the dictate of the economy. One of the major V. Rundshagen (B) University of Applied Sciences Stralsund, Stralsund, Germany e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. Örtenblad and R. Koris (eds.), Debating Business School Legitimacy, Palgrave Debates in Business and Management, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-12725-0_5

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consequences is the proliferation of psychosocial health issues (Verhaeghe 2013). Against this backdrop, the role of higher education both as subject to economization and as disseminator of the related ideology is worth critical investigation. Especially, the business school has been criticized for questionable contributions to society (e.g., Birnik and Billsberry 2008; Thomas and Cornuel 2012), its very viability is under scrutiny (e.g., Parker 2018). In a critical management studies tradition, I am motivated by concern with the role of management (more specifically: the role of management education provided by business schools) in the perpetuation and legitimation of unnecessary suffering and destruction (Adler et al. 2007). Following Morgan (1980), I draw on the concept of metaphor in organization theory, which encourages critical inquiry based on the acknowledgment that different metaphors capture organizational life and its implications in different and in new ways. The radical humanist paradigm, concerned with socially created and sustained reality alienating humans from their true nature, provides further inspiration. Its guiding metaphor is that of the organization as psychic prison, “an image which focuses upon the way human beings may be led to enact organizational realities experienced as confining and dominating” (Morgan 1980, p. 617). Subsequent accounts have departed from this metaphor to reflect that self-exploitation, restlessness, and overburdening rather than confining or dominating experiences characterize contemporary organizational life more appropriately (e.g., Han 2015; Verhaeghe 2013). In line with such diagnoses, they deploy anthropomorphic, psychopathological metaphors. Among the notable contributions are analyses of psychotic organizations (Sievers 1999) and of neurotic styles in organizations (Kets de Vries and Miller 1984). In higher education contexts, psychotic universities (Sievers 2008) and business schools harboring neoliberal neurosis (see Solitander, Chapter 4 in this volume) are discussed. The specific pathologies of insomnia (Schoeneborn et al. 2012) and burnout (e.g., Greve 2018) of organizations also feature as anthropomorphic metaphors in the literature. I draw on such metaphors in organization studies. In such vein, I will explore the interrelated pathologies of depression, insomnia, and burnout at the organizational level. I argue that the business school behaving

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like fallen ill of those pathologies leads individuals to enact realities (within the organization and beyond) that are experienced as exhausting, self-consuming and destructive. Among the major consequences are the promotion of these three pathologies at individual level, but there are also wider societal consequences. Following a brief overview of the contextual backdrop of distressing overarching trends highlighted through social science and philosophical lenses, I will explore the respective pathologies of depression, insomnia, and burnout. For each of them, I will briefly debate how we can understand business school pathways as pathological, also pointing to harmful consequences. These debate sections lead into a conclusion containing a plea for healthier conduct at business schools.

Distressing Trends in Society and the Business World Literature in sociological and philosophical domains offers a vast range of analyses of the current era, along with schemes of interpreting manifold implications. To unfold the debate and my positioning, I follow the key postulate that we have been witnessing the transition from a disciplinary society, i.e., a social arrangement emphasizing hierarchy and regulation, enforced through coercion and punishment for deviators, into a performance-oriented society. Han (2015) points out that the former was a society of negativity, whereas the latter is a society of positivity. It is widely attributed to the above-mentioned rise and dominance of neoliberal ideology advocating deregulation, liberalization, and privatization as major principles (e.g., Harvey 2005). Instead of orders, bans or laws, projects, initiatives, and individual motivation now power the economy and ultimately society in almost every aspect. Even individual careers and entire life paths become projects; an (almost) unlimited can-do attitude drives individuals seeking success through better performance. That spirals up overall productivity, and the pace of activity at large, beyond what discipline-oriented society could achieve (Han 2015). There are clearly positive associations with this transition. Fukuyama’s (1992) landmark work on “the end of history and the last man” famously

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elaborates the perspective of liberty and equality (at least in opportunity) granted by liberal democracy as the remaining global governance system enabling the pursuit of individual freedom and success based on performance, despite shortcomings in implementations. Furthermore, there is an underlying meritocratic narrative fueling life in liberal society, whereby everyone achieves for what he or she works. Success then is achievable for everyone—and deserved if achieved. However, Sandel (2020) points to severe problems with this narrative: he argues that it produces hubris among winners and harsh judgements on those left behind as losers of the system (many of whom turn toward populism and nationalist extremism in their anger). With regard to higher education, we also should consider that the meritocratic narrative rather is a myth, as the current system tends to reinforce advantageous positions of élites and to promote inequality by excluding large parts of the others, despite their ambitions and efforts (e.g., Guinier 2015). In the wake of the transition toward performance-oriented society, various (sub-) phenomena unfold before our eyes. My unavoidably strictly limited selection for this chapter consists of two of them: the first one is the intertwining of spheres. Work and private life, professional and leisure activities, and shift hours and spare time have become confluent streams. Beyond loosening spheres of activity, it is argued that entire structures have been dissolving in liquid times (Bauman 2007) neither allowing institutions, nor social or even private structures to solidify any more. The second phenomenon is acceleration. Modern social life incessantly speeds up, particularly through technological advances in transportation, communication, and production (Rosa 2013). In the business world, a leadership bias toward overhasty action (Paukku and Välikangas 2021) reflects the notion of all-encompassing acceleration. These phenomena build a mesh of mutually reinforcing dynamics, causing distress of various sorts. At individual level, the loss of solid structures combined with an accelerating modus vivendi lead to widespread uncertainty (Rosa 2013), which is a known source of disease-promoting stress (Greco and Roger 2003). It can fuel pronounced anxieties, exacerbated through a process of economization of all areas of life observed for recent decades and established as fertile breeding ground for dysfunctional behaviors and pathologies (e.g., Verhaeghe 2013).

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At organizational level, most dysfunctional behavior is arguably rooted in an interplay of toxic leaders with their destructive traits (Boak 2021) and an environment promoting the reckless pursuit of profit maximization. Shareholder value imperatives with quarterly report requirements of stock markets drive a frantic pace of ever more reckless conduct, justified with the help of economists who “regressed to dogma” (Muff et al. 2013, p. 50). Whereas recent discourse delineates ways of reconciling shareholder value with responsibility toward society (e.g., Queen 2015), critical voices insist that a perverted corporate course of conduct prevails, going “along with a globalization of psychotic anxieties that are unconsciously managed, maintained, and increased by the various referent systems and their respective role holders” (Sievers 1999, p. 607). Some of these role holders—many of them business school graduates—pursue narcissistic self-interest (Sievers 2012), also pointing to pathological dysfunctions. Such notions culminate in Bakan’s (2005) work unveiling how corporations obsessed by profit maximization meet psychiatric criteria for the diagnosis of psychopaths.

Business Schools on Pathological Pathways This section covers the three themes of depression, insomnia, and burnout . As pointed out in the introduction, they are first deployed as anthropomorphic metaphors to analyze the business school’s behavior reminding us of a person fallen ill. Subsequently, I argue that business school on its current pathological pathways causes both actual individual suffering and societal damage. Each of these themes is briefly explained as actual severe illness and then contextualized to discuss how the business school is implicated.

Depression Depression is one of the most widespread mental health disorders; with an estimated >300 million people affected worldwide (Liu et al. 2020). From a medical perspective, it is difficult to assess when it is a condition

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requiring professional attention; the boundaries between simply feeling down and suffering from a pathological condition are blurred. Depression as illness is a major health concern because of severe personal distress involved and due to the economic burden on society (e.g., Meagher and Murray 1997). Furthermore, it is the most common psychiatric disorder in people who die by suicide (Hawton et al., 2013). The medical meaning of depression refers to “a general state of malaise, pessimism, melancholy and negative outlook and feelings” (Gray 2008, p. 9). The etymology of the term suggests that pressure, or feeling pressed down, is central to the condition. Ehrenberg (2010) elaborated intertwining relationships between the diagnostic history of depression and changes in social norms and values. He posits that modern depression is a pathology arising from inadequacy in a social context where every individual is responsible for his or her own success, which in turn is a landmark characteristic of performance-oriented society (see previous section). In other words, the normative pressure resulting from the responsibility to be successful can overwhelm the individual. Han (2014) attributes this problem to the ongoing neoliberal dominance generating a regime of psychopolitics. Key feature of this system is its ability to shift responsibility for failure (of the individual) to the failed person itself; the individual becomes a project (of own making) instead of a subject (to disciplinary authority). In the contemporary organizational world, there are many links between people in employment settings and depression as “the commonest shared negative feeling about work in any working group” (Gray 2008, p. 9). “Particularly, high-stress work cultures with extreme levels of competitiveness, often accompanied by power-lust and other building blocks of hostility within organizations, contribute to psychologically and physically injured workforces (Butts 1997) suffering from depressive symptoms and episodes.” There are different angles to leverage debate on the role of the business school in this regard. First, we can understand it as a depressed or depressive institution; Kets de Vries and Miller (1984) establish massive bureaucracy and a notion of meaninglessness as some of the features of organizations in such state. Bureaucracy, however, should be understood in its contemporary guise in the higher education sector suffering

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from a political-economic colonization of the academic Lebenswelt (Geppert and Hollinshead 2017). Recent performance orientation of higher education policy leads to a plethora of targets and terror universities are facing (Jones et al. 2020). As for example pointed out by Juusola (Chapter 2 in this volume) and Alajoutsijärvi et al. (Chapter 3 in this volume), managerial control mechanisms are tightening and exercise pressure, much of which we can ascribe to subjection to competition in various guises. As a major principle of markets and a driving force in the business world, competition is largely associated with desirable outcomes such as more innovation, more choices, and lower prices for consumers. However, in our era over-prescription of competition hurts consumers, suffocates entrepreneurship, and increases economic inequality (Stucke and Ezrachi 2020) and provokes devastating outcomes in traditional non-market settings such as higher education. Referring to the latter field, Naidoo (2016) diagnoses a veritable competition fetish to which policymakers adhere. In the business school domain, performativity materializes particularly through league tables or rankings (Wedlin 2006), and positions therein translate into competitive (dis-) advantages in terms of resource allocation and reputation. Business schools compete for student enrolments, publication output, top researchers, third party funding etc., and those not faring well in this arms race (Enders 2014) are left behind as institutional deadbeats in depression. Second, we can look at the business school as locales of pressurized students. Accredited degree programs usually have to accommodate many courses (at least ten per semester at institutions where I have taught), which means that there is almost permanent attendance during weekdays. Every course requires an examination, so that the overall workload and learning requirements are excessive. More pressure is associated with grades: many students follow the proliferating trend of utilitarian views of academia (e.g., Geppert and Hollinshead 2017), they seek employment in exchange for study time and tuition money invested, and there tends to be at least a perceived correlation between favorable grades and job hunt success (Velasco 2012). As far as our students are typical representatives of the millennial student generation characterized by feelings of entitlement (Ng et al. 2010), among other traits, they think they always deserve top grades and feel treated with injustice if they do not

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receive them, besides fearing to lose out in a competitive job market. Perceived injustice is a source of depression (Lang et al. 2011). Third, we can consider pressure professors are facing: their main tasks traditionally encompass research and teaching. In the former domain, there is pressure to perform through publications with high impact scores. The infamous publish or perish motto has turned into publish and perish (e.g., Teute 2001), laying bare a depressing futility of the exercise. In addition, academics have to compete for research grants (Waaijer et al. 2018), especially when seeking jobs or trying to secure tenure. In the domain of teaching, student consumerism leads to more demanding audiences and heightened complexity in the relationship between learners and educators (e.g., Naidoo and Jamieson 2005), which increases risks of disappointing encounters. Furthermore, inflated administrative tasks and governance rules contribute to overwhelming workloads. Fourth, it is depressing to realize that (too many) business schools apparently still teach principles and attitudes that propel corporate scandals and misconduct, such as profit or shareholder value maximization, greed is good, environmental protection equals avoidable cost burden. Early in the new millennium, Swanson and Frederick (2003) wondered whether business schools are silent partners in corporate crime due to many ethical failures in the business world surfacing. It seems the situation has not improved, considering Parker’s (2018) call to pull the plug.

Insomnia In medical science, insomnia denotes disturbances of sleep, which can cause significant health problems (e.g., Sateia and Nowell 2004). Diagnoses differentiate primary and secondary insomnia. The former constitutes a disorder in itself, whereas exogenous causes such as other disorders cause the latter (e.g., Schoeneborn et al. 2012). One of the manifold negative impacts of poor sleep is an increased risk of impulsive and aggressive acts (Kamphuis et al. 2014).

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In organization studies, the metaphor of insomnia is relatively new (Schoeneborn et al. 2012). This is surprising, considering the acceleration phenomenon, competitive pressures, and intertwined spheres highlighted earlier. Organizational insomnia originates in a state of permanent restlessness. It typically is of the secondary type, as the business environment in general, and management fashions in particular, impose pressures triggering restless behavior (Schoeneborn et al. 2012). This turns out to be harmful: studies suggest that the restorative function of sleep results from removal of neurotoxic waste products, accumulated during awake periods, from the brain (Xie et al. 2013). A similar process would be vital in organizations: there, Schoeneborn et al. (2012) interpret this restorative function as reflection on mission and strategy, or as cleaning from dead-end road projects, failed policies, or misguided management fashions. They point out that, without sleep (or periods of reflection), deficits in organizational knowledge, learning, and memory are inevitable. Responding to the policy-induced pressures delineated in the section of depression, but presumably, at least partly also as actors who desire to behave like businesses (e.g., Starkey and Tiratsoo 2007), business schools display increasingly insomniac behavior: they engage in series of projects such as new degree program development, international expansion ventures, marketing campaigns, non-academic program invention. A favorable aspect to consider is that such dynamic engagement signals departure from the inertia of academia (and other mostly public sectors), associated with strong resistance to any change and being out of touch with reality (e.g., Banchoff 2002) in the infamous ivory tower. Especially considering that business schools prepare students for the business world and conduct research about (and sometimes for) business and management spheres, aligning with some of the characteristics of that world adds credibility. However, if such conduct overstretches resources and does not leave time for reflection (i.e., metaphorical sleep)—which should be a key competence of academic institutions—it can become pathological. Reminiscing about many conversations with colleagues, it is my impression that I am not the only business school professor who feels less and less enthusiastic about hyper-dynamic business world enactments

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at the business school. Institutional insomnia drives academic identity ambiguities—it feels like sitting on an accelerating merry-go-round, switching between conflicting roles of educator, entertainer, marketer, counselor, and administrator, juggling market dictates as well as bizarre apparatchik prescriptions while trying to meet student expectations and to churn out publications. Insomniac trends at the business school also endanger students. Literal phases of sleeplessness may result from improper individual time management (let us recall our own days as students that were probably more carefree and less utilitarian than nowadays). However, systematic insomnia provoked by incessant lectures, business projects, presentations, exam weeks, excursions, internships (sometimes conducted in lieu of vacation), and the hunt for extracurricular credits (to boost CVs for a competitive job market) have arguably reached a problematic level.

Burnout Han (2015) suggests that there is an inherent systemic violence in the performance-oriented society referred to in an earlier section, manifest as pressure to perform. Thereby he takes Ehrenberg’s (2010) analysis of depression caused by the burden of individual responsibility further. Moreover, he deduces that burnout as a type of depression through exhaustion and a personal state of nothing is possible (any more) only occurs in psychopolitically charged society believing (or promoting) that everything is possible (Han 2014). It has created a configuration inducing behavioral patterns of self-exploitation due to restless fear of failure as responsible individual; fear of not being competitive enough, of not being fast enough, and of underachieving—considering the endless possibilities publicly propagated (although they might be a mirage). These aspects lead over to the theme of burnout, which partly combines or integrates features and problems associated with depression and insomnia. In recent decades, burnout has gained high societal relevance and attention as prominent phenomenon (e.g., Maslach and Leiter 2016) that is costly in many regards. As a diagnosis, it is contested

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in the medical scene where experts debate in how far burnout differentiates from depression (e.g., Brenninkmeyer et al. 2001). However, burnout is gaining contours as distinct condition “of emotional and mental exhaustion at work” (Iacovides et al. 2003, p. 209), comprising three dimensions: exhaustion; indicating that an individual works over his or her emotional resource capacity, cynicism as a process of detaching from a job, and sense of inefficacy; referring to diminished perceptions of work accomplishments. Burnout occurs when there is substantial personjob mismatch in areas including workload (too much work with too few resources), control (lack of influence, accountability without power), and values (ethical conflicts, meaningless tasks) (e.g., Maslach and Leiter 2016). Hence, burnout is associated with modern organizational life (Halbesleben and Buckley 2004). Greve (2018) transfers the concept from the individual to the institutional level and elaborates on organizational burnout . As consultant, he has worked with a range of diverse organizations that were successful at some point and then seemed to approach an abyss, ending up in a state of exhaustion or paralysis that could not be resolved with internal resources. In the following, I briefly discuss selected aspects that potentially point to burnout under way at the business school. In their widely debated piece of critique, Pfeffer and Fong (2002) pointed out that business schools have been very successful in terms of attracting students and generating income, but that such success might be misleading. In the meantime, a plethora of critical accounts has accused business school of moral or ethical failures (e.g., Starkey et al. 2004). Parker’s (2018) suggestion mentioned earlier indicates that we might have reached the abyss. In contrast to these doomsday calls, Koris and Aav (2019) exemplify graduates holding considerate views of their responsibilities as educated managers; the outcome of management education might not be that terrible. However, I uphold the allegation that business school subscribes to wrongful economic models resting on distorted assumptions about human nature and purpose of business (e.g., Pirson 2017). Moreover, even considerate graduates do not seem to make a difference out there: crisis-prone financial market frenzy, corporate unsustainability boosting climate change, rising income inequality,

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etc., continue at unprecedented pace (e.g., Visser 2010), despite notable initiatives to establish alternative approaches. Hence, the burnout dimension and areas of inefficacy, value mismatch, and lack of control come to the fore. In addition, the current setting of individual performance orientation, competition fetish, and higher education governance (all quoted earlier) drives individuals within the business school into vicious circles. Self-induced and bureaucracy-imposed workloads keep increasing, and performance-related pay schemes turn professors into involuntary profit maximizers perverting academic ideals. Furthermore, a mismatch between personal attitudes of care, which are paramount in education (e.g., Gabriel 2009), and requirements of optimizing publication records of accomplishment (as academic) or of receiving favorable grades in transcripts (as student) can drive business school dwellers into cynicism. Whereas such aspects are primarily associated with triggering burnout in individuals, my suspicion that business school as institution and as part of a near-crazed system is on a burnout track keeps rising.

Conclusion Against the backdrop of psychopolitics and performance-oriented society, the disorders of depression, insomnia, and burnout condense a malicious mélange implicating business schools and its stakeholders in manifold ways. In my pathological pathway tableau, the rigor vs. relevance mantra (e.g., Birnik and Billsberry 2008)—identified by Hawawini (Chapter 10 in this volume) as a prominent dilemma business schools face—shines through in a psyched mode. Strongly simplifying, we could deduce that rigor has turned into an impact factor hunt requiring insomniac publication efforts sometimes extenuated as game playing, but leading to the deterioration of academic principles (Butler and Spoelstra 2020). Relevance has mutated into supplying graduates who are socialized according to the logics of (psychopathic) corporations (and some might believe that is normal). Both are devoid of meaning and destructive. Inside the business school, there are suffering individuals and a rise of cynicism, among other symptoms; many professors already feel

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powerless and unappreciated (Parsons and Frick 2008). In the outside world, legitimacy of business schools keeps eroding that way, especially if they fail to develop management-related solutions to pressing problems of the world like climate change or galloping income inequality (see also Currie, Chapter 13 in this volume) and to educate business citizens with reflective capabilities and moral awareness (see Sidani, Chapter 11 in this volume). Current pathological pathways lead the business school into the heart of dark academia (Fleming 2019). There is turnaround potential within business schools: Koris et al. (2017) found out that many of their students are open for critical thinking and introspection, skills that could provide cures. Colleagues like Jones et al. (2020) invite us to move beyond complicity with the destructive institutional zeitgeist. Waddock (2016) suggests that we need leaders who heal the world, leaning on the spiritual figure of the shaman. We certainly need healing at business schools, but shamans/therapists may have to come from the outside, as burnout patients tend to end up in downward spirals they cannot leave alone (e.g., Maslach and Leiter 2016). Birnik and Billsberry (2008) added righteousness to rectify the rigor and relevance ensemble. I suggest, to regain legitimacy and to support healing, reinterpretation whereby rigor refers to research guiding the business world out of psychopathy, relevance means to supply enlightened graduates understanding the true purpose of business as a force for good (e.g., Honeyman and Jana 2019), and righteousness is gained by placing well-being in organizations (e.g., Pirson 2017) at the center of business school missions. Albeit potentially utopian, may these ideas serve as my humble contribution to a quest for healthier business schools.

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Part III Rocking the Boat of Status Quo

6 The Business School in Ruins: Navigating the Multi-stakeholder Landscape of Contemporary Management Scholarship Brian Howieson and Ian Robson

Introduction Modern day business schools carry a heavy burden. They are expected to maintain relevance with research-focused rigor to satisfy the very different and often-competing demands of both external and internal stakeholders. This chapter sets out the nature of these demands and the impossibility of success as schools strive for legitimacy amid pressure to generate profit-bearing income to cross-subsidize other institutional units such as schools, departments, and services. B. Howieson (B) · I. Robson School of Management, The University of Stirling, Stirling, UK e-mail: [email protected] I. Robson e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. Örtenblad and R. Koris (eds.), Debating Business School Legitimacy, Palgrave Debates in Business and Management, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-12725-0_6

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Our debating position is as follows: With multiple stakeholders and audiences at play, there are insurmountable challenges for business schools to gain and sustain wholesale legitimacy.

The recent Chartered Association of Business Schools UK Task Force (CABS 2021)—created to explore the nature of delivering the “public good”—emphasizes the challenge facing business schools. The Task Force reports that business schools worldwide are now, increasingly, seeing their future role as educators in tackling complex sustainability problems concerning social and natural capital. The authors of the ensuing report maintain that business schools ought to take a multidisciplinary approach (working with internal colleagues from other disciplines) to engage “widely with civil society” in creating distinctive, value-adding scholarship (CABS 2021). This is a stiff challenge and one that necessitates a significant paradigm shift. This example of the growing emphasis in business education on knowledge exchange and impact highlights the competing demands of multiple stakeholders. Civil society, students (past, present, and future), research funding bodies, publishing companies and wider society all present very different governance systems, demands on business schools and expectations relating to the form of scholarship, its complexity, accessibility, and quality. It looks like yet another initiative or fad, in a long line of “drivers” that stretches back as far as the eye can see to BS5750, Investors in People, Business Process Re-engineering, Lean Production and more latterly sustainability, automation, digitization, hybridization, and big data. How are business schools supposed to keep up, adapt, re-align, provide empirical research, theory develop, and program learning? At the same time, business schools are expected to be profitable. Most, however, operate from a public sector governance perspective. The cash to generate this agile, high-quality scholarship is to be sourced from research grants, government grants for innovation projects and, of course, international student recruitment. And yet, we are all “fishing in the same pool.” In this hyper-competitive global market, we argue that business schools have lost their way in terms of strategy/competitive

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positioning—in many respects, they are “stuck in the middle” of the market along with the masses.1 This, we consider, owes much to a lack of resources in public sector settings and an over-ambitious mission to grow and to offer excellence to many stakeholders, each with competing agendas. Moreover, the migration to mixed-economy governance models has eroded the charitable status of universities in the United Kingdom and Europe which, when entwined with public sector values, policies, and processes is hardly the ideal foundation for such dynamic and enterprising development. Competing logics, from demanding stakeholders, contribute to a sense of bewilderment among flailing faculty and depressed administrators. Business Schools are, thus, ill-equipped to develop capabilities in traditional research, applied research, academic consultancy, employabilityfocused teaching, and SME engagement alongside teaching at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. New agendas proliferate the landscape with SME upskilling and micro-credentialing, apprenticeship degree initiatives and institutional demands for executive education helping to plug the funding gap. At the same time, a more fundamental challenge is emerging: the credibility, even legitimacy, of business schools as the dominant source of ideas, expertise and training for business and management professionals. The legitimacy of a business school is dependent on both its academic rigor and relevance to key stakeholders which include students, local small business, national and international organizations across all economic sectors (Collinson 2015). A reduction in public funding in many countries—coupled with varying funding models for each stakeholder group—adds complexity to the existing business school portfolio. With so many stakeholders (all with significant salience), it is impossible to satisfy and appease them all and at the same time. Significant “blurring” of boundaries and priorities, thus, takes place. With multiple and competing logics and audiences at play, there are significant challenges with legitimacy.

1 For the sake of brevity, we will use the term business school to cover the range of higher education bodies that conduct research, teaching, and related activities in the field of business and management.

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Strategic planning in business schools can be weak and non-targeted, attempting to cover all the bases to satisfy all these very different demands. A clear vision and mission that carefully evaluates market trends and stakeholder needs is required. Stakeholder saliency requires greater analysis to establish alignment with a school’s purpose. Greater clarity of purpose ought to underpin decoupling decisions and a greater openness to partnering to focus on core competence development. Business schools can rarely even attempt to satisfy all stakeholders and simply must be selective and focused. Going forward, then, for many business schools it will be strategically imperative to adopt a more regional emphasis to establish greater legitimacy in the communities that the universities were initially created to serve. An analytical and judgmental view of stakeholders will be required to establish saliency and alignment to more focused missions. Where pathways to impact become more prominent in business school strategy and mission, decisions will need to be made on decoupling from theoretical, abstract search agendas—especially in critical management approaches for some schools. A simultaneous and ambidextrous eye to international opportunities is of clear strategic importance to this proposed new agenda, though longer time frames and wider partnership benefits will be a new focus to replace purely finance-driven initiatives. In this chapter, and in supporting our debating position, we will: introduce legitimacy in the context of the business school; consider the current situation to focus our debating position; and explore the legitimacy dimension of stakeholder theory. We conclude with the view that business schools can no longer satisfy the often-competing demands of stakeholders, and—that to add value—they must embrace an impact agenda, supported by much closer, reciprocal relationships with practitioners.

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Legitimacy and Business Schools In this chapter, we employ a stakeholder management perspective to help us begin to understand the complex and competing demands that are placed on a business school in today’s world of education. Freeman (1999) noted that there was evidence to suggest that the “stakeholder approach” was becoming the dominant way of thinking in business schools, challenging the prevailing shareholder approach, and bringing issues of ethics, environment, and sustainability into sharp focus. This development has emerged as a set of applied theories that overlap and contribute to corporate governance, corporate responsibility, and sustainability concepts, spilling over also into practice. The efficacy of stakeholder theory—that underpins stakeholder management—is explained and developed extensively in Parmar et al.’s (2013) work relating to direct observations of how the business world and the process of value creation actually function. They point out that the most useful unit of analysis for stakeholder theory is the stakeholder relationship—the benefit is mutual and not just economic. Under a stakeholder approach, value can be cocreated in reputational, innovation, process and content domains that are not necessarily concerned with revenue, profit, and cost. Philips et al. (2003) identified a range of tensions in the application and framing of stakeholder theory. The tensions identified covered questions concerning, for example, the role of ethics and justice in stakeholder theory, the purpose and beneficiaries of value creation and the rights of stakeholders to engage instrumentally with each other’s costs and revenues. However, the focal dimension of stakeholder theory that we wish to highlight here concerns legitimacy. Mitchell et al. (1997) identified legitimacy as an element of saliency, arguing that in judging the importance and role of each stakeholder group, such groups required legitimacy to gain recognition. Simmons and Lovegrove (2005) developed this sense of legitimacy into a discussion of how legitimacy might manifest; for example, legal, social, and moral and technical/scientific. In this way, all organizational types with associated governance regimes, from private, public and third sector organizations to communities of

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practice, action groups, consumer/user groups, for example, could be defined as legitimate stakeholder groups. The institutional theorists such as Thornton and Ocasio (2008) and Thornton et al. (2012) switched the focus to the central organization, arguing that legitimacy is a two-way concept and that organizations at the center of a stakeholder array (in this case, the focal organization is the Business School) require legitimacy as a pre-condition of relationship building, leading to value co-creation. It is suggested here that the difficulty (and indeed challenge) for business schools resides in the means by which their legitimacy is achieved. Whereas traditionally the work of the business school has been well focused on the dissemination of scholarship through formal programs of learning, an ever-expanding array of stakeholders coupled with a radically evolving educational landscape, calls into question the legitimacy to engage with all stakeholders in value co-creation. This is particularly the case with practitioners who have very different demands to the traditional mainstay stakeholders of business schools, namely students. Business schools have themselves fought to maintain a sense of legitimacy with their own students, displaying impressive agility with the recent move to digital learning platforms, introducing curriculum elements relating to employability and career development alongside social science education.

The Current Situation By 2017, there were 13,000 business schools globally, with £400 billion of teaching revenues (CABS 2021). Mostly, they follow the American model, embracing strong relationships with practitioners, which is seen as the best way to make money (Antunes and Thomas 2007; Wilson and McKiernan 2011). It was not until the 1960s that the now, globally dominant, American model of the business school began to emerge (Antunes and Thomas 2007). Perhaps this was due to the rise of neoliberalism, which stressed that businesses should put the pursuit of profit

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above all else—this provided the raison d’être of business school education (Fotaki and Prasad 2015; Friedman 1962, 1970; Ghoshal 2005; Howieson et al. 2019). In addition, Business schools became seen as cash cows for their parent universities, providers of graduates and services to businesses, and as a fast-track to high salaries for their students (Berman and Paradeise 2016; Clarke 2008; Craig et al. 1999; De Vita and Case 2016; Dyllick 2015; Fotaki and Prasad 2015; Jabbar et al. 2018; Pfeffer and Fong 2002). And, more generally, the ability of business schools to generate income became dependent on their standing in the various accreditation and ranking schemes, such as AACSB (The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business) and the UK government’s Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) and Research Excellence Framework (REF) (British Academy 2021; Leisyte et al. 2009; Nash 2019). Thus, business schools have become an industry. In detail, it seems that from the 1980s, issues of image and reputation provide legitimacy and these include league table rankings, research rankings, citations, global performance rankings and international accreditation bodies. We suggest, however, that we are witnessing a forced “paradigm shift” in business school culture. It appears to be rooted in an ever-more acute imperative to develop revenue streams, to plug government funding shortfalls and to cross-subsidize other less enterprising schools and departments across the university community. This financial driver has inculcated a strong sense of profit and contribution that was not culturally significant in the last century in most parts of the world. Therefore, we now have significant stakeholder management challenges both external and internal. Both will be considered in turn.

External In the case of the UK business school community, key external stakeholders are relatively easy to identify as a necessary starting point of our analysis. For example, Fig. 6.1 illustrates a stakeholder array for a characteristic business school.

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Current UG/PG/Res earch students

Research Councils/Ins titutes

Alumni community

Prospective UG/PG/Res earch students DBA/PhD

Funding authority

Business School Accreditatio n bodies

Local community

Public Sector Orgs

Third sector Orgs

Private Sector Orgs

Media

Fig. 6.1 Business school—external stakeholder array

Students at all levels are clearly the starting point of any school engagement with core activities dedicated to designing, delivering, and quality assuring programs of learning at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. The norm is to deliver core learning covering knowledge and skills to equip students with competences. Business schools have also—in most corners of the world—collaborated with other schools in university communities to provide relevance and interest and to position programs against niches, often defined as sector studies such as health management, information technology, joint degrees such as languages and

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business and so on. As research scholars, our business school communities often interface with various research funding bodies and engage with research audit agencies (Research Excellence Framework in the UK) to establish reputational profiles and to gain legitimacy credentials in order to apply for research funding. The saliency of research audit exercises has increased substantially in this century with an increasingly firm intention to produce high-quality peer-reviewed published output. A result of this has been an elevation of the importance of the higher quality publishing houses and associated journals in business and management. High-quality research output has almost replaced teaching credentials as the principal criterion for faculty hiring. In turn, this focus on high-quality output threatens to distance business schools from other stakeholders, notably practitioners across all economic sectors. The situational context of academic staff also raises some questions over the current business model of business schools. Many academics consider relevance to pedagogy or practice to be unimportant for perhaps ideological and certainly for career progression reasons. Career progression for academics is largely a function of research output and research income. The drive to achieve world-leading journal publications largely precludes other activities (such as teaching, pedagogical development and relevance to practice) and creates, worryingly, an individualistic culture in which publication tallies are all. It is easy to see why this is the case—most academic staff are rewarded (by promotion) for publication (and citation) and they choose the 4*/A-rated journal route rather than concentrate on relevance or teaching excellence, for that matter (Adler and Harzing 2009). This research myopia creates a blind spot among faculty members, ignoring the need for students to develop knowledge and skills in relation to practice. Pedagogy is often centered around the use of textbooks and cases, mostly out of date, to deliver an identified skill set to students. We would argue that curriculum design and pedagogy is inevitably out of step with the lifestyles and technological abilities of both our students and employers. Business Schools have contributed to their own irrelevance through focusing almost exclusively on the publishing industry’s demands for academic rigor. This separation of the traditional “double hurdle” of rigor and relevance in business schools is palpable. The impact of this on legitimacy is clear as business

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schools struggle to maintain their relevance to an extensive stakeholder array that increasingly seems to have less and less in common. The recent introduction in the United Kingdom of “impact” as a necessary result of research, seeks to redress this balance though, in practice, serves to highlight the contrived nature of the whole process. How this will play out in terms of legitimacy is of great interest. At this juncture, an important observation in this debate must also concern the role of institutional accreditation such as AACSB (The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business), EQUIS (European Quality Improvement System) and AMBA (Association of Business Schools) which are being pursued aggressively by many business schools who hope to insulate against the challenges of selection by external stakeholders. Durand and McGuire (2005) explored the institutional dimension of accreditation, pointing out that while there may be many organization development benefits of accreditation processes, that these are largely peer to peer systems that encourage good practice and do not necessarily equip a school to co-create with their stakeholder array more effectively. In fact, we argue that accreditation can be extremely helpful in illuminating the “relationship gap” and in helping institutions to better understand the challenges facing modern business schools. More generally, however, in recent decades it appears that business schools have moved increasingly further from their original roots, serving the communities in which they were founded. This civic role has been eroded in this time period with business schools chasing international student revenue, capturing markets through diversified delivery strategies (online and overseas), and focusing on publishing as the core faculty activity. Of note, the bottom line, it seems, on external stakeholder relationships is that business schools are erratic and transactional in their stance and fail consistently in their lofty desires to build long-term mutually beneficial partnerships.

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Internal In terms of internal stakeholder relationships, business schools often find themselves at the mercy of quite ruthless, exploitative regimes who see them as cash cows and sources of wider community relevance and impact. Hypocritically, most universities are classified as charities (universities in the UK have charitable status) and yet, due to central government funding controls, are forced into profiteering projects in order to fill funding gaps and cross subsidize internally where other schools, on campus, have less potential to attract un-regulated income. In this respect, business schools have become very good at producing profit for universities and historically, this serves to cement the view that this is the main purpose of such a school. Figure 6.2 shows a far less complex stakeholder array yet also underlines the fact that a business school is expected to relate to this very complex constellation of stakeholder entities with the aim of co-creating value through close engagement and innovation.2 This profit imperative is at odds with the ideals of scholarship and the competing demands of research output and impact. It is little wonder that the practitioner community, in particular, often fails to understand the value-added potential of an academic community. They (practitioner community) speak a very different language, operate under very different governance regimes, are not generally politicized organizations and are focused on revenue, profit and cost attained through managing relationships and utilizing core competences, creativity, and data to successfully position themselves against a well-defined market. In this scenario, legitimacy becomes a challenge and trust in a business school’s ability to deliver value creation in partnership is limited to the traditional market sectors in which they have operated for many years, namely designing, delivering, and quality assuring educational programs. To emphasize what is clearly turning into a business school crisis, consider the example of a research lecturer who is asked to undertake the following annual tasks: 2 Of note, we have not added the Research Excellent, Teaching Excellence and Knowledge Exchange Frameworks to this array.

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Core service departments

Academic faculty and adjuncts

Academic Schools/Depart ments

Business School

Student Union

Professional staff

Unions academic and professional

Existing students

University Executive

Fig. 6.2 Business school—internal stakeholder array

1. Publish one or two journal articles in high-quality peer-reviewed outlets based on high-quality research. 2. Engage in the research academy at key conferences, submitting one or more papers for presentation. 3. Submit one small research grant application and engage in crossinstitutional research teams with the aim of applying for large grants. 4. Create and develop an impact case with practitioners, aligning this to published papers. 5. Write and publish one or more short practitioner articles each year.

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6. Collaborate with local SMEs to offer consultancy services or to build links back into teaching. 7. Supervise doctoral and dissertation students with the associated training, administration, and quality assurance parameters. 8. Examine external doctoral students. 9. Design and deliver multiple modules at undergraduate and postgraduate levels, offering micro-credentialing opportunities to local companies and residents. 10. Acquire online skills and technical competence to deliver blended, synchronous, and asynchronous teaching. 11. Administer teaching and engage with rigorous quality assurance systems. 12. Mentor and tutor students individually to support their learning and career aspirations. 13. Engage fully in the university governance system, attending weekly and annual meetings, contributing to decision-making and leading small projects. 14. Engage with Knowledge Transfer Projects and other practice-focused innovations. 15. Internationalization activities overseas—partnership development, research collaborations, and student recruitment. 16. Undertake training and development in IT, equality/diversity/inclusion, unconscious bias, and other university priorities. It becomes immediately clear that setting out these tasks within a fast moving stakeholder context with competing logics, cultures, and languages is an unbearable and unsustainable proposition. In addition, and of worry, the list of tasks above is not exhaustive and could be developed even further. In short, as such, changing markets and new competitors, combined with the multiple pressures of faculty shortages and the need to achieve research excellence, high-quality teaching, and stakeholder engagement, now mean the standard, full-service business model of business schools is becoming obsolete. In this regard, there are now serious questions about

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whether the dominant business school model is fit for purpose, especially in a post-neoliberal era (Admati 2019; Alajoutsijarvi et al. 2018; Fotaki and Prasad 2015; Ivory et al. 2006; Jabbar et al. 2018; Khurana 2007). The CABS (2021) report recognizes the need for business schools to change their behavior and practices in order better to serve their local communities and the wider society. This suggestion is in addition to continuing the traditional business of designing, delivering, and quality assuring undergraduate, postgraduate and research education programs along with the many other tasks listed above.

The Legitimacy Dimension of Stakeholder Theory Understanding what we believe is an organizational and sector legitimacy problem can only be attained by examining, in depth, the social “disconnects” and dynamics between business schools and stakeholder groups before it is possible to create effective dialogue and take effective actions. It is, therefore, necessary to consider legitimacy in a more sophisticated way than would traditionally have been the case—that is, in relation simply to the formal process of educational provision. This broader understanding of the term is already evident in the organization theory literature and we can usefully adopt it here. Its utility is immediately evident when legitimacy, in this context, is distinguished from two-related terms—status and reputation. By legitimacy, we refer here to the existence of unquestioned support for an organization’s “rights to exist and pursue its own affairs in its chosen manner” (Deephouse and Suchman 2008, p. 77)—you either have it or you don’t. Researchers have identified three types of such support—pragmatic, moral, and cognitive, all three of which can be either episodic or continual. The two-related concepts of status and reputation differ from legitimacy because they are ranked concepts rather than ordinal. Thus, status refers to how, in this case, stakeholders subjectively rank organizations’ esteem or inherent worth, while reputation is a generalized perception of past or future performance based on behavior and is frequently used as a

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competitive tool. Deeper and more theoretical analysis can be developed through models of saliency (Simmons and Lovegrove 2005) and legitimacy (Deephouse and Suchman 2008; Mitchell et al. 1997). For example, the challenge to business schools is laid bare in Table 6.1—in almost every relationship, legitimacy is waning. Taking the view from the stakeholder perspective, legitimacy is high in each case as the stakeholder groups themselves have a significant impact on business schools, with exception of local communities that have organizational form and governance processes of their own, and a set of needs that require an urgent response. These collective characteristics combine to form what Simmons and Lovegrove (2005) call saliency. In each stakeholder case, saliency and legitimacy are high on the stakeholder side, and medium to low on the business school side. Business schools have low salience in the eyes of practitioners and reducing salience for students. A deep understanding of key stakeholders with high salience is required and both formal and informal opportunities to build relationships are required. Further analysis is needed and while the ideological difference between stakeholders may never be bridged, business schools would have a much better understanding of stakeholder’s rationales and values. This would lead naturally to a selection of stakeholder targeting priorities and a re-framing of what a business school thinks it can offer to a smaller number of targets. Table 6.1 Stakeholder/legitimacy Stakeholder

Level of legitimacy

Practitioners: public, private and third sector

Low

Media

Medium

Students at all levels

Medium

Key challenge to legitimacy Curriculum, research, and pedagogical relevance perceived to be low, engagement low Mixed journalistic views on relevance rather than rigor Reluctant collusion of students with the institution regarding added value. “Stockholm syndrome” prevails (continued)

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Table 6.1 (continued) Stakeholder

Level of legitimacy

Funding authority

Low

Prospective students

Medium

Local community

Medium

Research councils and grant awarding bodies Alumni

Low

Accreditation bodies

High

Medium

Key challenge to legitimacy Falling perception of value in favor of other public services e.g., health Falling legitimacy due to cost of study, perceived limited impact on career and curriculum relevance Legitimacy not questioned, seen as an employer Only the research elite have high legitimacy An “alma mater” effect is in evidence with graduated students holding positive memories and thoughts on their student life. Relevance is questionable and rigor isn’t a factor A collusive relationship, accreditation bodies add legitimacy through setting “standards” and advocating engagement processes with stakeholders. Earning revenue and kudos out of a self-fulfilling prophecy

Source The authors

Conclusion At a fundamental level, legitimacy underpins an organization’s reason for being. It stems from appropriateness, worthiness, and trustworthiness allowing it to have influence and impact and secure resources. The future of business schools is, therefore, tied up with their future legitimacy (Collinson 2015). Without legitimacy, they will have a declining influence on the next generation of business leaders and will fail to shape the behavior of businesses or tackle the grand challenges facing the economies and societies that host them.

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Debating Position: With multiple stakeholders and audiences at play, there are insurmountable challenges for business schools to gain and sustain wholesale legitimacy.

In this respect, we need to recognize—as the CABS (2021) report notes—that business schools need to abandon the neoliberal ideology that puts profit above all else and replace it with the three Ps (i.e., People, Profit and Planet). This will also require universities, and their funding bodies, to adopt a similar course (Pugh et al. 2018; Rae 2010). Moreover, and of worry, there is a growing belief that UK business schools are failing those they seek to serve—businesses, students, and the wider society—by pursuing research that lacks relevance, offering only a narrow and biased education to students, and basing their understanding of the world on an outmoded neoliberal ideology (CABS 2021; Fotaki and Prasad 2015; Jabbar et al. 2018). This has significant implications for legitimacy. This is not to say, however, that research is a negative element of the work of business schools. On the contrary, it is suggested here that research is indeed the lifeblood of a university and a business school. What we argue for here is a more practice-focused form of impactful research to emerge, necessitating a far closer, indeed integrated, relationship between business organizations in all sectors and university business school. As such, the situational context of business schools raises key questions about their current business model, the sustainability of current practice as well as raising fundamental question of what business schools do (i.e., what is their purpose)? These questions confront “strategic choice” for business schools (Huff et al. 2006; Wilson and McKiernan 2011) and what they might do to re-position themselves in the scholarly and practice-based landscapes. We argue that schools will have to make substantial changes in what they research and teach. There are many drivers for these changes that flow from legitimacy, such as sustainability and ideas of the circular economy. This requires a broadening of the traditional focus of research and teaching in business schools to look at wider society and the

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environment, to embrace multi-disciplinary perspectives and to turn its theoretical perspectives and research focus toward “big” questions. Consequently, this means engaging to a greater extent in public and private policy debates—reclaiming the terrain of work, employment, and society and placing the physical environment at the center. Going forward, business education will be required to take something from contemporary society in framing and re-designing its research, teaching, and pedagogy around an impact agenda. Static instrumentalism with its associated turgid descriptions of organization, market, industry, and government functions has little relevance to stakeholders who are negotiating fundamental changes to work practices, consumption patterns, generic obsolescence in many markets and in life outside work—often technology-driven—and, in many cases, adding benefits and transforming our lives. We ask the question—how should our research lecturer adapt and develop in alignment with these fundamental changes to maintain relevance and rigor? Indeed this is the fundamental question facing business schools across the globe. Without a fundamental shift in mindset and associated specialization in serving the needs of targeted stakeholders, the business school surely faces ruination, failing to satisfy anyone and I failing to find the funding to survive.

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7 Delegitimizing Women Management Scholars’ Underrepresentation in the Research Impact Agenda Emily Yarrow

and Julie Davies

Arguably, business schools have been a major success story (Cornuel et al. 2021) and generate “transcendent goods” (Naudé 2021, p. 51). Counterclaims, however, reveal a dark side for the academic labor force (e.g., Anteby 2016; Tienari 2019) in these “reliable cash cows” (Cameron 2017). Moreover, as Juusola (Chapter 2 in this volume) notes, managerialism has made business schools less attractive workplaces for women. Globally, business and management studies are the most popular university subjects (Zammuto 2008), and women in many areas make up around half of students. In Australia, pre-pandemic, almost half of the E. Yarrow (B) · J. Davies Newcastle University Business School, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK e-mail: [email protected] J. Davies e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. Örtenblad and R. Koris (eds.), Debating Business School Legitimacy, Palgrave Debates in Business and Management, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-12725-0_7

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international students in its universities graduated from Australian business schools and international education was the country’s largest services export (ABDC 2022). Despite growth in business schools, debates persist about their legitimacy in universities and society more widely in terms of rigor, relevance, and impact (e.g., Pettigrew and Starkey 2016). This chapter highlights the underrepresentation of women business school academics in the burgeoning research impact agenda. We call here for delegitimizing gender inequality for women scholars in business schools. Our main arguments are (1) that there is significant hypocrisy between symbolic and substantive legitimacy in business schools; (2) business school branding claims that promote the United Nation’s (2015) sustainable development goals (SDGs) are at odds with internal discrimination against female faculty; and (3) gendered research impact is detrimental for the quality of women scholars working lives as well as for business schools as important sites of impactful knowledge production. In recovering from the pandemic, concepts of purposeful business (Stroehle et al. 2019) and the public value business school (Kitchener and Delbridge 2020) offer dynamic and exciting opportunities for business schools in society to support organizations “as agents of societal change, recovery, and renewal” (The British Academy 2021, p. 48). We can draw on inspiring and impactful examples from business schools on the Web sites of AACSB’s (2022) innovations that inspire, EFMD’s (2022) excellence in practice awards, and The Responsible Research for Business and Management network showcase achievements in business schools. Centrally to our debate, and to make explicit our position we argue that discrepancies between rhetorical or “symbolic legitimacy” and “substantive legitimacy,” i.e., between what business schools claim they do and how they support their employees, create and serve to sustain unacceptable forms of hypocrisy. We contend that this matters because a lack of female professorial role models for students and suboptimal quality of working life and prospects for women management scholars is unacceptable. Writing as women management scholars ourselves, our own position in the debate is not only one of lived experience, but one of solidarity and care to colleagues and contemporaries. By adopting and arguing a legitimacy-as-process approach in this chapter, we illustrate macro-, micro- and individual-level factors to help us highlight business

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schools as sites of entrenched gender inequality regimes which must be overturned. First, we discuss discrepancies between symbolic and substantive institutional legitimacy that result in hypocritical business school practices. Second, we highlight debates about rigor and relevance in the institutional development of business schools and how the research impact agenda and SDGs enhance business school branding. Third, we consider gender inequality in the case of women management faculty in terms of gender segregation, representation in Financial Times ranked business schools, and in leading research impact case studies which can result in gendered impact. Finally, drawing on a model of legitimacy-as-process, we highlight how responsible and inclusive business school leaders can reduce discrepancies between symbolic and substantive institutional legitimacy. We conclude with implications for practice in integrating equity, diversity, inclusion, and respect (EDIR) policies with the growing research impact agenda to avoid the gendered reproduction of research impact and to improve decent work for women faculty members and other minorities in business schools, as well as further contributing to the value of Business Schools in society and the post-pandemic world.

Symbolic, Substantive, and Hypocritical Legitimacy A core facet of our debate here builds on Suchman’s (1995, p. 774) definition of legitimacy as “a generalized perception or assumption that the actions of an entity are desirable, proper, or appropriate within some socially constructed system of norms, values, beliefs, and definitions.” Suddaby et al. (2017, p. 471) observed that “legitimacy [is] a central and widely used but often confusing concept in management research.” This is particularly the case as legitimacy “lies in the eye of the beholder” (Ashforth and Gibbs 1990, p. 177). External legitimacy depends on organizational fields, regulators, reputational norms, and professional associations (DiMaggio and Powell 1983; Greenwood et al. 2002). General perceptions and assumptions about the value, desirability, and acceptability of business schools are socially constructed in the context

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of the changing nature of business in society. Yet women remain on the margins and excluded from decision-making roles and the scholarly impact agenda. This results in rampant hypocrisy between what business schools proselytize about societal equality and women scholars’ lived experiences within the academy. We are interested in discrepancies between symbolic (e.g., business school branding, accreditations) and substantive institutional legitimacy (e.g., business schools as decent, equitable workplaces) that result in hypocritical business school practices (characterized by gender pay gaps, vertical gender segregation, and other forms of gender discrimination). We draw on Brunsson’s (2007) notion of “hypocritical legitimacy” to examine disconnects between business school rhetoric, actual gender equality, and equitable and inclusive value creation. Symbolic legitimacy relates to branding, rhetoric, accreditations, rankings, and other signals which mask entrenched gender inequalities. Values and beliefs linked to the UN’s (2015) SDGs that business schools communicate as part of their brand underpin the notion of legitimacy as a property (Suddaby et al. 2017). A business school’s membership of the United Nations’ Principles for Responsible Management Education (UN PRME) indicates norms in educational models that align with expectations of education as a public good. However, there is an ongoing disconnect between “talk” and “action” particularly when sustainable business education is deliberated (Snelson-Powell et al. 2020). We further highlight this disconnect in our debate later in the chapter when we highlight the differences in rankings when the UN SDG five of gender equality is compared with the percentage of female faculty in Financial Times ranked business schools. While business schools may be successfully communicating “legitimacy-as-perception” with compelling mission, vision, and values statements, many are falling short of “legitimacy-as-process” (Suddaby et al. 2017, p. 451). Our position in the debate and argument is that business schools tend to focus on boosting numerical representation of women students (e.g., Symonds 2021) rather than the percentage of women faculty engaging with research impact, a case of “hypocritical legitimacy” (Brunsson 2007).

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The rhetoric of business school leaders professing UN (2015) SDGs enhances business school branding and suggests responsible leadership, yet as we argue later this may be framed as hypocritical legitimacy (Brunsson 2007). As an example, an analysis of the percentage of female faculty in Financial Times ranked business schools indicates, however, that top contemporary business schools are looking but not being good (Gioia and Corley 2002). We draw on our own previous studies (Davies et al. 2020; Yarrow and Davies 2019) where we found that of 395 publicly available Research Excellence Framework 2014 impact cases for business and management studies in the UK where we identified a lead author, only 25% were women and of these 54% were sole authored. In this chapter, we focus on SDG five which seeks to “achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls” (UN 2022b). Business schools make valuable contributions to this agenda by researching and teaching about equality in organizations and wider society, educating future leaders, and annually recruiting higher numbers of women students (Reilly 2021) but they appear to neglect the predicaments of women faculty.

The Research Impact Agenda In this section, we highlight gender discrimination in business schools with implications for greater representation of women academics in the growing research impact agenda. Over a decade ago, Pettigrew (2011, p. 350) drew attention to the “double hurdle of scholarly and policy impact” which enables a “more contextual and dynamic view of knowing” (Pettigrew 2011, p. 353). Pettigrew and Starkey (2016, p. 649) noted that “business schools have an important and crucial role to play at this interface” between scholarship and practice. In the UK context, research impact is defined as “the demonstrable contribution that excellent research makes to society and the economy” (UKRI 2021). Increasingly, research impact and its evaluation influence research resource allocations as well as informing wider evaluation, and where applicable, tenure and promotion at the individual level (Haley 2022).

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The UK’s REF, Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA), and the Performance Based Research Framework (PBRF) in New Zealand indicate how “national research evaluations drive competition and the individualization of academic work” (Davies et al. 2020, p. 130). These policies appear to promote the ideal unencumbered scholar “who is totally dedicated to the work and who has no responsibilities for children and family demands other than earning a living” (Acker 2009, p. 206). There are social costs for academics who engage with scholarly impact measures (Haley 2022) and there are risks that “when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure” (Strathearn 1997, cited in Haley 2022, p. 4). To further deepen the evidencing of the debate, this echoes journal list fetishism (Willmott 2011), which is deeply imbued with inequity and gendered micro-politics (Yarrow 2021). We reflect on how the talent pipeline for women can be improved to include early career researchers and doctoral students (Davies and Yarrow 2018). In 2017, women comprised 46% of doctoral graduates across Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries (OECD 2019), however, there are relatively low numbers in the professoriate because of “significant structural and systemic discriminatory practices within the profession” (Aiston and Jung 2015, p. 205). Indeed, “European business schools are characterized by strong vertical gender segregation, with 60% reporting that less than 30% of their highest ranked faculty were female” (CABS 2022). Emergent research (Chung et al. 2021; Collins et al. 2021) shows that women scholars with caring responsibilities have suffered particularly during the COVID-19 academic in terms of research productivity, further entrenching gendered labor market inequalities (Foley and Cooper 2021), thus contributing a central tenet of our debate in this chapter that by improving women’s inclusion in not only the research impact agenda, but in the business schools more widely, that there is latent opportunity to contribute effectively to the redressing of gender inequality, as a value adding activity. The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB 2021) business accreditation standards emphasize engagement, innovation, and impact, especially positive societal impact (AACSB 2020), teaching effectiveness and impactful scholarship and research. EQUIS,

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European Quality Improvement System by the European Foundation for Management Development quality improvement system (EFMD 2021) standards and criteria are guided by business schools focusing on community, excellence, impact, and purpose. These may all be defined as value adding activities, but we argue here that there is a disconnect between rhetoric (symbolic legitimacy) and the lived experiences of women in business schools who perceive practices that fall short of their expectations of substantive legitimacy. As such, our position within the debate is that for business schools to add further value by being truly inclusive and equitable, concrete action rather than hypocritical legitimacy of the status quo of gender inequality must be at the forefront of business school’ mission and we contend here that delegitimizing women management scholars’ underrepresentation in the research impact agenda is central to this.

Female Faculty Gender Inequality in Business Schools Noon’s (2010) seminal work suggests that there are grounds for positive discrimination to drive sustainable equality. In addressing gender equality debates, we must consider a “chilly climate” within higher education more widely (Maranto and Griffin 2011). A “chilly climate”, according to Hall and Sandler (1982) is where there is lack of recognition, persistent devaluation of and discrimination against women in higher education, something which we both have both observed and experienced in contemporary UK business schools. As a concrete example of how the “chilly climate” plays out, the European Foundation for Management Development’s recent available report identified that “the average proportion of all full-time female faculty, not just senior professors, employed by the top 85 business schools on the Financial Times 2015 European Business School Rankings is 33%” (EFMD 2016, p. 2). This is despite initiatives in business schools such as Gender Equality Plans (GEPs), the Athena SWAN charter to support women researchers, and business school signatories to the Principles for Responsible Management Education (see Haynes 2017). The principles

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were established for “academics and employers … [jointly] to provide support and resources for integrating gender issues and awareness into management education, business school curricula, and related research to facilitate respect and support” (UN 2022a), yet if this were deemed to be effective, should we not see better representation of and inclusion of women in leadership positions of business schools and a reduction in women management scholars’ underrepresentation in the research impact agenda? We support Verbos and Kennedy’s (2015) call for business schools to “clean their houses” by demonstrating ethical leadership which encourages an inclusive, psychologically safe, and supportive culture for all. Consistent with Adamson et al.’s (2016) work, we argue that business schools need to adopt a “bird’s eye view.” The “responsibility of the organization is also to conduct systematic assessments of the gender impact and outcomes of its various structures, as well as new policies and procedures. This is because inequalities tend to find new, subtle and unexpected ways of reappearing” (Adamson et al. 2016, p. 10). Rundshagen (Chapter 5 in this volume) also writes about current systems which reinforce inequalities despite individuals’ significant efforts and ambitions. We agree with Prasad et al. (2021) that we need a stronger emphasis on men’s roles and responsibilities in the quest for gender equality, we contend here that contributing to the further value of the Business School in terms of wider societal equality and responsible management education is everyone’s fight, not solely that of women. To drive sustainable, equitable, and meaningful value creation as well as change, the responsibility lies with all scholars, men and women. Gender inequality and vertical gender segregation permeate almost every facet of business school life. They demonstrate the need for addressing inequality and the delegitimizing of women management scholars’ underrepresentation in the research impact agenda. Our debate centers on the fact that women continue not only to be underrepresented in the upper echelons of business schools globally (EFMD 2016), but they are, and continue to be excluded from the research impact agenda (Davies et al. 2020). For impact to be most effective in “benefiting the economy and influencing society” (UKRI 2021), we argue that women need to be more actively

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included in research impact work, in order to counter our ongoing displacement and exclusion. We contend here, drawing on empirical evidence from the Times Higher Education university impact rankings for UN SDG five and Financial Times rankings data on women in business schools that discrepancies between business schools claiming that they are supporting SDGs and their failure to ensure gender equity for women in their workforces is unsustainable.

Times Higher Education University Impact Rankings The metrics for UN SDG five, gender equality, in the Times Higher Education university impact rankings (THE 2021) include metrics such as female authored papers, Citescore, and number of papers; the proportion of women in senior positions (the number of senior academic staff and number of female senior academic staff) (THE 2022). They also include progress against policies on non-discrimination against women and transgender people and policies to support women in higher education. In 2021, Western Sydney University, listed 17th in the Times Higher Education league tables, was the highest ranked university among universities which included sustainable development goal five in their top three SDG priorities. The top five ranked universities for UN SDG five were Princess Nourah bint Abdulrahman University in Saudi Arabia, La Trobe University, Western Sydney University, and Charles Darwin University in Australia, and Glasgow Caledonian University in the United Kingdom. However, none of these universities is listed in the Financial Times (2021) Global MBA rankings. There is a negative correlation between a business school being ranked highly in the, 2021 Financial Times global MBA rankings and its host university being ranked highly for SDG five in the, 2021 Times Higher Education university impact rankings. The differences in rankings highlight a core facet of our debate here. There is a significant disconnect between equality rhetoric and what is valued in ranking terms and ultimately rewarded.

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For example, in the, 2021 Financial Times European business school ranking (Financial Times 2021), the top 12 listed do not provide any reassurance that the representation of women faculty members is being addressed. Only SDA Bocconi and Essec Business School employ just over a third of women faculty (37% and 35%, respectively). While Edhec Business School and SDA Bocconi School of Management (Financial Times 2021) report an environment where the percentage of female faculty exceeds the percentage of female students, there is a 26% gap at ESMT Berlin and 25% gap at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford. Iceland, Finland, Norway, and Sweden were listed in the top five most gender equal countries in 2021 according to the Global Gender Gap Index (WEF 2021). We would expect, therefore, that Nordic business schools listed in the Financial Times (2021) MBA European business school rankings would lead the way in terms of relatively high representation of women faculty members. While three business schools in the Nordic region ranked in the Financial Times exceeded slightly over a third of women faculty, the two Norwegian schools are listed last among the Nordic schools, below schools based in Denmark, Finland, and Sweden. Overall, these data indicate that there is scope for much better representation of women faculty in business schools. In contributing to the debate of gender equality in business schools and women’s inclusion in the scholarly impact agenda, we assert that to enhance their substantive legitimacy, business schools should proactively implement decent work and gender equality policies and practices in order to actively address these discrepancies.

Financial Times Rankings Data on Women in Business School While it is laudable that the methodology of the Financial Times business school rankings includes the percentage of female faculty and students in its list of criteria, our analysis of the data reveals shocking discrepancies. For instance, IPADE business school in Mexico reported only

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10% female faculty for the, 2021 Global MBA rankings of 100 business schools with four business schools in the USA, Germany, and India reporting 13% or less women faculty. However, there is no indication whether any of these women are professors. It is helpful to consider the Times Higher Education university impact rankings for SDG five to evaluate how business schools are contributing positively to gender equality, albeit it remains clear that there is still much work to be done.

Legitimacy-as-Process Drawing on a model of legitimacy-as-process, we contend that responsible and inclusive business school leaders could potentially reduce inconsistencies between symbolic and substantive institutional legitimacy. Figure 7.1 illustrates macro- and micro-level factors in Bitektine and Haack’s (2015) model based on the context of generating business school impact cases. We argue that at the macro-level, collective notions of what makes a successful impact case study have evolved over two iterations of REF in the United Kingdom and perceptions about who carries out impact. For example, this includes the acceptability of predominantly male professors fronting cases and the example in 2014 of all titles of cases from Cambridge Judge Business School including a man’s surname. Additionally, Fig. 7.1 illustrates contingencies and preoccupations at the individual level of the business school woman academic in terms of her workload, group membership, agency in determining her time and key contacts depending on her career stage and support to engage impactful activities if she wishes. Key actors validate who can engage with and lead impact cases. For instance, there are typically calls for impact case ideas at the beginning of a REF cycle research evaluation cycle in order to ensure that there are sufficient impact projects. Individuals with research grants are well placed to respond to these calls and to benefit from incentives to create cases that may lead to further funding. At the micro-level in Bitektine and Haack’s (2015) framework, inequitable and discriminatory perceptions, judgments, and actions are exemplified to indicate how general judgments of legitimacy are formed.

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Fig. 7.1 Macro, micro, and individual level factors impacting on women business school academics and their engagement in the research impact agenda (Source Based on Bitektine and Haack [2015])

Implications for Research and Practice Our insights have important implications for eradicating the gendered reproduction of research impact and ensuring decent work for women faculty members and other minorities in business schools. While the, 2022 Times Higher Education university impact rankings will include new criteria to reward universities who support immigrants and refugees

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and courses on sustainability (Bothwell 2021), we would like to see the methodology for the rankings to be extended to business schools. This is particularly important given the close attention paid to these rankings by business schools and indeed prospective students and stakeholders. Despite our doom-mongering, we have found some positive examples that give us hope and bring light to our polemic. Reflecting on a recent personal conversation, one acting business school dean refused to allow a peer review business school accreditation team to go ahead. He argued that gender representation on the panel was not aligned with the school’s values of equity, diversity, and inclusion. Again, drawing on a personal conversation, another dean refused to participate in an accreditation body conference because two thirds of the speakers and chairs were men and there were sessions of all male panelists. In contributing to the debate around how to improve women management scholars inclusion hypocritical legitimacy and gender equality in business schools, we call for innovative ways to embed equity in research activities. These must include structural, policy, and business school cultural change. We propose that future research methods to understand gender equality in business schools might include auto and institutional ethnographies, focus groups, historical methods, discourse analysis, and participant observation to explore power with appropriate levels of researcher reflexivity. Quantitative methods, critical approaches to understanding intersectionality (which Solitander emphasizes in Chapter 3 in this volume), contingencies, and careers using a range of visual methods, videos, philosophical, narrative, biographical, and innovative insights can help us to understand how to reduce persistent inequalities (Stead et al. 2021).

Conclusion In our focus on the underrepresentation of women management scholars in the research impact agenda in the context of the neoliberal business school, we contribute to the debate about the legitimacy of business schools by highlighting an example of hypocritical legitimacy. Our position in the debate is such that we argue that for long-term sustainability

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of business schools and inclusive research impact to become a reality, business schools must do far more to include, promote, and treat equally women management scholars and their scholarly contributions. After all, women’s rights are human rights. By drawing on the concepts of symbolic and substantive legitimacy and analyzing Times Higher Education and Financial Times rankings data, we demonstrate significant and deeply entrenched hypocrisy. Business school branding based on SDGs is often matched by a failure to practice internally these SDGs in how business schools themselves support women academics. As Broomfield (2020) argues, gender parity is not rocket science. Yet, shockingly, in making predictions about the future of management education business school deans appear to be more interested in biodiversity than gender diversity (Nugent 2022). Howieson and Robson (Chapter 6 in this volume) point out, however, that research lecturers are overloaded with annual tasks such as equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) and unconscious bias training. Surely, our students, business leaders of the future, deserve better leadership to embed EDI in business schools. We assert here that business schools are not internalizing the SDGs they profess. Gaps between symbolic and substantive institutional legitimacy must be addressed at the level of the woman management scholar. We look forward to raising awareness about how business school deans are successfully integrating equity, diversity, inclusion, and respect policies within the growing research impact agenda. We agree with Zhang (2021) that disruptions during the COVID-19 crisis will continue to unsettle organizational inertia which may serve to shift entrenched cultures which disadvantage women and other minorities and reduce gender inequalities. This scenario would offer hope for greater alignment between symbolic and substantive legitimacy and opportunities for sustainable value creation in business schools to impact the academic workforce and society more widely.

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8 The Myth of the Global Market for Business Education Lars Engwall and Linda Wedlin

Introduction Compared with traditional professional programs, like those in theology, law, and medicine, business education is a latecomer. Although earlier there were related academic programs through chairs in the economic sciences as early as the eighteenth century, business schools started to appear only in the nineteenth century. Additional business education institutions appeared in the early twentieth century followed by a worldwide boom in establishments after the Second World War L. Engwall (B) · L. Wedlin Department of Business Studies, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden e-mail: [email protected] L. Wedlin e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. Örtenblad and R. Koris (eds.), Debating Business School Legitimacy, Palgrave Debates in Business and Management, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-12725-0_8

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(Engwall et al. 2016). Briefly, the number of institutions offering business education has exploded, leading to a demand for quality assessments in the form of rankings and accreditations. The first approach sorts institutions according to certain criteria, while the second is a mechanism to scrutinize institutions for admission to exclusive “clubs.” Both these sorting methods exist within an international context. Publications with a global reach, such as the Financial Times, The Economist , and The Wall Street Journal , rank business schools. Likewise, international organizations such as the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB), the Association of MBAs (AMBA), and the European Foundation for Management Development (EFMD) have developed systems for accreditation. Together, rankings and accreditations have created a widespread perception that business education institutions operate in a global market. Deans work hard to earn not just one but several accreditations and are continuously monitoring ranking outcomes. Since both accreditations and rankings use criteria that reward internationalization, business school deans strive to increase the proportions of both international faculty members and international students. In this way, they are responding to the imitation pressures that are so common in modern organizational fields (DiMaggio and Powell 1983; Haveman 1993). This chapter challenges the prevailing view regarding the globalization of business education. It argues that it is a myth that business education institutions operate in a global market where faculty, students, and alumni are perfectly mobile. The chapter also notes that this view means neglecting the most significant market for all institutions, i.e., the home market, particularly in countries where English is not the mother tongue. To develop the above arguments, the next section discusses two significant mechanisms for the international sorting of academic institutions: rankings and accreditations. The following sections then elaborate on important characteristics of higher education and labor markets. A concluding section sums up the arguments and discusses their implications.

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International Sorting of Academic Institutions The idea that business schools should be international and that students should travel to participate in business programs around the world is not new. The diffusion of the MBA label for business training programs into Europe and the rest of the world after the Second World War is indicative of that (Mazza et al. 2005). However, it was not until the 1990s that internationalization became an explicit strategy of business schools and programs worldwide. This coincided with the general development of evaluations, leading to what Power (1997) has labeled “the audit society” to signify the increasing reliance on audits and accountability technologies, and entailing the intensification and internationalization of quality assurance in higher education (Westerheijden et al. 2007). This development was particularly significant in the business school field through the spread and recognition of accreditations and rankings of business schools and programs. In this way, two international sorting mechanisms for the business school community emerged, playing a role in the internationalization strategies of schools in two ways: first, participating in these mechanisms brought international recognition and promotion of the included programs and schools; second, insiders could establish “internationality” as a recognized criterion for the quality of management learning programs. Rankings and accreditations contribute in different ways to these two processes.

Rankings Newspapers and magazines interested in reaching an international business elite audience were rapidly launching business school rankings just before and in the early years of the new millennium. The presentation of the Financial Times ranking of MBA programs in the United States and Europe in 1999 was the first widely recognized attempt to compare MBA programs across national borders (Wedlin 2006); several other widely recognized rankings produced by international media have followed since then. The field of international rankings has further expanded in that ranking organizations interested in universities more broadly, such as the

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British Quacquarelli Symonds (QS), Times Higher Education (THE), and ShanghaiRanking (producing the Academic Ranking of World Universities, ARWU), are producing sub-rankings according to subject areas, among them business and management. This has not only increased the number of rankings for business schools to manage, but has also widened the scope of ranked management training from focusing mainly on MBA programs to also include masters’ programs, undergraduate courses, and executive education programs in the rankings. This development encourages business schools to recruit students from outside their local market to their various programs and offerings. Through their wide scope along with their extensive spread and recognition in the market for students and businesses, these international rankings constitute an important visibility and marketing tool for business schools. Their specific international character has not only helped reorient many business schools to develop an “international ambition” and aim to attract more international students, but it has also provided a way for business schools in more remote areas and fields to claim “belongingness” to an international business school field (Wedlin 2006). Furthermore, the rankings have helped highly ranked business schools claim a distinct and “elite” status, as a means to distinguish themselves from other business schools. In this way, the rankings constitute a mechanism to construct an understanding of what constitutes “an international business school” and to create recognition for those classified as such (Wedlin 2011). Gaining recognition through these rankings has become a key ambition for many business school deans as a way to improve the standing of their institutions in a process often considered a reputation and status game. Rankings also make a distinct contribution to the internationalization strategies of business schools by setting criteria for what constitutes an “international business school,” particularly making “international” a key feature of what is needed to succeed. The Financial Times ranking as well as those provided by, for example, QS and THE, explicitly set criteria for “international faculty,” “international student body,” and “international board representation” as part of the “diversity” score in the ranking, making internationalization strategies core features of business school development (Chan et al. 2021). In addition, important measures in

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several rankings take account of international research publications— another way to promote the international ambition and outlook of a business school’s activity. The indicators and measures used in the rankings as well as the statistical procedures used to compile them help set standards for comparing and evaluating the core activities of business schools. On a broader scale, this helps to form notions of competition and competitiveness among business schools in what is increasingly perceived to be an international market for business programs, and to shape “positional competition” in this market (Alajoutsijärvi et al. 2018). The above points to the power of rankings in the field of higher education, as actors in the field consider them to constitute objective facts. However, as pointed out by, for example, Philip Altbach (2006), global rankings have their limitations: “If rankings are problematic nationally, they present even more challenges globally” (p. 3).

Accreditations The second sorting mechanism, accreditation, has taken on a similar international character as rankings, being used by business schools to promote their brands and internationalize their operations. Here, voluntarily entering an accreditation process organized by an international accrediting organization has become a way to make a business school align with international standards of performance and quality. Like rankings, accreditations are linked to the expansion and internationalization of general quality assurance considerations in higher education. However, they have longer traditions, particularly in the United States, and have a broader scope than rankings, also being used to certify the quality of various services such as engineering and health care. In the business school field, the US accreditation organization The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) was founded in 1916 to provide accreditation for US business schools. In the 1990s, it began to internationalize and accredit business education institutions outside the United States as well, becoming one of the cues for other organizations to take an interest in promoting accreditation. One of those was the European Foundation for Management Development

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(EFMD), a European non-profit network with over 900 members in some 90 countries from academia, business, public service, and consultancy, aiming to promote the quality and development of business education and management training in Europe (Hedmo 2012). In contrast to AACSB, the program launched by the EFMD, called EQUIS (European Quality Improvement System), accredits programs rather than institutions. EQUIS and AACSB, together with the UK-based Association of MBAs (AMBA) accrediting MBA programs internationally, are today the three leading accreditation programs for business and management training. Seeking accreditation from these organizations is a way for business schools to demonstrate an international outlook and show that they play by the rules of the international business school field, upholding common standards of quality development and quality assurance. Being accredited is often a “qualifier” for being included in rankings and for being considered for partnership agreements, student exchange programs, and other international opportunities in the business school field. In this sense, accreditation opens doors for the internationalization of business schools (Sziegat 2021). Here, gaining “triple crown accreditation”—i.e., accreditation from all three of the above-mentioned accrediting organizations—is seen as the ultimate target, something only about 1%, or approximately 110, of the world’s business schools have attained as of the end of 2021 (MBA Today 2021). The seeking of international accreditation is thus in itself a strategy for internationalizing business schools. The impact of the specific criteria or models for assessing the international strategies of business schools is less easily judged, since the accreditation programs focus on evaluation and on the standardization of quality assurance procedures rather than on specific criteria. However, it can be noted that a “global mindset” and “diversity and inclusion” are two of nine focus areas of the AACSB accreditation, with the latter gaining an increasingly important role in accreditation decisions in recent years, being embedded in 66% of the accreditation standards in the 2020 guidelines (AACSB 2022). EQUIS, on the other hand, has a specific component aimed at “internationalization,” with standards covering the student body, faculty, international partnerships, research activity, and corporate connections (EFMD 2022).

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In the AMBA guidelines for MBA programs, ensuring “an international outlook of the program” is one specific criterion in the accreditation process, but it is less clear how this is weighted in the overall assessment (AMBA 2022). From a broader perspective, however, international accreditation has become a way for business schools to connect to an internationalizing quality assurance agenda and to use the accreditation stamp as an entry ticket. By complementing the status game of the rankings, the role of accreditation is to serve as “a necessary prerequisite condition for world-class B-schools” (Thomas et al. 2014, p. 306) that helps to establish a benchmarked reputation for high quality. At the same time, accreditations appear to steer all programs toward an American model (Hedmo 2004).

The Basic Assumptions It is obvious that one basic assumption underlying both rankings and accreditations of business schools is that higher education is a global activity with students moving between countries. Another assumption is that students collect all relevant information on institutions of higher education, making rational choices based on the information obtained. There are reasons to question both these assumptions, given the properties of higher education and the functioning of labor markets, making the idea of a global market for business education a myth.

Properties of Higher Education The general business literature on products and markets has over time increasingly acknowledged the heterogeneity of products. A crucial distinction made in this literature is that between goods and services. While there are opportunities to test goods before purchasing them, this is not the case for services—they are intangible (Flipo 1988). For higher education, this intangibility is even more pronounced than for most other services. Generally, an individual can have earlier experiences of a certain service, for example, a visit to a restaurant, a stay in a hotel, a

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car repair, etc. Although the individual will be uncertain of the quality of a new offer of the same service, he or she has a view of its content. This is not the case for higher education, since students by definition should not know the subject matter of the education they are going to participate in. In addition, as soon as they have undergone an education—contrary to the repeat consumption of other services—they will not undergo the same education again, even if they liked it very much. This means that students choosing an education are facing high uncertainty. On top of that—again in contrast to dissatisfied customers in other contexts—alumni are less likely to publicly voice their dissatisfaction in cases when they have had negative experiences. The reason is that, for career reasons, they have an interest in not discrediting their education; instead, they tend to boost their alma mater. This does not exclude the possibility that business schools faced with the risk that alumni will provide a bad review or express dissatisfaction in, for instance, alumni surveys, are wary of their relationship with alumni and work hard to please them. These characteristics of higher education imply that prospective students face great uncertainty in choosing a course of study and educational institution. The views of their parents and schoolmates as well as their own observations of alumni in the labor market constitute significant input. To a considerable extent, these views emanate from observations in the national and even regional contexts, and not from extensive information about institutions of higher education in other countries. Most students thus tend to obtain their higher education in their home country or even in the region where they grew up. Mobility mainly follows on the nationally created reputations of academic institutions. In addition to student inertia, a corresponding inertia among institutions of higher education hampers the globalization of higher education. Admittedly, there are institutions of higher education that establish campuses abroad. As shown by Engwall and Kipping (2013, p. 330), however, such investments in satellite foreign campuses are rare, and of the 100 top-ranked business schools in 2011 offering global MBAs, only three had foreign campuses. In terms of the international business literature, such establishment of foreign campuses constitutes foreign direct

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investment. These campuses represent the last step in what the literature calls “the establishment chain” (Johanson and Wiedersheim-Paul 1975). Earlier steps in this process are exports, the use of agents, and the setting up of sales subsidiaries, all for the provision of goods and services abroad. Here, higher education again is different. Except for the rare foreign campuses, the internationalization of institutions of higher education instead occurs through the import of students from foreign countries. However, even this form of internationalization has its limitations. Of the 100 business schools particularly oriented toward global management mentioned above, only one of five had a majority of international students and international faculty. Recent data on the MBA programs of the three top US business schools, i.e., the Harvard Business School, Stanford Graduate School of Business, and the Wharton School, also show that their shares of foreign nationals are limited to around one third: 37% (Harvard Business School 2021), 33% (Stanford Graduate School of Business 2021), and 36% (Wharton School 2021), respectively. The United Kingdom overall exhibits a similar ratio, with 39% foreign enrollment in its business schools (HESA 2021). Obviously, these three US business schools and those in the United Kingdom have competitive advantages: they are at the top of the rankings and they operate in countries where English is the mother tongue. In this way, they, like their counterparts in other English-speaking countries, such as Canada and Australia, can admit international students to their existing programs with no need for adaptation. The same is not true in non-English speaking countries, where the admission of international students forces a transition to teaching in English. Deans in such countries solve this problem by hiring international faculty members and having national faculty members teach in English. The former solution has the disadvantage that the foreign professors may have difficulties taking part in collegial decision-making and in the national public debate. The weakness of teaching in English by nationals, on the other hand, is that even if the national faculty members have a good command of English, they will be less articulate than if they were teaching in their mother tongue. Language and culture still play significant roles in modern societies.

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The disadvantages faced by non-English speaking countries are also evident in the research output of institutions of higher business education. A study of 15 international management journals for the 1981— 1992 and 2005—2009 periods found that 76.9% of the published papers in the first period and 57.6% in the second had US authors; not even the United Kingdom came close to the United States, with 5.6% and 7.9% of published papers having UK authors in the two periods (Engwall and Danell 2011). Summing up the shares of Englishspeaking countries, i.e., the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia, further demonstrates the comparative advantage possessed by native English speakers, with 90.7% and 74.2% of published papers having authors from these four countries in the two studied periods.

Alumni in the Labor Market As argued above, institutional reputation, primarily based on alumni success in the labor market, plays a significant role when prospective students choose institutions of higher education. This circumstance highlights two problems in relation to the labor market: first, the language problem and, second, the barriers to entry that alumni from a foreign country may face. The language problem is likely to occur for students in Englishspeaking programs who get jobs in non-English-speaking countries. This is also true for students returning to their non-English-speaking home countries. However, even students in non-English-speaking countries where programs, to live up to perceived global competition, are taught in English face the problem when they as graduates start working in domestic industry. Both these groups will be at a disadvantage in the job market, since they will not know fundamental concepts in their mother tongue. This is particularly problematic since most business graduates have so far spent and are likely in the near future to spend most of their working lives in their home country. For students returning to their home country, the problem of barriers to entry may occur in addition to the language problem. One such difficulty is that of having their degree acknowledged. Here, they face what

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Lindbeck and Snower (1989) have called the insider–outsider problem. This means that those inside a job market have market power over those outside the market, thereby erecting barriers to entry. This mechanism, which operates for all outsiders, will be more severe for persons with a foreign academic education. While a carpenter, car mechanic, or plumber can relatively easily demonstrate her or his ability by fixing acute problems, most academics have more difficulties doing so. Again, nationally constructed reputations will favor graduates from national institutions, particularly prestigious ones, from which insiders have graduated. This will disfavor immigrants and nationals with foreign degrees. An indicator of this is the large number of well-educated foreign taxi drivers all over the world (Engwall 2019).

Conclusions The above arguments do not imply a denial that we live in a globalized world. It is quite clear that modern communications, both physically and electronically, have made the world more integrated. As a result, transnational relationships have increasingly developed between individuals, corporations, and other institutions. However, at the same time there are also strong local cultural forces that moderate globalization. While individuals communicate and travel, they remain embedded in their local environments when it comes to family and culture. Most students therefore tend to choose national programs for their studies. They have advantages after graduation, since national labor markets tend to favor locals, while outsiders face resistance, leading to a considerable waste of academic competence, not seldom manifested by well-educated individuals driving taxis. The implications of the above are that business school deans should care much more about their home markets than about global markets and that they should reflect more carefully on their internationalization strategies. Following Douglass (2016), business schools should aim at being national flagships rather than global champions. This is particularly the case in countries whose nationals speak a language of limited global reach. It is doubtful whether teaching in English is the right

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way to prepare students in these countries for the job market. There is no evidence that teachers communicate better in a language that is not their mother tongue, nor is there any evidence that students understand better when they are taught in a foreign language. These circumstances are particularly worrying, since most students in institutions of higher education are nationals who after graduation are likely to work in national labor markets. It is therefore crucial that they know basic concepts from their studies in their mother tongue. The above does not mean that business school deans should not think about internationalization; rather, it implies that they should do so in a way other than that which ranking and accreditation have forced them to do. They should instead concentrate more on preparing their national students for the globalized world we are living in, particularly by imparting more knowledge from the humanities to their students. In this way, through more education in foreign languages, history, literature, and other humanistic disciplines, these students would be much better prepared for the globalized world. Although the English language is spreading fast worldwide, future graduates may find a need to communicate in other languages with partners who do not have Anglo-American worldviews. This is an important circumstance that business school deans should consider. It is also important that they consider the future career opportunities of their foreign students and not just regard foreign recruitment as a means of financing their institutions. Overall, there is a need for more nuanced information regarding the achievements of business graduates in different job markets.

References AACSB. (2022). Diversity and inclusion in the standards. Tampa, FL: AACSB. https://www.aacsb.edu/educators/accreditation/business-accreditation/div ersity. Accessed 16 Jan 2022. Alajoutsijärvi, K., Kettunen, K., & Sohlo, S. (2018). Shaking the status quo: Business accreditation and positional competition. Academy of Management Learning and Education, 17 (2), 203–225.

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(Eds.), Effects of higher education reforms: Change dynamics (pp. 185–201). Rotterdam: Sense Publishers. HESA. (2021). What do HE students study? https://www.hesa.ac.uk/data-andanalysis/students/what-study. Accessed 29 Oct 2021. Johanson, J., & Wiedersheim-Paul, F. (1975). The internationalization of the firm: Four Swedish cases. Journal of Management Studies, 12(3), 305–322. Lindbeck, A., & Snower, D. J. (1989). The insider—Outsider theory of employment and unemployment. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Mazza, C., Sahlin-Andersson, K., & Pedersen, J. S. (2005). European constructions of an American model: Developments of four MBA programmes. Management Learning, 36 (4), 471–491. MBA Today. (2021). List of triple-accredited business schools (AACSB, EQUIS, AMBA) 2021. https://www.mba.today/guide/triple-accreditationbusiness-schools. Accessed 16 Jan 2022. Power, M. (1997). The audit society: Rituals of verification. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Stanford Graduate School of Business. (2021). MBA entering class profile. https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/programs/mba/admission/class-profile. Accessed 29 Oct 2021. Sziegat, H. (2021). The response of German business schools to international accreditation in global competition. Quality Assurance in Education, 29 (2-3), 135–150. Thomas, L., Billsberry, J., Ambrosini, V., & Barton, H. (2014). Convergence and divergence dynamics in British and French business schools: How will the pressure for accreditation influence these dynamics? British Journal of Management, 25 (2), 305–319. Wedlin, L. (2006). Ranking business schools: Forming fields, identities, and boundaries in international management education. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar. Wedlin, L. (2011). Going global: Rankings as rhetorical devices to construct an international field of management education. Management Learning, 42(2), 199–218. Westerheijden, D. F., Rosa, M. J., & Stensaker, B. (2007). Quality assurance in higher education: Trends in regulation, translation and transformation. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer. Wharton School. (2021). Wharton MBA class profile. https://mba.wharton. upenn.edu/class-profile/. Accessed 29 Oct 2021.

9 On How Intercultural Management Education Can Increase the Societal Legitimacy of Business Schools Madeleine Bausch

In this chapter, I argue that Intercultural Management Education can help to increase the societal legitimacy of business schools. I argue in favor of business school education because, more than any other educational institutions, business schools possess the necessary resources and potentials to transform businesses and society for the better. Based on six dimensions of Intercultural Management Education, I outline how they can contribute to increase business school legitimacy. The remainder of this chapter is as follows: After an introduction that outlines current criticisms of business schools and proposed remedies, I argue that business schools are, better than other educational institutions, M. Bausch (B) Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Chile, Santiago, Chile e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. Örtenblad and R. Koris (eds.), Debating Business School Legitimacy, Palgrave Debates in Business and Management, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-12725-0_9

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able to tackle these criticisms. In line with a constructivist approach, I then discuss how six dimensions of Intercultural Management Education can address the legitimacy issues of business schools.

On Problems and Solutions of Business School Legitimacy Business school legitimacy has been debated for decades (Mintzberg 2004; Pettigrew and Starkey 2016; Starkey et al. 2004; Thomas et al. 2013; Wilson and Thomas 2012), and the outbreak of the COVID19 pandemic has recently fueled again the discussion on how business schools should transform and develop in the near future to maintain their legitimacy (Beech and Anseel 2020; Schlegelmilch 2020). To name a few well-known arguments, business schools have been criticized to spread a Western ideal of management, based on US practices and values emphasizing individualism, short-term profits, competition, and self-interest (Engwall 2004; Khurana and Penrice 2011), for the sake of well-being and sustainability; to focus on “functions of business” and analytical skills (finance, management, marketing) while neglecting “general education,” “soft,” humanist, and environmental factors as well as social and ethical values (Mintzberg 2004); to fuel “academic capitalism” (Münch 2014) through rankings and publication numbers, fostering competition instead of collaboration (Adler and Harzing 2009), or to be too theoretical and detached from practice (Mintzberg 2004). Lately, business school intentions to incorporate Corporate Social Responsibility in their curricula have been criticized to be decoupled from their actual practices (Snelson-Powell et al. 2016). These criticisms are certainly mostly true and appropriate, and the business school model does present some problems regarding their (societal) legitimacy which should be tackled. Business school curricula often do not meet the requirements of the new world order in which businesses are operating: a highly volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world, as described by the VUCA world, a world characterized by volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and agility which requires systemic and networked thinking, agility and flexibility from leaders (Rath et al.

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2021). New economic models such as the circular economy (Stahel and MacArthur 2019) require business leaders to replace the robust notion of the homo oeconomicus, an ideal of mankind who acts according to rational principles, with an empathetic and socially reciprocal homo sociooeconomicus, who embodies both rationality and emotions and social relationships in behavior (Weise 1989). Especially the COVID19 pandemic has shown that business schools’ educational mission is not just to convey content, but that they also have a “commitment to societal ends” (de la Torre and Young 2020b). In these regards, de la Torre and Young (2020b) argue that “any commitment to educating business students to become global citizens is still in its infancy” (n.p.). Several authors have, therefore, highlighted the need to question the role of business school for society (Starkey et al. 2004), and they largely agree that business schools require innovation to survive (Schlegelmilch 2020). Some have made concrete suggestions to counteract these criticisms and the “loss of legitimacy” (e.g., de la Torre and Young 2020a, 2020b; Mintzberg 2004; Starkey et al. 2004; Wilson and Thomas 2012). Starkey et al. (2004), for example, argue that business schools are in first place social institutions with an educational mandate. They advocate for including “greater openness to external agents” in research and education (p. 1527) and propose to “experiment with different forms of education […] geared to developing skills in reflective, collaborative, and analytic thinking as well as action mindsets that enable managers to negotiate the complex tensions” (p. 1523) that exist between theory and practice. In this line, some have argued that business schools should go back to the roots and embrace the “Humboldt ideal”of education (Starkey and Tempest 2005). This ideal goes back to the Prussian Wilhelm von Humboldt, for whom a university’s mission was not only to convey professional learning content (technical abilities), but also to educate students as moral and good citizens, and as “autonomous actors” who could further serve the needs of society. Wilson and Thomas (2012) propose to enhance business school legitimacy by promoting multi-disciplinary perspectives in research and teaching; emphasizing moral and ethical questions of modern capitalism, along with a critical examination of managers and leadership; and addressing the “big questions” of today’s societies (see also Currie, Chapter 13 in this volume).

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They argue that “business schools themselves will have to become less insular and nationally oriented” and advocate that the integration of “language, comparative social cultures and the impact of religion on global economic activity” would be necessary parts of both research and teaching curricula (p. 375). Arguments for strengthening internationality, interdisciplinary and practice orientation are also postulated by Henry Mintzberg who recalls that “management is more art, based on insight, vision, intuition” and “[e]ffective management therefore happens where arts, crafts, and science meet” (Mintzberg 2004, p. 10). Instead of making management a “scientific” subject, management faculties should there try to make it an interdisciplinary field, considering “scientific knowledge” and humanist features. Additionally, de la Torre and Young (2020a) advocate the empowerment of “global citizenship” and “cosmopolitanism” in business leader education. According to their notion, a “global citizen” acts morally (defending human rights), politically (fostering freedom and sustainability), culturally respectful, and economically wisely by promoting transparent business and “free flow of ideas, goods and services, capital and labor.” They argue in favor of conveying crosscultural and multi-lingual competencies, creativity, self-awareness and open-mindedness, a strategic holistic perspective, and systems thinking. In this chapter, and as a contribution to the debate, I aim to provide a positive perspective on business schools and on their development through Intercultural Management Education which can help business schools to bridge the divide between a profit-oriented and a social and more humanist view, and to strengthen their societal legitimacy. Before outlining respective arguments, I argue that more than other educational institutions, business schools possess the necessary resources and potential to address the abovementioned problems.

Who If Not Business Schools? Especially business schools possess vast resources that can respond to today’s challenges and demands, and they can have a transformative power on tomorrow’s business leaders. In their proper nature, business

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schools vary considerably across the globe: Depending on their institutional, cultural, and historical embeddedness, they differ in resources and educational approaches, ranging from offering exclusively graduate MBA programs to holistic comprehensive curricula. Some are exclusively private while others are incorporated into public universities. They differ in size and student body and address well-established quality criteria differently. However, even though some business schools are publicly funded and large in size, many of them are private in nature and smaller in size and structure, which is why they often—but not always—have more monetary resources which can be spent more flexibly. This allows not only an often-faster development and testing of innovative course curricula and contents, but also enables to respond more flexibly to demands from the practical business world and from society. Throughout the past few years, business schools have renovated their curricula, incorporating responsible business and management practices, sustainability, and ethical behavior as important topics (Gupta and Cooper 2021), and there is hope for a more positive development in 2022 (Ethier 2022). Many have integrated experiential learning methods (e.g., Schumacher and Festing 2020), and faster than other educational institutions, they have been able to switch easily to online and hybrid classes in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Moreover, business schools attract staff from all over the world, allowing to choose—between research and teaching positions, allocating people where they are best at. Flexibility and innovativeness in strategy and content are also due to being generally smaller social systems than large public universities, in which decision-making is too often a lengthy process that involves too many interest groups and committees. And, despite criticism on academic rankings (Adler and Harzing 2009; Münch 2014) that classify both the business schools and scholars, those have attracted outstanding academics to business schools, enhancing the quality of research and teaching. From an intercultural perspective, the biggest asset of business schools lies in their international character and outreach, since they attract students and staff from different cultures from all over the world.

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This is also related to accreditation bodies such as AASCB (Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business) or EQUIS (European Quality Improvement System) who require accredited business schools a certain percentage of international staff. For example, Harvard Business School’s regular MBA class of 2021 counts 37% international students from 61 countries and from its 244 faculty members, only 23% stem from the USA while 77% stem from Argentina to Vietnam (Harvard Business School 2022). At Copenhagen Business School, 20% are international students (Copenhagen Business School 2022) and at ESCP, students from 122 nationalities study at six campuses across Europe (ESCP 2022). This bears immense potential for global education, mutual learning, research collaboration, social capital development, and networking. Therefore, in line with Starkey et al. (2004), I argue that the business school can be seen as an “agora in action where different stakeholders and different disciplines interact and learn from each other” (p. 1528). In sum, business schools are able to tackle today’s challenges with the human, financial, and ideal resources they possess. In the following, I will argue that these resources can be used constructively to counteract the criticisms of business schools regarding their societal legitimacy by investing in Intercultural Management Education. Before presenting six dimensions of how Intercultural Management Education can address business schools’ legitimacy issues, the chapter gives a brief overview on Intercultural Management.

How Intercultural Management Education Can Increase the Legitimacy of Business Schools What’s Intercultural Management? Intercultural Management is a field of research and teaching that stems from International Business and Management, which first arose in the 1950s due to intensified global business relationships (Adler and

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Gundersen 2002). With the seminal studies of Geert Hofstede (1980) on cultural dimensions, culture became a relevant factor for business and management in the 1980s, which paved the way for the development of the field of Cross-Cultural Management (CCM) studies and the formation of a proper field (Phillips and Sackmann 2015). While Cross-Cultural Management focuses on comparative aspects of management and international organizations, Intercultural Management (ICM) focuses on the interactions and processes between individuals and organizations around the globe.1 In contrast to International and Cross-Cultural Management, which mainly focus on national cultural differences and similarities, Intercultural Management is increasingly dedicated to exploring the intersectionality and dynamics of multiple cultures, such as organizational, regional, professional, gender, and national cultures. It is a highly interdisciplinary field which combines insights from (intercultural) communication studies, sociology, psychology, area studies, and linguistics with business, organization studies, and economics (Barmeyer et al. 2021). In its broadest sense, Intercultural Management Education aims to prepare students to cope with and to positively manage an increasing globalized and international business environment, in which people from different (national, organizational, or professional) cultural backgrounds meet. As any proper field of research, it conveys theoretical models and concepts, and empirical insights to provide explanations to complex settings of intercultural encounters and has been integrated in business school education for two decades. As such, Intercultural Management Education aims to uncover the implicit, hidden side of cultural values, morals, interpretation, and their relation to human behavior in organizations and societies. Taking a constructive perspective (Barmeyer et al. 2021) and in line with Dietz et al. (2017), I further argue that intercultural management skills are “central ingredients for understanding and analyzing complex global issues and for creating positive value” (p. 140).

1 In the English language, “cross-cultural” and “intercultural” are sometimes used synonymously, while in other European languages, there is a clear distinction between the two.

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Six Dimensions of Intercultural Management Education to Promote Business School Legitimacy In the following, I argue how the Intercultural Management Education (ICME) can bring about the desired positive effects and outputs to business schools and their students. Table 9.1 provides an overview of the content of ICME and its relation to addressing the legitimacy issues of business schools. Firstly, ICME advocates a human-oriented perspective in management since it is deeply concerned with individuals, groups, and their reciprocity in organizations. Rather than solely focusing on short-term achievements and outputs of organizational behavior, it teaches to consider the soft factors such as employee well-being, communication, and motivation along with the principles of management, such as cost structures, statistics, measurements, or return on investment. This may tackle longstanding problems of employee demotivation, burn-out, and high turnover rates (de Smet et al. 2021). By dovetailing social sciences with humanities, ICME conveys the notion of organizations as social systems, not machines, since organizations are formed and shaped by individuals. Values and interpretations are a central topic in ICME since they guide behavior, and as such, it responds to the criticism of lacking social and ethical value education in business schools (Mintzberg 2004; Wilson and Thomas 2012). Discussions on morality and principles can then help to educate business school students as responsible “global citizens” (de la Torre and Young 2020a) or “business citizens” (see Sidani, Chapter 11 in this volume). Secondly, ICME is multi-disciplinary and interdisciplinary in research and teaching per se, integrating insights from psychology, sociology, cultural studies, communication studies, and linguistics with business, organization studies, and economics, as well regarding its methodology. As such, it can help both students and researchers to foster networked and outside-the-box thinking of their own discipline, which is necessary to answer the required “big questions” (de la Torre and Young 2020b; Wilson and Thomas 2012, p. 374) of society and business, whether regarding health care or Artificial Intelligence, for example. In addition

Focus on individuals and differences in their moral and value orientations, interpretation, communication, and behavior in business contexts ICM as a multi- and interdisciplinary field of research and teaching that combines management studies with sociology, psychology, intercultural communication, linguistics, and area studies. It is multi-paradigmatic and multi-methodological in nature. Ability to understand values, thinking patterns and behavior of individuals, to communicate one’s own point of view transparently in (intercultural) interactions and to think about alternative solutions. Ability to question one’s own (cultural) background, to contrast it to another person’s (cultural) background, and to reassess the appropriateness of management instruments in different contexts.

Humane orientation

Multi- and interdisciplinarity

Ethnorelativism

Intercultural competence

Explanation

Content of ICME

(continued)

. Inclusion of non-Western management concepts in thinking and acting . Understanding of other perspectives . Serves empathy development

. Serve competences to lead in a VUCA world: Volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous business environments

• Conveys notion of organizations as social systems, not machines . Emphasis on “soft factors” of business along with technical content and “hard factors” . Promotes multi-disciplinary perspectives to answer the big questions of society . Conveys “generalist education” in addition to “specialist education”

Enhancing BS legitimacy

Table 9.1 Six dimensions of Intercultural Management Education and their relation to business school legitimacy

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Degree to which a person feels comfortable with conflicting opinions and interests, uncertainty, and complexity, and entails the ability to constantly negotiate existing and new solutions between contrasting poles. Ability to flexibly adapt one’s own behavior to a situation Favors a multilingual language education instead of a universalist “English as a lingua franca” approach

Culture and ICM must be experienced to be understood, either via exchanges or assignments. Organizations are seen as social arenas in which individuals meet and exchange

Tolerance for ambiguity

Language learning

International and practice orientation

Systemic and networked thinking

Agility

Explanation

Content of ICME

Table 9.1 (continued) . Acknowledges strengths and weaknesses of opposing value orientations . Helps to overcome ambiguities and to create hybrid, new models and solutions . Helps business schools and students to adapt to changing environmental conditions . Ability to understand and communicate with people from non-Western, or non-English-speaking backgrounds . Increases network abilities across borders and between people . Makes business schools less insular and more oriented towards international markets . BS as places in which social capital is built and developed . Emphasizes collaboration instead of competition

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to the necessary “functions of business” and analytical skills, interdisciplinary thinking can help to develop “general education” as a fundamental requirement for leaders (Mintzberg 2004) since they are then able to understand employees from different professional backgrounds. Thirdly, intercultural competence development is at the heart of ICME. Defined as “the ability (1) to understand the values, ways of thinking and behavioral patterns of individuals from other cultures, (2) to communicate one’s own point of view transparently in intercultural interactions and (3) to think about alternative solutions in intercultural situations” (Barmeyer et al. 2021, p. 172), intercultural competence is constituted by cognitive (e.g., knowledge of political, social, and economic systems, language skills), affective (e.g., empathy, openness, flexibility), and behavioral (e.g., ability to apply cognitive knowledge, metacommunicative skills) abilities (Spitzberg and Changnon 2009). This may help leaders to become more empathetic (Brower 2021) and to minimize failures in international business negotiations. A comparison of intercultural competence and leadership skills shows that intercultural competence conveys abilities that leaders need to cope with today’s VUCA world: flexibility, agility, complexity, tolerance for ambiguity, ethnorelativism, and empathy (Rath et al. 2021). As part of intercultural competence, three concepts can help to increase business school legitimacy: 1. The conveyance of an ethnorelativist attitude (Bennett 2004) can transform students’ and business leaders’ perspectives away from ethnocentric thinking. Ethnorelativism describes the ability to question one’s own (cultural) background, to compare it to another person’s (cultural) background, and to reassess the appropriateness of management instruments in different contexts (Barmeyer et al. 2021). While an ethnocentric attitude assumes a “one-size-fits it all” approach and an “what-works-here-works-elsewhere” thinking, people with an ethnorelativist attitude relativize the appropriateness of their behavior in different contexts, so, for example, whether “proven” US and Western management models meet the need of non-US, non-Western societies (Boyacigiller and Adler 1991). Incorporating ethnorelativism in business school curricula, future

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managers could learn about alternative approaches to management, relativize their beliefs about “what works,” and include contextsensitive concepts in their thinking and acting. This attitude can then also be transferred to interpersonal relationships between business partners or between leaders and employees. 2. Tolerance for ambiguity reflects the degree to which a person feels comfortable with conflicting opinions and interests, uncertainty, and complexity, and entails the ability to constantly negotiate existing and new solutions between contrasting poles. Especially in organizations in which cultures, opinions, and points of view clash, a leader’s tolerance for ambiguity is needed to integrate different demands. Dealing with conflicting moral or value orientations in class can help students to transfer the possible solutions to business life, which is now, more than ever, characterized by ambiguities (e.g., sustainability vs. shortterm profits, stakeholder vs. shareholder interests, collaboration vs. competition). Alike, it helps to overcome ambiguities and to create hybrid, new models, and solutions (e.g., cooptition as a hybrid of competition and collaboration). 3. Intercultural competence reflects in agile thinking and acting, and respects and tolerates different worldviews and opinions. It is the ability to flexibly adapt one’s own behavior to a certain situation, as needed when working with people from different departments, organizations, or professions. However, agility not always means adaptation, but can also manifest in the form of minimization or integration (Caligiuri and Tarique 2016), with the aim to finding the best solution for each situation. Fourthly, ICM training emphasizes language learning as a way to cross borders and connect people. Language is at the heart of communication, it is the window to culture and to their people, and without language, there is no communication. Many projects fail either due to miscommunication or no communication; but communication only becomes possible through language in its multiple spheres (national, professional, organizational). English as a lingua franca has proven as a helpful business language; however, a glance into practice reveals that even highly positioned managers, especially in emerging economies, do

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not dispose of the necessary English skills and projects often get “lost in translation” (Ordorica 2020). As Engwall and Wedlin (Chapter 8 in this volume) rightly point out, business is mainly conducted locally, for which language competencies are of use and need. For these reasons, there is a growing number of scholars who emphasize the need for language learning in business schools (Brannen and Mughan 2016; Horn et al. 2020) and to establish curricula for language learning. Fifthly, to address the shortcomings of international and practice orientation (Wilson and Thomas 2012), ICME is a highly practical field which combines empirical research with international experience that can serve as a door opener to a more relativistic thinking that can be transferred to all areas of life. Experiencing intercultural management requires stays abroad, international assignments, or at least interaction with people from diverse backgrounds. A look on the numbers tells that business schools are somewhat diverse in students and staff, like probably no other educational institution. As well, especially over the past decades, students have increasingly demanded experience abroad (with a collapse of international assignments during the COVID-19 pandemic), and business schools are increasingly engaged in establishing international partnerships with other business schools and universities.2 Lastly, ICME conveys and requires systemic and networked thinking which means that organizations are seen as social arenas in which individuals meet and influence each other. Systemic and networked thinking is needed to cope with a VUCA world and to solve the interdisciplinary “big questions” mentioned above. Related to their interdisciplinary and international character, business schools are true “agoras” “where different stakeholders and different disciplines interact and learn from each other” (Starkey et al. 2004, p. 1528) and in which people from different national cultures, industries, companies, and backgrounds meet. The small size of their social system and their resources allow for networking, for interdisciplinary and interconnected thinking, that can be triggered and enhanced by ICME. In its nature, ICME emphasizes collaboration in international and interdisciplinary teams, and advocates 2 In this regard, I believe it is important to distinguish (US)-American from European or non-US business schools since it is much easier for European business schools to engage in partnerships via EU programs.

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that a multitude of perspective can enrich solution finding for problems. An assessment of the benefits of collaboration can teach students then to become more collaborative.

Conclusion In this chapter, I have argued that Intercultural Management Education (ICME) can help business schools to address their shortcomings as outlined by several scholars and to increase their societal legitimacy. More than other educational institutions, business schools dispose of the necessary resources to change businesses and society for the better. An assessment of six dimensions of ICME has shown how their content and methodology can further develop business school curricula: humane orientation, multi- and interdisciplinarity, intercultural competence, language learning, international and practice orientation, and a systemic and networked thinking can be conveyed by ICME, which can support business school students to become the desired global citizens. Taking these arguments into consideration could help business schools to increase their societal legitimacy and to broaden their impact on business and society. Followingly, business schools could approximate the desired Humboldt ideal of higher education: There is certain knowledge that must be general, and even more so a certain education of the mind and character that no one should lack. Everyone is obviously a good craftsman, merchant, soldier and businessman only if he is in himself and without regard to his particular profession a good, decent, enlightened man and citizen according to his status. (von Humboldt 1809, p. 218, author’s translation)

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de Smet, A., Dowling, B., Mugayar-Baldocchi, M., & Schaninger, B. (2021). “Great attrition” or “great attraction”? The choice is yours. McKinsey & Company. https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/people-and-org anizational-performance/our-insights/great-attrition-or-great-attraction-thechoice-is-yours. Accessed 24 Feb 2022. Dietz, J., Fitzsimmons, S., Aycan, Z., Francesco, A., Jonsen, K., Osland, J., Sacksmann, S., Lee, H.-J., & Boyacigiller, N. A. (2017). Cross-cultural management education rebooted: Creating positive value through scientific mindfulness. Cross Cultural & Strategic Management, 24 (1), 125–151. Engwall, L. (2004). The Americanization of Nordic management education. Journal of Management Inquiry, 13(2), 109–117. ESCP. (2022). Facts and accreditations. https://www.escp.eu/facts-and-accred itations. Accessed 9 Jan 2022. Ethier, M. (2022). The crystal ball: B-Schools acknowledge challenges, put positive shine on 2022. MBA Watch, January 3. https://poetsandquants. com/2022/01/03/the-crystal-ball-b-schools-acknowledge-challenges-put-pos itive-shine-on-2022/. Accessed 9 Jan 2022. Gupta, U., & Cooper, S. (2021). An integrated framework of UN and AACSB principles for responsible management education. Journal of Global Responsibility, 13(1), 42–55. Harvard Business School. (2022). Statistics. https://www.hbs.edu/about/statis tics/Pages/default.aspx. Accessed 9 Jan 2022. Hofstede, G. (1980). Culture’s consequences: International differences in workrelated values. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. Horn, S., Lecomte, P., & Tietze, S. (Eds.). (2020). Managing multilingual workplaces: Methodological, empirical and pedagogic perspectives. New York: Routledge. Humboldt, W. v. (1809). Bericht der Sektion des Kultus und Unterrichts an den König. In A. Flitner & K. Giel (Eds.), Werke in Fünf Bänden (Band IV, pp. 210–238). Darmstadt, Germany: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. Khurana, R., & Penrice, D. (2011). Business education: The American trajectory. In M. Morsing & A. Sauquet Rovira (Eds.), Business schools and their contribution to society (pp. 3–15). Los Angeles: Sage. Mintzberg, H. (2004). Developing managers not MBAs. London: FT Prentice Hall. Münch, R. (2014). Academic capitalism: Universities in the global struggle for excellence. London: Routledge.

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10 On the Dilemmatic Legitimacy of Business Schools: The Barbell Syndrome and the Dominance of Business Degrees Gabriel Hawawini

In this chapter, I argue that business schools will remain legitimate providers of business education despite the fact that they continue to suffer from dilemmatic issues within the academic and business communities. (I review these issues below.) Their legitimacy is supported by their success over the years in adapting to the changing economic and social environment and evidenced by the increasing number of schools that offer business programs as well as the rising number of graduates who are awarded a business degree.1 In academia, questions are raised about (1) the nature of the schools’ business research and whether it meets the highest academic standards; (2) the clarity of their mission and whether business schools have lost their sense of purpose in the name of performance (Ghoshal 2005; G. Hawawini (B) INSEAD, Singapore, Singapore e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. Örtenblad and R. Koris (eds.), Debating Business School Legitimacy, Palgrave Debates in Business and Management, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-12725-0_10

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Khurana 2007); (3) the content of their curriculum and whether it lacks rigor (Clinebell and Clinebell 2008); (4) the treatment of their students and faculty and whether business schools view their students as customers and their faculty as mere employees (Obermiller et al. 2005); and (5) the ethical standards of their graduates and whether they learn to focus on short-term profits at the expense of long-term business sustainability (Koris and Aav 2019). In the business community, questions are raised about (1) the nature of the business schools’ academic research and whether it is relevant to practitioners (Pfeffer and Fong 2002); (2) the schools’ curriculum and whether it over-emphasizes narrow technical subjects at the expense of practical managerial issues; (3) their faculty members and whether they are familiar with the reality and complexity of running a business (Clinebell and Clinebell 2008); and (4) their graduates and whether they have the profiles and the skills that companies need (McMillan and Overall 2016). To depict these dilemmatic issues, I use the barbell as a metaphor, with the barbell’s weights symbolizing the opposing views on the issues that business schools try to balance. I refer to these conflicting demands as the barbell syndrome and posit that regardless of the challenges posed by these dilemmas, business schools will remain legitimate suppliers of business education as long as they manage to retain their resilient character and their ability to adapt to the constantly evolving economic and social environment. Additionally, I argue that business schools can enhance their legitimacy by (1) broadening their mission statement to include explicit contributions to solving environmental and societal issues; (2) creating an institutional culture where both research and teaching are valued equally; (3) incentivizing their faculty to explain the relevance of their academic research to the business community; and (4) fostering a climate where both students and faculty take joint ownership to develop well-educated graduates. In this context, it should also be pointed out that ranking organizations and accreditation bodies can effectively nudge business schools in these directions. Why does the barbell syndrome exist and why does it continue to afflict business schools despite their dominant position as suppliers of business education? The following explanations provide some answers:

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1. The schools’ lack of motivation to tackle the barbell syndrome headon because their academic and economic models work well: Why fix a model that students are eager to subscribe to, faculty is ready to join, employers are quick to recruit from, and alumni are happy to fund? 2. The mission and governance structure that business schools have adopted at the time of their birth in Europe and the United States, with a focus on serving the business community, have planted the seeds of the barbell syndrome. But this birth attribute has not hampered the ability of schools to grow in size and in number: Why should business schools renege on a birth attribute that has not prevented them from flourishing? 3. The flexibility of business programs which allows business schools to easily redesign the curriculum and continuously adapt it to changes in the economic and social environment: Why should business schools attempt to replace them with alternative programs that may, or may not, overcome some of the challenges posed by the barbell syndrome? 4. The success of the MBA (Master of Business Administration) degree that has become the required passport to access high-paying jobs in most industries. Even the BBA (Bachelor of Business Administration) degree acts as an advantageous passport to good jobs. Why should business schools try to switch to alternative qualifications that may, or may not, solve some of the barbell issues? Before suggesting alternative paths business schools could potentially adopt to deal with the barbell issues they face, I first review the state of business schools since the turn of the twenty-first century and argue that their ability to successfully overcome repeated crises has diminished their motivation to address the dilemmatic issues they continue to face. I will then describe the nature of these dilemmas, and will then proceed to look at the origin of the modern business school in search for historical clues that could explain their current predicament.

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The Resilience of Business Schools Since the Turn of the Century Since the turn of the twenty-first century, business schools around the world have faced, and continue to face, external challenges that affect their activities. First came the burst of the Internet bubble in 2000s and the subsequent recession. Then came the global breakdown of the financial system in 2007, followed by the Great Recession. And finally, during the early months of 2020s came the COVID health crisis that spread rapidly around the world. One may add to this list the ongoing retreat from globalization, the ebbing of the flow of international students, the emergence of online learning as a credible alternative to traditional teaching and learning methods, and the inroads made by competing suppliers into the business education industry (for example, consulting companies offering educational programs, corporate in-house management development programs, virtual universities, and online credentials) and you get a storm that threatens to extinguish many business schools, particularly the most vulnerable ones that do not benefit from a top reputation and a high ranking.2 And yet, surprisingly, despite repeated warnings that these crises will permanently reduce the demand for business school programs and cut their number significantly, most schools were able to adapt to the changing environment and launch new programs that meet the demand of companies for their graduates, including international and online programs (Hawawini 2005, 2016). Such resilience augurs well for the future of business schools whose demise has been greatly exaggerated. I believe that although their success in overcoming repeated crises has weaken their motivation to address the dilemmatic issues they continue to face, they will remain the dominant suppliers of business education as long as they retain their ability to adapt to the evolving economic and social environment in which they operate. I would also argue that the very success of business schools in dealing with their external challenges has weakened their resolve to tackle effectively the internal dilemmas listed previously.

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The Barbell Syndrome The most prominent dilemma business schools face is the persistent tension between the academic rigor and the practical relevance of their faculty’s research. Business schools are often criticized by scholars from outside the field of business studies for the lack of rigor of their research (Gordon and Howell 1959; McLaren 2019; Pierson 1959). And when the schools respond to this criticism by adopting a more rigorous research agenda to gain legitimacy in the academic community, they are warned by the business community that their research is coming short on practical relevance (Bennis and O’Toole 2005; Mintzberg 2004; Pfeffer and Fong 2002). I argue that at the heart of this dilemma is the fact that business schools serve two distinct communities with differing needs and interests. The academic community emphasizes rigorous research irrespective of its immediate applicability to business practice whereas the business community seeks the immediate applicability of the schools’ research output to their quotidian needs. Before looking further into why these dilemmas exist and whether business schools have addressed them satisfactorily, I review three of the other dilemmatic issues presented earlier, and I offer suggestions on how business schools could deal with them.

Performance Versus Purpose Business schools have been accused of sacrificing their mission on the altar of performance (Conn 2019; Ghoshal 2005; Khurana 2007). According to this view, the business schools’ pursuit of growth in the size, tuition revenues, and number of programs they offer—to generate the financial margins they need to fund their academic and physical investments—has been achieved at the expense of clarity of purpose. Table 10.1 reproduces the mission statements obtained from the websites of ten highly ranked business schools in the United States, Europe, and Asia, listed in alphabetical order.

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Table 10.1

Mission statements of ten business schools

Business school

The school’s mission statement as reported in its website

Berkeley (Haas)

To help extraordinary people achieve great things (www.haas.berkeley.edu/about/) To educate responsible leaders versed in ‘China Depth, Global Breadth’ (www.ceibs.edu/introduction-ceibs) To create knowledge with enduring impact, and influence and educate current and future leaders (www.chicagobooth.edu/why-booth) We are committed to educating and developing leaders and builders of enterprises who create value for all their stakeholders and society at large (https://www8.gsb.columbia.edu/about-us/mission-sta tement) To educate leaders who make a difference in the world (www.hbs.edu/about/Pages/mission.aspx) We bring together people, cultures and ideas to develop responsible leaders who transform business and society (www.insead.edu/about/who-we-are) We challenge conventional wisdom, transform careers and empower our people to change the way the world does business (www.london.edu/about) To develop principled, innovative leaders whose big ideas help make the world better while also advancing management practice (https://mitsloan.mit.edu/about/why-mit-sloan) To create ideas that deepen and advance our understanding of management and with those ideas to develop innovative principled, and insightful leaders who change the world (www.gsb.stanford.edu) To be the best-in-class education partner for transformational learning that prepares today’s global business leaders and organizations for greater impact and long-term success (https://executiveeducation.wharton.upenn.edu/about-wha rton/)

CEIBS

Chicago (Booth) Columbia

Harvard INSEAD

LBS

MIT (Sloan)

Stanford

Wharton (Executive Education)

All the business schools claim that they exist to educate future leaders who will change the world for the better. Not one school states explicitly that its purpose is to serve academia or the business community. So why do schools, whose stated mission is to produce enlightened business leaders, emphasize performance based on metrics such as the growth in the number and size of their programs, the quality of their facilities, the

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size and the research output of their faculty, the salary and the placement of their graduates, and their position in the rankings, as the annual reports of the business schools listed in Table 10.1 show? Clearly, there is a dissonance between the business schools’ declared purpose and the metrics they use to measure their performance. Based on this observation, I would argue that business schools should refocus their effort on fulfilling their stated mission, which is to educate future leaders who will change the world for the better. They should develop criteria that track their progress in a manner that is more closely aligned with their mission statements. Ranking organizations and accreditation bodies should help nudge schools in this direction by adopting explicit mission-based criteria to evaluate them. For example, these bodies could develop metrics that account for research and teaching that provide managerial solutions to the most pressing issues affecting the world’s population (hunger, health, education, climate change, etc.) and the contributions of faculty and alumni to achieving these objectives.

Research Versus Teaching Here, the dilemma is between emphasizing research at the expense of teaching, irrespective of whether the research is immediately relevant or not (Hattie and Marsh 1996). The heart of this dilemma is the evaluation and promotion system most business schools have adopted. Existing systems generally reward research ahead of teaching. Most business schools would promote very good researchers who are poor teachers while denying promotion to very good teachers who do little or no research. (Evidently, promoting very good researchers who are also very good teachers is not a dilemma.) The obvious outcome of this lopsided evaluation system is a reduction in the number of good teachers who are promoted. Many schools deal with this dilemma by creating two distinct categories of faculty members: a shrinking group of tenured faculty with reduced teaching loads and significant research budgets (essential, but expensive), and a growing group of non-tenured adjunct and affiliate faculty with higher teaching loads and little or no research support

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(essential, but less expensive and easier to manage than the preceding group). I claim that for this dual faculty structure to work harmoniously, schools must create an institutional culture that recognizes the importance of both contributions and value them accordingly. Additionally, this is, once more, an area where ranking organizations and accreditation bodies could and should help.

Faculty-Centrality Versus Student-Centrality Evidently, business schools should serve both their faculty and their students (see, e.g., Obermiller et al. 2005). The dilemma arises when business schools must decide whom to favor when resources are limited, as they always are. Specifically, should the business school be organized around serving its faculty needs first or serving its students’ needs first? Some business schools treat their students as customers whose demands must be satisfied within the classroom (with state-of-art teaching space and outstanding teachers) and outside the classroom (with teachers readily available to meet with students, great facilities, and effective student services). Faculty members argue that treating students as customers raises their expectations excessively (see, e.g., Chonko et al. 2002). As a result, any service which is perceived by such students as being poor becomes a source of tension and potential disappointment. Furthermore, attempting to solve the dilemma by acceding to escalating student demands creates a self-reinforcing loop with no satisfactory equilibrium. A school administrator once told me that a group of students, unsatisfied with the quality of the teaching delivered by a first-time teacher, demanded that the school reimburses them a portion of the fees they had paid, pro-rata, based on the number of unacceptable teaching hours they had to endure. This sort of behavior is exacerbated by the high tuition students pay to pursue their degree.3 Most faculty will argue that students should not be treated as customers (Clayson and Haley 2005). They should instead be viewed as a “product” that the business school “manufactures”. In this context, it is

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the faculty’s responsibility to deliver the best possible and most valuable “product” into the job market. One answer to this dilemma is to consider students neither as customers nor as products but as participants in the learning process. The students, together with the faculty’s skills and knowledge, co-create the “end product”, that is, the well-educated graduate. The challenge of the participative alternative is that it is harder to implement in comparison to the simpler ‘customer approach’ or ‘product approach’ because it requires a fundamental shift in the culture and the learning processes of business schools.

The Origin of the Modern Business School I now turn to the birth of the modern business school in search for clues that may shed some light on the origin of the barbell syndrome and its presence in the business school model. Most business schools were born as schools of commerce, as will be shown below, first in Europe (France) as stand-alone entities, unattached to a university, and later in the United States as distinct units of established universities. Other business programs were originally created as an extension of the engineering or the economics department of an existing university (see, e.g., Passant 2016, 2019). The first school dedicated exclusively to the study of business is more than 200 years old. It was established in 1819 in Paris, France, by a prominent group of businessmen as a private school under the name of the École spéciale de commerce et d’industrie (The Special School of Commerce and Industry), now ESCP Europe. Sixty years later, in 1881, the first business school in the United States, the Wharton School of Finance and Commerce, was founded at the University of Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia, thanks to a large donation from the Philadelphian steelmaker Joseph Wharton, as stated in the school’s website. The first business school in Asia goes back to 1917 when a commerce program was established at the Nanjing Higher Normal School, in China. The program was transferred in 1921 to Shanghai and renamed

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in 1932 as the National Shanghai Institute of Commerce. It is known today as the Shanghai University of Finance and Economics. The first U.S. school to offer a graduate degree—a Master of Commercial Sciences (MCS)—was the Tuck School of Business, established in 1900 at Dartmouth College. It was funded with an initial gift of a substantial sum of money from Edward Tuck, an alumnus and successful banker. The first school to offer an MBA program was the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration, established at Harvard University in 1908. It was funded in equal parts by Harvard’s alumnus Henry Lee Higginson, a successful Boston banker, and the Rockefeller Foundation. What do all these pioneering schools have in common? With the exception of Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration, they were all born as schools of commerce, not business administration, and most of them were initially funded by businessmen who played a major role in the schools’ governance structure and the shaping of their curricula. The influence of the business community was particularly pronounced in the case of the Harvard Business School (Yogev 2001). One could argue that the prominent role played by the business community at Harvard, and the choice of the business administration label for its graduate school and its degree, initiated a trend in management education that put an almost exclusive emphasis on serving the business community. And because of Harvard University’s academic preeminence and reputation, many other institutions inside and outside the United States have adopted the same mission and offered the same degree to benefit from the halo of respectability. We may thus surmise that if Harvard University had chosen a broader mission (beyond just serving the business community) and a more general label for its school and its degree (for example, “management” instead of “business administration”), today’s business schools would be called management schools and the BBA and MBA would most likely be less controversial degrees in management sciences. But does it matter whether these schools are called management schools or business schools and whether their diploma is a degree in management science or in business administration? I claim that mission statements and labels do matter, particularly those chosen by the leading

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institutions, because these choices become a standard in an emerging field of study that other educational institutions feel compelled to emulate in order to signal quality.

Why Are Business Administration Degrees Attractive and Resilient? Two of the oldest and most reputable universities in the world tried to create an alternative to the standard MBA program. The first was Yale University in the 1970s and the second was Cambridge University in the 1990s. Yale established a School of Organization and Management (SOM) in 1970 and it admitted its first students in 1976. The program emphasized broader managerial and organizational issues, and its graduates received a Master’s in Public and Private Management (MPPM). In 1994 the school changed its name to the Yale School of Management, and in 1999 it converted its degree into the more generic MBA. Cambridge established the Judge Institute of Management Studies in 1990. Its objective was to offer a 3-year program whereby students would spend a term at the school and two terms as interns, conducting several concrete projects with a sponsoring company in each of the three years. This innovative program was abandoned after two runs. It was replaced with a standard one-year full-time MBA program. In 2005, the Judge Institute of Management Studies changed its name to the Cambridge Judge Business School. Why did these two attempts to create an alternative to the standard MBA program not survive? A combination of factors may have contributed to their demise, but I would surmise that a key factor is a unique characteristic of business administration programs that makes them very attractive and quite difficult to disrupt: they are one of the most flexible and adaptable degree programs. If one examines the evolution of the structure and content of a typical business degree program over the years, one can see that most courses are frequently renewed, new subject matters are quickly introduced into the curriculum (for example, entrepreneurship, family business, big

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data analysis, fintech, cryptocurrencies, environmental, social and governance, or ESG, issues), and alternative pedagogical methods are readily adopted to deliver learning beyond the standard classroom setting (for example, experiential learning, consulting projects, business simulations, role-playing, international exchange programs). All these innovations are delivered under the same BBA or MBA label even though the underlying curriculum keeps morphing in accordance with the emphasis the school puts on its latest version of the program. In other words, the BBA and MBA degrees are today generic acronyms that refer to a broad, and forever changing, business education, and are internationally recognized as the standard-bearers for a general business education. These degrees are difficult to dethrone because they keep mutating and adapting. But all their variants carry the same MBA or BBA name.

How Can Business Schools Overcome the Barbell Syndrome? The way business schools typically deal with the inherently dilemmatic barbell syndrome is to accept it as a natural element of a business school’s destiny, learn to live with it, and tweak the system as best they can whenever the imbalance between opposing choices becomes unacceptable to some of the business school’s stakeholders (its faculty, students, employers, and alumni). In principle, there are at least four possible responses to the barbell syndrome: 1. 2. 3. 4.

Override it Focus on one of the barbell’s extreme alternatives Differentiate while downplaying the barbell syndrome Break away from the barbell and disrupt the standard business school model, even though history indicates that this response is unlikely to succeed.

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Overriding the Barbell Syndrome In such a case, the business school attempts to satisfy the most pressing demands of its stakeholders. It supports research that is both rigorous and relevant, delivers research-based teaching that is both technically superior and practically useful, and pleases both its faculty and its students. It also addresses societal challenges by engaging with the business community as well as the business school’s other stakeholders. Although not impossible to achieve, this is a tall order that can only be embraced by business schools with a strong reputation and deep pockets. The challenge is, once again, the difficulty of addressing and satisfying the expectations of multiple stakeholders with different, and potentially conflicting, demands. The high costs of this path preclude most schools from even trying to adopt it.

Focusing on One of the Barbell’s Alternatives An alternative to the do-it-all approach is to recognize the constraints imposed by the barbell syndrome and design a business school model that abandons any attempt to balance the barbell conflicts, and instead focuses on one of the barbell’s alternatives. Here are some examples: emphasizing rigorous research without any concern for its immediate relevance; emphasizing teaching and the transmission of existing knowledge while limiting the support for academic research (including, for example, refraining from offering a doctoral program); emphasizing purpose and the duty of students to tackle the most pressing problems the world is facing without worrying about class size, growth in revenues, and exceptional student services. Such a niche approach may be appealing to some students, faculty, and employers, but its one-sided focus makes it a risky path for business schools that adopt it. Because business schools tend to move toward a common standard, and because accreditation and rankings reward a convergence to the common standard, business schools that adopt the one-sided focused approach run the risk of eventually drifting away from

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their niche position, and moving toward the common standard. Or they risk drifting into extinction by focusing on one extreme of the barbell.

Differentiating While Downplaying the Barbell This is the approach most European schools have adopted. They distinguish themselves from the U.S. model with shorter programs (for example, a one-year MBA program instead of two years as in the United States), a more diverse population (a higher percentage of foreign students and faculty), a more international outlook (being multilingual and/or having branch campuses abroad), and a curriculum that puts more emphasis on environmental and societal issues. However, the differentiation approach does not eliminate the barbell syndrome, it only masks it. Emphasizing differentiation allows these schools to direct their energy and resources toward sharpening their distinctive features while downplaying the challenge posed by the overhanging barbell dilemma.

Breaking Away from the Barbell Syndrome and Disrupting the Standard Business Degree Model Some business schools may seek a solution in making yet another attempt to break away from the barbell syndrome and try to disrupt the standard business school model. This path is unlikely to succeed if it takes place within a traditional university, as seen at Yale and Cambridge universities. A disruptor is most likely to emerge successfully if it is an independent institution, unconstrained by the inertia of a traditional university, and the unfettered pull of the standard business school model. Nevertheless, I believe that it would grow only if it does not compete directly with established schools, as is the case, for example, for the University of the People—an online university that offers an accredited one-year MBA program for USD 3000.

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Conclusion Although the aforementioned scenarios to overcome the barbell syndrome may not suit all business schools, I believe that business schools are, in general, well-positioned to deal with the issues of performance versus purpose, academic versus practical research, research versus teaching, and faculty-centrality versus student-centrality. Along the performance versus purpose continuum, I argued that business schools could strengthen their credibility and deal effectively with this recurring legitimacy issue—frequently discussed in academic writings and in the media—not only by broadening their mission statement and strategic plans, but also by “walking the talk” and tracking their progress. Given the schools’ adaptability and resilience discussed above, this should not be a tall order. Clearly, accreditation bodies and ranking organizations can and should play an important role here when evaluating business schools. Regarding the issue of academic versus practical research and that of research versus teaching, business schools should recognize that there is no rigid trade-off between rigor and relevance in research, and no incompatibility between quality research and quality teaching. Both dimensions must cohabit for business schools to thrive. Again, accreditation bodies could contribute positively to these issues by nudging business schools to recognize the importance of both contributions. Along the faculty-centrality versus student-centrality continuum, I argued that although this issue requires a major shift in the culture of business schools, they would do well to adopt the so-called “participative model” where neither the faculty nor the student takes precedence, but where both take ownership in the co-creation of graduates that are well-educated and highly employable. On a more general note, I believe that regardless of the recurring crises and the dilemmatic issues that business schools have been facing since their inception, they should remain the pre-eminent providers of business education as long as they retain their resilient character and their ability to adapt to the constantly evolving economic and social environment, while broadening their mission to provide effective managerial solutions to the most pressing issues affecting the world’s population.

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Acknowledgements I thank my colleagues Roger Mesznik, Ashok Vora, and Ludo Van der Heyden, as well as Riina Koris, the co-editor of this anthology, for their comments on the issues raised in this chapter.

Notes 1. According to the Business School Data Guide published by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (www.aacsb.edu), the number of schools worldwide that grants business degrees (Bachelors and Masters) has been rising steadily over the years to reach about 17,000 in 2020. Today, the MBA is the most popular professional degree program in the world with over 2500 MBA programs offered worldwide (www.find-mba. com/what-is-an-mba). However, only 890 schools are AACSB accredited, of which 533 are in the United States. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, business studies is the field that grants the most degrees in the United States: 197,100 MBA degrees were awarded in 2019 (24% of the total number of master’s degrees awarded that year) compared with 177,700 in 2009 (26% of the total). The corresponding figures for the bachelor’s degree in business administration (BBA) were 390,600 in 2019 (20% of the total) compared to 358,100 in 2009 (22% of the total). 2. Richard Lyons, then dean of Berkeley’s Haas School of Business predicted in 2014 that half of U.S. business schools could disappear within the next ten years due to online learning (John Byrne, www.poetsandquants.com, July 15, 2014). And Clay Christensen, the late Harvard Business School professor and co-author of The Innovative University (2011) predicted in 2013 that the bottom 25% of all U.S. colleges will disappear in 10 to 15 years (The New York Times: November 1, 2013). In 2017, he raised that forecast to 50% in the next 10 years (Doug Lederman in www.ins idehighered.com, April 28, 2017). 3. The customer model is directly linked to the high cost of the MBA program: if the cost of the program were lower, the customer model would probably be less compelling to schools. Along this line, an administrator shared with me the following thought, saying, half-jokingly, “If we could offer a full scholarship to all our students, their behavior

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would definitely be more subdued”. Another consequence of the customer model and its associated high cost is that failing to get the MBA degree is usually limited to a few students who are given the option to drop out of the program early, and almost “gracefully”.

References Bennis, W., & O’Toole, J. (2005). How business schools lost their way. Harvard Business Review, 83(5), 96–104. Chonko, L. B., Tanner, J. F., & Davis, R. (2002). What are they thinking? Students’ expectations and self-assessments. Journal of Education for Business, 77 (5), 271–281. Christensen, C., & Eyring, H. (2011). The innovative university. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Clayson, D., & Haley, D. (2005). Marketing models in education: Students as customers, products, or partners. Marketing Education Review, 15 (1), 1–10. Clinebell, S. K., & Clinebell, J. M. (2008). The tension in business education between academic rigor and real-world relevance: The role of executive professors. Academy of Management Learning and Education, 7 (1), 99–107. Conn, S. (2019). Nothing succeeds like failure: The sad history of American business schools. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Ghoshal, S. (2005). Bad management theories are destroying good management practices. Academy of Management Learning and Education, 4 (1), 75–91. Gordon, R., & Howell, J. (1959). Higher education for business. New York: Columbia University Press. Hattie, J., & Marsh, H. W. (1996). The relationship between research and teaching: A meta-analysis. Review of Educational Research, 66 (4), 507–542. Hawawini, G. (2005). The future of business schools. Journal of Management Development, 24 (9), 770–782. Hawawini, G. (2016). The internationalization of higher education and business schools: A critical review. Singapore: Springer Briefs in Business. Khurana, R. (2007). From higher aims to hired hands: The social transformation of American business schools and the unfulfilled promise of management as a profession. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

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Koris, R., & Aav, S. (2019). There is more to us than meets the eye: A glimpse into how business school graduates view their purpose. The International Journal of Management Education, 17 (2), 151–161. McLaren, P. (2019). Stop blaming Gordon and Howell: Unpacking the complex history behind the research-based model of education. Academy of Management Learning and Education, 18(1), 43–58. McMillan, C., & Overall, J. (2016). Management relevance in a business school setting: A research note on an empirical investigation. The International Journal of Management Education, 14 (2), 187–197. Mintzberg, H. (2004). Managers not MBAs. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers. Obermiller, C., Fleenor, P., & Raven, P. (2005). Students as customers or products: Perceptions and preferences of faculty and students. Marketing Education Review, 15 (2), 27–36. Passant, A. (2016). Issues in European business education in the midnineteenth century: A comparative perspective. Business History, 58(7), 1118–1145. Passant, A. (2019). The early emergence of European commercial education in the nineteenth century: Insights from higher-engineering schools. Business History, 61(6), 1051–1082. Pfeffer, J., & Fong, C. T. (2002). The end of business schools? Less success than meets the eye. Academy of Management Learning and Education, 1(1), 78–95. Pierson, F. (1959). The education of American business men: A study of universitycollege programmes in business administration. New York: McGraw-Hill. Yogev, E. (2001). Corporate hand in academic glove: The new management’s struggle for academic recognition: The case of the Harvard Group in the 1920’s. American Studies International , 39 (1), 52–71.

11 How Business Schools Can Graduate Business Citizens Yusuf Sidani

Introduction The legitimacy of the business school has been questioned in earlier scholarship (Schoemaker 2008). Contrary to this line of thinking, I argue that there is a strong case for the continuous relevance of schools of business. The world, of course, needs business professionals and a school of business is still the best way to contribute to that end. Perhaps more importantly, however, the world needs “business citizens”. Business schools have the potential to transform students into those types of individuals, a potential that hasn’t been realized enough yet (see also Currie, Chapter 13 in this volume). Y. Sidani (B) Suliman S. Olayan School of Business, American University of Beirut, Beirut, Lebanon e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. Örtenblad and R. Koris (eds.), Debating Business School Legitimacy, Palgrave Debates in Business and Management, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-12725-0_11

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Multiple scandals over the past few decades demonstrate that business schools have not always been able to build business leaders with a societal vision or a moral compass (see Bausch, Chapter 9 in this volume). Many of the figures entangled with ethical failures graduated from top schools of business, leading one to question what exactly is being taught there and what is being missed. Over the course of their educational journeys, whether in an undergraduate business degree or an MBA, many students do not show a recognizable elevation in moral development. On the contrary, sometimes the moral stance of students gets murkier with a business education. This could be attributed to the overwhelmingly narrow focus on the economic aspects that some business educators reinforce, even if inadvertently. In many business courses, emphasis on profit maximization dominates the educational discourse (Chakraborty et al. 2004). Despite an increased importance given to ethics education, reflected either in terms of offering stand-alone courses or in terms of embedding ethics within each class offering, the message does not seem to sink in. Profit maximization remains an explicit prime, almost exclusive, virtue in many schools of business. In the following sections, I explain how schools of business can increase their legitimacy through not only focusing on professional development but also on the development of their students as “business citizens”. I explain the unrealized potential of the schools of business in character development, and elaborate on how this would eventually contribute to societal development. In that, I argue that business schools need to be fixed not delegitimized.

A Case for the School of Business There is much in support of the continued legitimacy of business education. Schools of business remain well situated as the primary choice for many students and employers. Educators are still able to link their educational curricula with market needs (Milhauser and Rahschulte 2010). Moreover, business education remains able to transcend disciplinary silos as it has become more attractive to professionals in other disciplines such

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as engineers and healthcare professionals. This is related to a growing interest for those working outside the field of business to pursue education in business and management to match the changing roles they assume in their organizations (Srour et al. 2013). Primary socialization, as many scholars note, happens within the family and the early years of one’s life (see, for e.g., Moosmayer 2012). During that period, the early values are planted and embraced, attitudes are formed, and preferences and ensuing behaviors are shaped. The school is also part of this early socialization process as the individual becomes embedded in a system that helps shape one’s personality and tendencies. For the business student, the school of business represents the second phase of socialization, dubbed secondary socialization. This is where new beliefs and value systems are introduced, and complementary or alternative conceptualizations of the world are molded. A school of business, particularly the one that embraces liberal education (which emphasizes access to inter-disciplinary knowledge and a broad array of skills), opens the door to various life perspectives, presents new opportunities, and provides positive challenges to the young person (Drumwright et al. 2015) (for a view critiquing liberal arts education, see Brennan, Chapter 14 in this volume). Attitudes often change and value systems get altered during the university years. Schools of business have the potential to become the center place for the secondary socialization of future business professionals (Lamsa et al. 2008), through building character and virtues.

Character and Business Education Schools of business need to graduate students who have the necessary skill sets, competencies, primary experiential experiences, and character to operate in the real world. Corporate universities, open-education platforms, and other similar institutional arrangements cannot properly substitute for the business school experience. Specifically, such powerhouses of learning cannot build character in a way a school of business can.

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Many schools of business currently are not able to build student character in a sufficient manner. Early studies suggest that higher education institutions spend little time in “building character or a social conscience” (Bassiry 1990, p. 802) and universities make only a limited contribution in that regard (Bok 1990). Business schools suffer from the same normative myopia that faces managers in organizational settings. Ranking higher and better among prestigious business schools, attracting higher levels of funding, enticing more and better students to join, and increasing the employability of students are all reasonable and valuable performance indicators for higher education institutions. Yet, in prioritizing those sound objectives, business schools often ignore the value systems (relating, for example, to the need to cater to a larger set of stakeholders in business decisions) they need to embed in their students while going after those grand aims. This failure does not render schools of business obsolete or illegitimate. Business schools need to be fixed, not eradicated. Character is something unique to every person, but it can be developed (Sturm et al. 2017). The role of leader character has not been addressed sufficiently in business scholarship (Wright and Quick 2011). A person of character refers to a person who has attained an admirable level of wisdom, courage, integrity, humanity, humility, justice, perspective, temperance, judgment, and transcendence (Crossan et al. 2013, 2015; Peterson and Seligman 2004; Sosik et al. 2012). Conceptualizations of character refer to it as encompassing internal properties (that are related to, though not synonymous with, personality) and behavioral manifestations (Brooks 2015; Lewis 1996). In that, character is interlinked with virtue. Several of these supposed dimensions of character are related to morality (Wright and Quick 2011). A school of business has the potential to develop character and the underlying virtues. In that, a school of business is better situated, at a certain point of the educational journey of the future professional, to offer more than what other emerging alternative educational mechanisms are able to offer (online universities, corporate experiences, etc.), or even more than what the workplace can offer. I explain the reasons behind this assertion in the following sections.

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The Role of a School of Business Being more relevant to the practitioners’ needs does not mean that schools of business need to operate like corporations. Business schools are well positioned to offer an experience that is not likely to be duplicated in the business field. Corporate cultures do not replicate the university experience. Even later life experiences in incredibly positive and celebrated organizational cultures would not be able to replace the university experience. Businesses overwhelmingly emphasize the value of organizational culture, but the cost of non-compliance is huge. Employees who do not fit the culture sometimes find it necessary to leave and find other jobs. The turnover experience for a university is not the same. While universities encourage a “school spirit” in terms of commitment to the university and its ideals, a good university gives students the pluralistic experiences to an extent that is not typically paralleled in corporate contexts. This cultural pluralism poses an enriching experience to university students, and is one important contributor in the development of character. Not all universities or schools of business are able to reach their potential in building character. I am offering below a number of propositions that—I suggest—will help in developing the character of graduates of schools of business.

Character Development as Part of the Curriculum To raise the issue of moral education in a school of business is bound to face skepticism. Focusing on the moral dimension might be perceived as a distractor from what schools of business are designed to do in the first place. Their role, it might be argued, is to develop professionals who are able to contribute to the bottom line, improve company competitiveness and increase higher levels of profitability. In that, many business theories and approaches taught in schools have been developed with a primary end in mind, making the highest return on investment, mostly assessed through a financial lens. This is not to say that those approaches and concepts are immoral; they are not. Yet, by failing to sufficiently address ethical underpinnings of business decision points, these theories position

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morality as operating outside the realm of business thinking. This has led to the development of amoral theories that relieved students, future managers, from any sense of moral obligation (Ghoshal 2005). Working on character development in a school of business is more easily said than done. Yet, this is doable, and a school of business has the potential to develop business character among students. In a family, one gets exposure to early virtues and certain aspects of character are formed. Yet, the impact of the family in influencing business character is rather limited. Very focused trade schools, or virtual universities that emphasize depth of knowledge rather than depth of experience are also not powerful places to develop business character. Moreover, waiting for a person to develop his or her business character after they join a business would come too late; many businesses are not well equipped or ready to allocate the resources and time necessary for character development. In some cases, some ill-advised businesses with toxic cultures might essentially even contribute to destruction of character rather than building it. Business education should not only be about sharing of relevant concepts; the business student experience should be about building the “whole” individual. In that, Crossan et al. (2013) advanced a model for leader development based on Rest’s four stages of moral development (Rest 1986). Based on that conceptualization, a school of business could be adequately positioned to build a person who is morally aware, characterized by proper judgment, motivation, and courage in addition to the ability to reflect (Crossan et al. 2013; Rest 1986). These elements, and their implications, are discussed further below.

Moral Awareness How can a school of business develop moral awareness? As prior research shows, people’s moral development does not stop in childhood. As people mature into adulthood, they keep growing, from a moral perspective (Kohlberg 1973; Rest 1986). Studies suggest that there is a role for a course in ethics in developing moral awareness (von Weltzien Høivik 2004). While many business schools dedicate such a course in business

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ethics and social responsibility (see Solitander, Chapter 4 in this volume), this is not enough in and of itself to create moral awareness vis-à-vis thorny business issues. The ethical dimension of business not only needs to be emphasized in every course, but also needs to be a common and recurring theme throughout the business student’s journey. Some studies suggest a relationship between an ethical work climate and moral awareness (VanSandt et al. 2006) as people are likely to be influenced by the context in which they work. When there is a valuesbased culture, leaders would emphasize the importance of values while making a business decision, and the organizational culture would expect and reward ethical behavior. Consequently, it would be more likely that employees would become more alert to those situations that might pose an ethical challenge. Accordingly, the journey toward moral awareness needs to be reinforced in the classroom and the business school. The business school has to be a model of ethics and social responsibility, as an organization with whom the student interacts. If business education fails to present the university unit as a role model for how an ethical climate would look like, then a major purpose of university education is lost. The three or four years of university education represent an opportunity to develop, further beyond primary socialization, one’s conceptualization of what is right and what is wrong.

Moral Judgment Making the right ethical decision is not only about understanding, or even embracing, ethical norms and approaches. Many good people, with good intentions, make wrong decisions (from an ethical perspective). This question is more about understanding business and business principles than just understanding ethical norms or committing to a good life. A person who does not understand the ins and outs of insider trading, for example, might fail to make the right decision when faced with a conflict of interest situation. In this case, knowing about agency theory, asymmetry of information, and people’s psychology and biases in making investment decisions, is at least as important as identifying with what is

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good from an ethical perspective. Business education thus needs to foster the various business concepts in a way where the decision-makers, or the students, understand deeply the various intricacies of various business transactions.

Moral Motivation Moral motivation refers to “the reasons, motivations, impulses and/or stimuli that drive a person to act morally” (Hilderbrand 2020, p. 5). The motivation to act in a moral manner is not categorically determined by primary socialization; there is room for later influences and this has great implications for educators (Nunner-Winkler 2007). Schools of business can also operate at the level of developing the motivation of a student to do what is right. A business student who understands the ethical underpinning of marketing to vulnerable populations, might nevertheless fail to be motivated to do the right thing when faced with a decision where a trade-off needs to be made between making a profit and marketing to a vulnerable population (Sidani 2018). Experiential business learning helps increase the moral motivation of students. Some schools adopt community-based projects where students have to participate in a project that engages external societal elements. This would be a fascinating opportunity for a school of business to make students aware of the needs and challenges facing those communities. Motivation to act in the right manner is not a classroom activity; this has to be done on the ground. Business schools will make themselves more relevant when their instruction opens up to the outside community, beyond the walls of the academy into the real world.

Moral Courage Courage refers to the determination to take the appropriate “right” action even when faced with powerful opposing forces. Teaching courage is not easily done in the classroom. Courage, which is arguably the “most universally admired virtue” (Koerner 2014, p. 65) is acquired in early

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childhood through family socialization, and developed later by life experiences. Schools of business can contribute to the development of this virtue. If courage is “the resolve to act on moral convictions even when it is not comfortable or self-serving to do so” (Rossouw 2002, p. 414), then schools of business need to create contexts where students are able to develop this virtue. In that, courageous actions, even when leading to undesirable outcomes would be evaluated based on their learning potential, not solely on their short-term consequences. There is some evidence to suggest that students’ moral courage is intensified in contexts of psychological safety. When students operate in university contexts where they feel safe, this would develop their courage and bravery, key elements of character. Giving people voice to present their opinions and perspectives without fear of reprisal, will positively contribute to the motivation to act in an ethical manner (NunnerWinkler 2007). Schools of business adopting transparent and authentic communication with students contribute to that end (Cotten 2017).

Reflection The above suggestions for moral and character development provide students with multiple opportunities for self-reflection. Reflection means the ability to process information from past events and actions, and to use morality “to reflect on and examine experience” (Reynolds 2008, p. 1028). The power of reflection in learning has been verified in school and workplace settings (Daudelin 1996). Students who are well guided to perform activities that motivate reflection become more committed to actions manifesting admirable values. They become more likely to repel pressures for acting in a fraudulent manner (Christensen et al. 2007), and their ethical decision-making processes improve (Gu and Neesham 2014). University settings have the potential to provide for interactions characterized by psychological safety, as the risks involved are minimal compared to the ones typically found in the workplace. Beyond its role in building courage, psychological safety empowers individual and elevates organizational learning (Sidani and Reese 2020). A problem-based learning approach, that includes a contemplation routine,

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has also been found suitable for business ethics as it facilitates “introspection, reflection, discovery, and concern for other viewpoints” (Sidani and Thornberry 2012, p. 215).

Developing Business Citizens, Not (Only) Business Professionals In their incessant desire to have a “strong” curriculum, business schools have traditionally expended lots of efforts on increasing the professional side of the school. Much of the curriculum reflects a desire to broaden knowledge and conceptual business knowledge (Pfeffer and Fong 2002). While this effort is admirable, an over-obsession in that direction will push a school of business away from developing a business citizen. I define a business citizen as the one who understands important business concepts and has access to relevant business tools and techniques, but—on top of that—has an appreciation and an understanding of how to operate a business under various, often conflicting, competitive, societal, environmental, and ethical demands (Koris et al. 2017; Örtenblad et al. 2013). I elaborate on how this might be accomplished below.

Leveraging the University Experience For schools that are implanted within a larger university system, a school needs to leverage on this embeddedness. There might be pressures from faculty to emphasize a uniform culture and build a community around the business school. Yet, it is worthwhile to look at this embeddedness as an opportunity rather than as a hurdle. For stand-alone business schools, there needs to be alternative ways of creating a broad relationship with a larger community beyond the walls of a school of business. Why is this important? Businesses do not deal only with business partners, and their relationships are not restricted to suppliers, customers, and employees and the interactions among them. There has been growing importance given to engaging third parties including governmental agencies, NGOs, and the larger community in the university experience. University becomes a microcosm of the bigger world.

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Students understand that they must attend to a wider set of expectations and manage a broader set of relationships. This becomes the building block of developing the Business Citizen.

Connecting with Other Disciplines One tendency by internal stakeholders at schools of business, whether students or faculty members, is to encourage vertical depth. A business program is thought to be better if it offers deeper disciplinary coverage. As schools of business prepare students for professional certifications, for example the CPA (Certified Public Accountant) or the CFA (Certified Financial Analyst), those schools recognize that there are additional accounting or finance courses that must be included in the curriculum. Such certifications, in addition to specific needs by employers, push into that direction. The drive toward including more depth in professional competence in business education usually comes at the expense of courses outside the business disciplines. Faculty members and business school administrators thus find themselves in a continuous struggle between having to choose between more vertical depth in curriculum (that is, more depth within business topics) versus horizontal breadth beyond direct business offerings (courses from outside business). While a certain level of depth is, of course, needed, a good differentiator for business schools could be in their ability to graduate well-rounded individuals with enough depth and breadth of education. Schools of business will find that sometimes a certain degree of immersion in courses in humanities, social sciences, and hard sciences would complement their business educational experience. Business schools should repel the urge to emphasize vertical immersion at the expense of horizontal education. Relevant courses in sciences would help students, for example, in understanding the real impact of their business decisions on the environment in which they live. Courses in social sciences help understanding the variables influencing societies and how people approach their lives and how they make decisions; this is valuable for marketers. Courses in humanities will broaden the

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perspective of future business leaders in making decisions of ethical significance. Yet, the value of horizontal breadth does not only lie in utilitarian ends regarding how this helps future decisions in business. A diverse curriculum develops the person as a citizen in a community where people need to live together whether they run profit-seeking businesses or not. People assume many roles in life; being a business professional is just one of them. Business schools will find it beneficial, through interdisciplinary connections, not only to graduate a business professional but also to graduate a business citizen.

Schools of Business as Corporate Citizens Schools of business need to reemphasize impact at various levels. Impact is not only measured by the extent to which a school is successful in relaying important business concepts, or in the degree of student learning and acquisition of key skills. Impact is measured at multiple levels, student learning, knowledge creation, knowledge transfer, community engagement, and interaction with a wider set of stakeholders, to name a few. At its best, a school of business would transform from just being a repository of business knowledge, into a center of learning impacting—beyond students—an extended community, thus helping to bridge societal gaps. Criticisms against this line of thinking are noteworthy. Decades ago, Friedman strongly disapproved the growing corporate emphasis on social responsibility (Friedman 1970). He explained how businesses exist to create value for their shareholders; to make any other claim on business diverts them from their real missions. He argued that businesses are neither designed, nor are they equipped to solve societal problems; we should not even expect that from them. The same rationale could be used to criticize the perspective of a school of business as developing “citizens”. A school of business, it might be argued, is just that, a unique place where future managers learn about the ins and outs of running a business efficiently and effectively. To make any other claim on the role

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of the school would only distract these entities from doing what they are designed to be doing. The counterargument is that learning happens better with the recognition that there are multiple roles that a business manager assumes; these are not restricted to money-making activities. Students need to be prepared early on to that multiplicity of roles. A business manager is not a profit-seeking manager, but a citizen of the business community. This is another way to say that the objective of a school of business is to graduate a stakeholder-minded individual. A school of business needs to graduate students with the needed knowledge, skills, and competencies to contribute to a profit-seeking entity, but with a strong realization that all of this has to be done with a proper balance among various societal, ethical, and environmental demands. Schools of business need to understand the problems of their societies in context. With the globalization of business education (Zammuto 2008), many schools across the world look up to prestigious schools of businesses trying to emulate best practices. This exercise is, of course, needed and valuable. Yet, this runs a risk that schools of business might become disentangled from their own contexts. With the growing international move into globalized education, facilitated by accreditation bodies such as the AACSB (The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business), EQUIS (European Quality Improvement System by European Foundation for Management Development (EFMD)), and AMBA (Association of MBAs), business education might fail in understanding or tackling educational needs in specific contexts (Darley and Luethge 2019). International accreditation processes need to be utilized for proper benchmarking, application of best practices, support, and guidance. These processes should not be used to change a strategy that is aligned with its context just to meet an accreditation threshold. Rankings are important and celebrated; yet strategizing around rankings would yield good public relations and short-term reputation, but not good education. Business students, the future (effective) business citizens with the right character, need to understand the context in which they are going to operate, and act accordingly.

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Conclusion Schools of business are legitimate institutions and will continue to provide legitimate solutions to the societies in which they operate. This legitimacy is increasingly getting challenged by new disrupters, facilitated by a drive toward globalized education in a hi-tech environment. Additional challenges to the legitimacy of the academy relate to the doings of the academy itself, including a myopic view of desired educational outcomes, and curricula that lack relevance. To counter that, schools of business need to repurpose business school education around developing the character of the total well-rounded business citizen, who is not a mere business professional. Success in doing that means that a school of business will remain relevant for generations to come.

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12 The Market’s Filthy Lesson: Disruption for Business and Management Education in Australian Public Universities Owen Hogan , Michael B. Charles , and Michael A. Kortt

Introduction Business and management education has never achieved the kind of public legitimacy that has been associated with more traditional tertiary discipline areas such as science, health, or even the humanities (Alajoutsijärvi et al. 2015; Thomas and Wilson 2011), at least outside of circles O. Hogan (B) Southern Cross University, Gold Coast, Bilinga, QLD, Australia e-mail: [email protected] M. B. Charles · M. A. Kortt Faculty of Business, Law and Arts, Southern Cross University, Gold Coast, Bilinga, QLD, Australia e-mail: [email protected] M. A. Kortt e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. Örtenblad and R. Koris (eds.), Debating Business School Legitimacy, Palgrave Debates in Business and Management, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-12725-0_12

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that have now been linked to unethical practices, exploitation of labor, unsafe workplaces, environmental degradation, and the worst aspects of capitalism (Charles et al. 2008). Modern society, of course, still requires business and management skills—such skills are more necessary than ever in specific sectors. But it is becoming increasingly apparent that business and management schools in many public universities, being often largely divorced from the coalface of work and excessively occupied with theory building rather than practice, are not necessarily the most appropriate places to administer that kind of training (Pfeffer and Fong 2002). With COVID-19 having thrown a spotlight on the viability of Australian public universities and the nature of the education they provide, what is increasingly required is not some one-size-fits-all business and management education, which most universities in Australia have more or less set out to achieve over the past decades. Rather, business and management education is required to enable future employees in diverse sectors to gain the skills, understanding, and abilities needed to do their jobs successfully. In this sense, many schools of business or management have failed, at least outside more highly specialized courses such as accountancy and finance, to demonstrate that they warrant continued and unquestioned public support into the future. As will be argued herein, it could well be that more vocationally oriented education with an emphasis on minimum content and skills development has a significant role to play in ensuring that society and the economy has the kind of workers needed. The question might remain for traditionalists. Can a university be a proper university without a business school? We would say, emphatically, “yes”. And embracing that possibility might, somewhat paradoxically enough, be in time embraced by business or management academics themselves. Instead of teaching generic subject matter from business textbooks that are largely divorced from reality and commercial practice, some academics might find a new sense of purpose and achievement in facilitating more meaningful and targeted education in sectors, such as primary industries or manufacturing or even services, that are of great importance in their local or regional areas. In such cases, everyone might win. It could be that, in the not-so-distant future, we might find

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ourselves shaking our heads when we recall the idea of every Australian public university having a “business school” of its own. Given these factors, we argue that the dominant institutional structure and homogeneity of taught offerings that have existed across Australia’s 37 public business schools for several decades are drawing to an end. We also contend that business and management education in Australia will end up looking markedly different as new business models emerge out of market disruption and policy change. Indeed, the Australian Government introduced higher education reforms during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic that relegated business teaching and research to even less public support than ever before (Daly and Lewis 2020), with an AUD18-billion Job-ready Graduates Package targeting areas of national priority (health, education, agriculture, science, and information technology) through more skills-based and vocationally orientated education (Department of Education, Skills and Employment 2021a). Bearing these external forces in mind, this chapter first explores the traditional sources of legitimacy that have supported the growth of Australia’s public business schools—forces which are now militating against maintaining the status quo. Then, we discuss the changing needs of the most salient stakeholders of business schools, including employing organizations, business graduates themselves, and broader society. From there, we link the fate of business schools more closely with higher education policy directions, the rise of private providers and the current governmental focus on innovation driven by Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM). Finally, we discuss the possible implications of these drivers and how the resultant diversification will manifest itself in the years ahead.

Sources of Legitimacy for Australian Business Schools What appears to have given business education legitimacy in Australia, especially the role of business schools as “cash cows” servicing a large onshore export market of higher education (Marshman and Larkins

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2020), no longer underpins the need for one in every public university. For the most part, Australia’s 37 public universities dominate the domestic tertiary education sector. Before COVID-19 became a major catalyst for disruption and exposed inherent weaknesses in the sector (Hogan et al. 2021a), university-based business schools also enjoyed successful enrollment growth, resulting in significant revenue generation for their parent institutions. How business schools got to this position is intriguing because it appears to be largely the result of developing commodified educational products and ongoing international student market growth (Green et al. 2017). The focus on international markets has brought with it the pursuit of international accreditation, rankings, and the attraction of greater international academic talent to improve research standings. Less obvious is whether domestic graduates have the skills sought by employees or whether business research has positively impacted Australian industry. Australian universities modeled their early business schools and faculties on the elite business schools of the United States (Byrt 1989). Prolific economic growth through the 1980s saw Australia’s managerial workforce expand significantly, and business programs proliferated from within newly formed public universities that resulted from significant higher education reforms during the early 1990s (Pearse 2010). One element of these reforms was to open Australian universities up to international student markets. As a result, Australian public university business schools have grown in both stature and size so that they are now far bigger, on average, than their US and UK counterparts (Green et al. 2017). Before COVID-19, almost a quarter of all public university students studied a management discipline, with public universities accounting for 85% of all business student enrollment (Hogan et al. 2020). At the height of the business education export industry, worth $35.7 billion in 2019, 43% of all international students studied business (ABCD 2019). The significant contribution made by business schools meant that they became the cash cows of Australian universities, thereby generating substantial revenues to subsidize other less-profitable university operations and managerial pursuits (Green et al. 2017). However, many such schools have showed an extreme vulnerability in international

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markets. Indeed, 21 schools once had international student enrollments of over 50% (Hogan et al. 2020). Unfortunately, too, many schools were over-reliant on international students and tended to recruit students mostly from single counties such as China and India (Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency [TEQSA] 2019). These students had very little chance of securing employment in their preferred areas of study if they decided to extend their visa stays and little is known regarding their employment rates once they returned to their home countries. Australian business schools now await the opening of international borders and the return of international students, but, as more domestic students turn to STEM, health and education degrees, business classes will likely have fewer domestic students than ever before. Over this period, international accreditation and rankings were allowed to become critical indicators of success and quality. Of less importance for domestic students, the pursuit of accreditation from the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB), European Foundation for Management Development (EFMD) and the Association of Master of Business Administration (AMBA) became essential for operating in international markets (Hogan et al. 2021d). Twenty Australian public universities are now accredited, mostly with AACSB and the EFMD Quality Improvement System. Most hold memberships with these bodies. Four universities hold the “Triple Crown” (the attainment of AACSB, EQUIS, and AMBA accreditation). Rankings have also become a key pursuit of business, although with less success across the public university sector. Six schools sit inside the top 100 for both the Times Higher Education rankings and QS Top Universities for business and economics. At the same time, there are four universities listed for management in the Academic Ranking of World Universities for Management (ABDC 2019). At present, many public university-based business schools cannot hope to continue their international accreditation aspirations. Without cash and a critical mass of academics, meeting accreditation standards is well-nigh impossible. But what of it? If international accrediting bodies fail to recognize the diversified structures of public business schools and new business education entities in the form of private organizations and industry groups should that worry employers and future

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students? An accounting degree accredited by the Chartered Accountants meets the eleven professional standards, whether such a degree is taught at a TAFE (in Australia, a state-government-run vocational training provider), a public university, or any other private provider. There are also global corporations offering business education, such as Google’s Digital Garage, General Electric’s GE Digital, LinkedIn Learning, or Microsoft’s Virtual Academy (Schlegelmilch 2020). The Australian Institute of Business boasts that it is the largest Australian online MBA provider (Australian Institute of Business [AIB] 2022). However, the AIB is neither a university, highly ranked in global ranking schemes, nor accredited by AACSB, EFMD, or AMBA. The popularity of such degrees suggests that more and more students might prefer flexible delivery and lower costs over the reputation of university-based business schools. Naturally, Australian universities place a great emphasis on research quality, as do their business schools. The Australian Research Council, through its Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) initiative, undertakes assessments periodically to determine how close to the world’s best a university is in terms of research quality. ERA ranks Fields of Research (FoR) across each institution via five degrees of achievement, ranging from (1) “below world standard” to (5) “well above world standard”. Measures include research outputs (including citations) and research income. Nineteen Australian business schools rate a (3) “at world standard” or above, which means that almost half of Australian business schools are regarded as below world standard (Hogan et al. 2020). When considering the heavy weighting of research in most international ranking methodologies, these results will hamper most business schools from gaining or maintaining higher global ranking positions.

Changing Society, Changing Needs Heightened concern regarding the impact of contemporary economic and market approaches to the environment has brought further attention to bear on the question of whether business schools are meeting societal needs, and whether a reformation of the influence and reach of business schools is overdue. Sustainability pundits are being listened to (finally)

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when it comes to acknowledging and redressing some of the historical ethical failings of business education. In particular, business schools have started to find enlightenment through the principles of responsible management education (Hogan et al. 2021b), although the degree to which such principles have taken root beyond mere lip-service remains debatable (Cornuel and Hommel 2015). One might also ask whether it is a case of too little, too late. As the Sustainable Development Goals 2030 (United Nations 2016) loom ever closer, contemporary business leaders are taking stock of their historically exploitative activities (Idowu et al. 2020). As it turns out, some resources are indeed finite and are regarded by various cross-sections of society as precious. The blowing up of the Juukan Gorge cave, a sacred Indigenous site, in 2020 by mining giant Rio Tinto hit a raw nerve with many members of the Australian public (Nagar 2021), since such a site is not just the patrimony of an isolated population of Indigenous Australia (which, of course, should have been cause enough to preserve the site), but is part of our global human patrimony. The patience of employees to continue suffering under HR policies proffered by organizational behavior specialists and being lorded over by overpaid CEOs appears to be running out (Cappelli 2015; Cowen 2019). We have all surely read about many people deciding to quit their corporate jobs and find a more meaningful livelihood and lifestyle elsewhere (Watts 2022), with the COVID-19 pandemic having shown people that life is simply too precious to squander on souldestroying corporate mundanity that aims to produce outcomes that, in many cases, are intrinsically problematic. In response, more business schools have accepted that traditional business practices negatively impact society. And so now the mantra is that business and business education can actually be a force for good (Honeyman and Jana 2019; Muff et al. 2013). But can the poacher suddenly become the gamekeeper? This is certainly a gray area. Management paradigms like Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Social and Governance have shown that businesses can adapt to changing public values. A few extremely wealthy business leaders have recast themselves as sustainability saviors, and big shifts are occurring in consumer demand. While shifts in attitudes and practices of both big business and

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consumers are driving change, we have yet to see how business schools will lead corporations and their shareholders out of the current dilemma. Aside from the above concerns, business schools have been criticized for producing graduates who, in many cases, do not have the skills and abilities required to make an immediate impact in the workplace (Jackson 2014). The root of this situation is almost certainly found in academia itself. Despite rhetoric to the contrary relating to socioeconomic “impact”, academic careers are still closely tied to achieving almost purely academic outcomes, at the expense of outcomes that might have more general resonance (Koskela 2017). Research, led more by theory than by practice, often takes place in an academic vacuum, where academics are often more interested in arcane theoretical frameworks. In this world, citations in peer-reviewed journals are the end game, with only glacial references to research-policy nexus. Impact in the “real” world of business, management, and policy matters far less. In effect, peers in business schools reward their peers, with take-up outside this group being more serendipitous than planned. Such a mindset translates to the classroom, where students are rewarded with higher marks for citing such obscure theory-driven literature instead of demonstrating skills that have workplace applicability. With arguably too much emphasis in public business schools being placed on academic research that is rarely used by industry, such graduates are well prepared to enter into philosophical debates about the exploitation of labor, the rationale behind ethical investment, or the dangers associated with neoliberalism. Even after sifting laboriously through such content and readings, they lack the fundamental skills required to do the job they have been hired to do (Jackson and Chapman 2012). In a world slowly recovering from COVID-19, and where many businesses that did not successfully ride the online retail wave are still struggling, workplaces want workers, not navel-gazing idealists or budding philosophers. Such graduates have been found to lack basic numeracy or communication skills (Hack-Polay 2020) and thus require additional training in the workplace. This is partly reflected in employer satisfaction surveys that consistently rate the capabilities and skills of business graduates below the Australian tertiary sector average (Hogan et al. 2020).

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Like many other nations, Australia is experiencing dramatic shifts in the nature of work, which has a flow-on effect to the tertiary education market. The growth in various sectors and jobs is moving away from fields that require business degrees. The health and social assistance sector has a growing demand for workers in aged and disabled care, home-based care, and childcare (National Skills Commission 2021). The burgeoning education and training sector requires more teachers and education aides across primary, secondary, adult, and community education. The professional, scientific, and technical services industry is also set to grow. While this does include demand for accountants and marketers, emerging careers in information technology and the sciences appear to dominate (National Skills Commission 2021). The shifting landscape of societal demands has heightened the challenge for business schools in Australia. The relevance of business school teaching and research has shown to be lacking and it is therefore questionable whether such a prevalent business school sector teaching much the same things is indeed required in so many Australian cities and regions. The scope of school activity is changing. Schools that cannot respond to enhancing global sustainability, responsible business, and filling the skills gap in meaningful ways instead of merely virtue-signaling and lip service will certainly start to see declining enrollments within a tighter and more competitive domestic student market.

A New Coal Face The coalface of tertiary business education in Australia was already changing before COVID-19 hit, signaling an eminent disruption for many schools. Indeed, shifts in employment demand and increased entry by diversified non-university providers were beginning to beg the question of why there is need for a business school in every public university teaching much the same thing. According to statistics released by the Department of Education, Skills and Employment in 2015–2019, business enrollments fell by 3%, while enrollments across all disciplinary areas rose by 4%, with information technology courses growing by 33% and health by 15% (Department of Education, Skills and Employment

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2022). The decline in business enrollments was impacted mainly by a 13% decline in postgraduate enrollments over the same period. Compare this to postgraduate information technology and health courses, which grew by 42% and 20%, respectively. Such declines can be attributed to Australia’s 142 registered providers that are not regarded as universities (Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency [TEQSA] 2021). While these providers hold only an 8% share of the total market, they represent a growing body of differentiated competition for public universities in vocational and higher education markets. Consider, for example, Mater Health, a large not-for-profit health provider, which has a national network of hospitals, health centers, and related businesses and runs its own nationally accredited vocational education. Their students benefit from work-integrated learning during their studies and have a higher chance of finding work after graduation. Likewise, General Assembly, an online education provider, offers a range of information-technology-based courses, including digital marketing and product management, that target the building of specific skills. Their value proposition is to provide one-on-one career coaching and strong connections to employers. Contemplating the future of business schools in Australian public universities thus goes hand-in-hand with discussing the future of the higher education sector itself. In a nation with a population of around 25 million people, and where it is unlikely that pre-COVID-19 numbers of international students will return (Hogan et al. 2021c), it is questionable whether 37 public and two private Australian-based universities are required (Universities Australia 2020). This is alluded to in comments made by current federal education minister Alan Tudge, who stated that We … need to start a conversation about how we can support greater differentiation and specialisation in the university sector. We have 39 comprehensive universities, which may not be an optimal model for the quality of teaching or research in this country. (Department of Education, Skills and Employment 2021b)

Such thoughts resonate with the fact that there is a high degree of homogeneity within the sector. In effect, the smallest business school acts

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as a kind of “mini-me” of the largest, with broadly similar educational and research emphases, together with a broadly similar and comprehensive offering of degrees (Davis 2017). This comprehensive approach, after all, has been the test of sectoral legitimacy for decades; that is, being seen to be doing what everyone else is (presumably) doing, albeit with varying levels of quality. That all of these institutions should have a business school would have once been almost unquestionable, particularly in the heyday of full-fee-paying international students. In fact, one might view that state of affairs as institutional isomorphism (Croucher and Woelert 2016) at its very worst, with 37 public universities all offering more or less the same sort of business and management education. However, with COVID-19 came change. Unexpected by many university administrators, but certainly unsurprising to most canny observers, the international student tap being (finally) turned off saw these 37 business schools being deprived of the one thing that gave them legitimacy within the Australian tertiary landscape—viz., being able to subsidize other aspects of the university’s operations that were central to the university’s ambitions (particularly concerning research and impact), but were not able to make ends meet on their own (Norton and Cherastidtham 2018). The change was to come fairly quickly in some quarters. Indeed, many Australian public business schools have been subsumed into new faculty structures. At one regional university, the business school was soon cobbled into a new faculty structure with other discipline areas, such as law, the creative arts, and the humanities. In effect, this particular university no longer has a business school, with “management” being regarded merely as a “discipline” within the broader faculty. One might well contend that the lid to Pandora’s Box has been opened: a public university in Australia need not have a separate “business school”. With greater rationalization across the sector potentially imminent as a response to the current federal government refusing to intervene in any significant way, the loss of one stand-alone business school entity is unlikely to be the last.

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Possible Implications If Australian public universities are rationalized to a much greater extent, and indeed follow the path of greater overall specialization, especially outside the elite and more traditional universities known as the “Group of Eight” or the larger metropolitan universities, it seems that more and more tertiary administrators will be asking questions regarding whether their particular university needs a business school, or whether business and management education should be subsumed into emerging areas of strategic and contextually bound specialization. It follows that, if a public university that is struggling to find its way decides to concentrate its education and research efforts on, say, health, agriculture, engineering, and education, it might determine that business and management education is best undertaken as part of courses associated with the aforementioned target areas. In such a set of circumstances, there is simply no need for a specialist business or management entity within the university. Rather, there are courses about management in the health services sector, courses about developing business in an agricultural or agribusiness setting, courses relating to the management of engineering or infrastructure, and so forth. Here, business and management education is closely tied to a sector targeted by the university and is carried out to achieve maximum job readiness and practical expertise in that sector, instead of a more amorphous traditional business or management education that tries to please all sorts of end-users and stakeholders, but often ends up pleasing no one in particular. In short, Australia can likely do away with stand-alone business schools entirely in some settings, such as those discussed above. This might particularly be the case in public universities in regional Australia, where there is often a desire to provide services and facilitate socioeconomic outcomes that are directly relevant to that institution’s setting and context. For example, if a regional university’s stated remit is to provide education, services, and research of relevance to the society and economy of the university’s host region, it is possible that administrators will seek to privilege activities that can contribute directly to such ends. Such a mindset clearly could have beneficial outcomes with regard to achieving genuine engagement with community stakeholders. After all, why would

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such a university need to teach students about investment banking, the share market, or global finance when the vast majority of their graduates will never work in such areas? That is just another example of institutional isomorphism gone mad. Indeed, if you wanted a career in such areas, the clear option would be to attend a business school in a metropolitan location, where—hopefully—the business school in question has close connections to relevant industry. Of course, the established and larger public universities in metropolitan settings in Australia might be able to continue with more traditional business, management, and also commerce offerings based on their prestige and established networks. In short, they will likely continue with the “business school” model largely inherited from the post-war United States (Pearse 2010). But the need to continue the current largely homogeneous approach to business and management education across the nation is clearly due for a substantial rethink. In fact, it is difficult to see how such change can be avoided if the current outlook and policy climate prevails. Indeed, business schools that cannot aspire to the lofty global standards of teaching and research excellence achieved by the more entrenched schools may need to either specialize with respect to serving particular types of industry or sectors. That option may entail (a) closer levels of genuine collaboration between business schools and industry or (b) considering whether such schools—as separate entities within the institution—are still worth supporting. In the latter case, it may be that business school staff, in universities where there are limited prospects with respect to achieving high-level outcomes based on traditional metrics of academic excellence, might be redeployed to new or established entities within the university where more targeted business or management teaching is needed. Specialized business education, which once sat at the periphery of academic programming within business schools, may indeed become the legitimate norm inside more targeted institutional missions.

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Conclusions Ongoing policy reforms and intense competition within a more constrained student market will decide the fate of many Australian business schools, especially as new models of teaching business and management in sectorally specific or regionally relevant ways likely come to the fore. The elite business schools hold considerable resources that can be leveraged to withstand the current environment, and some of these might soldier on with minimal changes, yet many public secondtier and regional universities have already experienced significant pain. Under these circumstances, once a business faculty or school lost its cash cow status, university leaders have looked to restructure and consolidate, thereby resulting in downgraded business schools, merged faculties, and thousands of redundant staff (Littleton and Stanford 2021). One might wonder whether such business schools will rebuild once the pandemic and concerns about job-readiness have passed. But the convergence of national priorities around STEM-based industries, education export market disruptions and new learning delivery models weigh against such a return. Innovation and entrepreneurship through scientific and technological advancement are increasingly being privileged as the remedy for economic recovery (Parker 2018). Indeed, sustainable, ethical, and responsible social systems to nurture people and the planet is the emerging theme, not business courses that remain stuck in the neoliberal mire of wealth creation at all costs. In effect, Australia’s postCOVID-19 economic recovery is prioritizing employment and skills that will most likely drive potential students away from traditional public university business schools and encourage them to look at alternative learning providers. As a result, it is difficult to see how each public university will need to have its own business school, especially if those business schools do not specialize, or offer bespoke services to particular industries, sectors, or host regions. And, in such cases, it may be that business and management education is better located in sections of the university that are closer to the strategic directions of that institution.

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13 How Business Schools Address Grand Societal Challenges Through Research: Personal Reflections and a Call to Arms Graeme Currie

Introduction In this chapter, I argue business school faculty need to move away from our fetish for theory and self-referential intellectualism on the basis this undermines the legitimacy of the business school. There are some aspects of business school research that might be considered “blue skies”; i.e. research in domains where “real world” applications are not immediately apparent (Bell 2005), but these are rare. Rather, I suggest business school research has a translational role in working with other disciplines to impact grand societal challenges, such as those in health care for long-term conditions, an empirical topic upon which my chapter will focus. G. Currie (B) Warwick Business School, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. Örtenblad and R. Koris (eds.), Debating Business School Legitimacy, Palgrave Debates in Business and Management, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-12725-0_13

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In this chapter, I follow calls for a new business school model that addresses needs of a wider group of stakeholders beyond shareholders so that business schools address the grand challenges of society (Currie et al. 2016; Khurana 2007). Business schools need to engage more with disruptive developments or “grand challenges” in the socio-economic world, such as: financial crises and their economic and societal effects; climate change; migration, global gap between rich and poor emerging markets; radical technological innovation; aging populations; and globalized flows of trade, capital, and people: all problem areas which require interdisciplinary research (Ferlie et al. 2010; Jacobs and Frickel 2009; McKiernan and Wilson 2014; Muff et al. 2013; Starkey 2015). As one of the largest departments in many universities, and producing a large proportion of any university’s graduates, if we at the business school want to equip them with global capability for the future, then we need to engage in such an agenda. In essence, my call for business schools to address grand societal challenges through interdisciplinary research is not just a research agenda, but the research we produce as business schools should pervade our teaching programs at all levels to produce global citizens among our student population. In my own institution, Warwick Business School, we need to deliver on our branding claim to be a “changemaker”. The above, I suggest, is a fairly well-established argument, but how this might be achieved has merited less attention. In my chapter, I set out how such an aim might be realized, reflecting upon my own research and the research strategy from my own institution, Warwick Business School, as a case study for crossing disciplinary boundaries, but also drawing in other examples from across the globe where business school research is concerned to address grand societal challenges.

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Literature Review Historical Perspective: Business Schools Are a “Burning Platform” In framing our understanding of the role of business schools, and prospects for their contribution to addressing grand societal challenges, briefly sketching the history of their development is relevant. When initially set up, business schools were expected to enhance managerial capability to support economic growth in a context of large-scale industrialization and the growth of large corporations (Alajoutsijärvi et al. 2015; Porter and McKibbin 1988; Whitley 1988). However, first, business schools appear captured by “bottom line” strategies that merely serve narrow corporate interests with scant concern for other stakeholders in society (Starkey and Tiratsoo 2007). Second, the ethics and morality underpinning business school research and education is called into question (Ghoshal 2005). More so, because their legitimacy has been somewhat undermined through their complicity in corporate scandals, such as Enron, and their part in the Global Financial Crisis, associated with investor capitalism (Adler 2002; Ferlie et al. 2010; Khurana 2007; Locke and Spender 2011; Starkey and Tiratsoo 2007). Finally, they have drifted toward privileging theory development, which has further undermined the legitimacy that business schools might have derived from their practical relevance (Bennis and O’Toole 2005; Currie and Knights 2003; Khurana 2007; Thomas and Wilson 2009). In essence, their stance has seemed far off addressing grand challenges for broader society. This has led to commentators characterizing business schools as a “burning platform” whose legitimacy is at stake, with calls for their re-invention, including a wider mission to look outward (as our next subsection heading suggests, to “lower their walls”) and address grand societal challenges in an interdisciplinary way (Currie et al. 2016).

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Designing “Lower Walls” to Impact “Grand Challenges” Grand challenges, such as those identified in the chapter’s introduction, cannot be addressed by any single discipline. For example, driving less reliance upon fossil fuels through alternative energy sources (a “hard science” problem), has global geopolitical and economics implications (addressed by social sciences, including business schools). Improving health care for an aging population requires development of evidence of what works (a clinical science problem), but then requires understanding of how to implement and scale up evidence-based intervention (addressed by social sciences, including business schools). Thus, one aspect of the “lower walls” solution is that business schools reach out and engage with other disciplines to address grand challenges of society.

Institutional Challenges to Addressing Grand Challenges Now, this is not without institutional challenges. For example, accreditation agencies, which operate on a supranational base, may stymie collaboration with other academic departments, since they are keen to promote business schools as a distinct institution and thus retain high walls regarding interdisciplinary engagement (Julian and OforiDankwa 2006; Wedlin 2007). Business schools increasingly use narrow lists of journals for performance management and promotion purposes in business schools, which again divert their research faculty away from interdisciplinary journals (Anderson et al. 2021; Starkey and Tiratsoo 2007).

Institutional Facilitators for Addressing Grand Challenges At the same time, I note some countervailing institutional tendencies that render the context for interdisciplinary research more receptive to impact grand challenges of society. First, the Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) (www.sfdora.org) hopefully limits use of lists of so-called “high quality” journals in business schools that drive faculty

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toward narrow specialism and which can exacerbate self-referential theorizing. Second, within the UK, in the regular national research assessment exercise (www.ref.ac.uk) research impact now constitutes a larger proportion of the assessment than seven years earlier (up from 20% to 25%). At my own institution, Warwick Business School, our impact cases reflected our aims to be a “changemaker” and address grand societal challenges, e.g. one impact case set out how business school research underpinned economic, social, and health impact of UK Government investment in Coventry City of Culture. Third, some of the more progressive business schools look outward toward more interdisciplinary educational programs that derive from research. For example, Said Business School offers MBA partnering programs (www.sbs.ox.ac.uk/progra mmes/mbas/oxford-11-mba), where students from a department outside the business school combine their Master’s degree with the MBA. Nevertheless, overall, we might see institutional forces driving business schools away from the interdisciplinary collaboration necessary to address grand societal challenges. So, how do we move forward? I offer some strategies below.

University Structures for Addressing Grand Challenges Most business schools remain university-based, and their host institution thus remains a significant actor in cultivating a receptive context within which business schools might flourish in their attempts to address grand societal challenges. This has a downside; their structure is antagonistic toward interdisciplinary research necessary to address grand challenges. However, it also offers opportunity. In my own university, the University of Warwick, Global Research Priorities (GRP) have been identified in eleven areas: brain and behavior; connecting cultures; energy; food; global governance; innovative manufacturing; international development; materials; science and technology for health; sustainable cities; productivity and future of work (www2.warwick.ac.uk/research/priori ties/). Warwick Business School (WBS) faculty are significantly engaged in most of these GRPs, indeed take the lead for three of these: brain and behavior, energy, productivity, and future of work. On a personal

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basis, I work into the science and technology GRP with colleagues from the Warwick Medical School. It is instructive to reflect upon what the business school brings in to these GRPs.

The Business School’s Research Contribution for Grand Challenges Second, some business school domains prove more receptive to interdisciplinary research to address grand societal challenges. It might be that some business schools, in line with their strategic focus to address societal grand challenges, choose to invest in certain areas. In particular, some domains allow the business school to be a translational actor, that is, supporting faculty in science, engineering, and medicine to implement their research-based solutions. Health care is a classic domain within which business school faculty can make their translational contribution, working alongside medical school faculty to translate evidence the latter have generated into frontline practice at scale (see, e.g., www.warwick. ac.uk/fac/sci/med/about/centres/arc-wm). Some of the ingredients for ensuring scale up of evidence-based clinical intervention are staple topics for business school faculty, such as distributing leadership, mobilizing knowledge, human resource management, governing integrated care (see Currie and Spyridonidis 2019, for such application). This does not mean that business school faculty limit themselves to supporting others through their translational expertise; they can also generate more theoretical knowledge. In the University of Warwick, GRP focused upon brain and behavior, much of the theoretical knowledge in the domains of psychology and economics is held by faculty within the interdisciplinary subject group, behavioral science, developed in Warwick Business School from 2010 onward (www.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/wbs/ subjects/bsci). Science, technology, engineering and medicine disciplines seek to draw upon the theoretical knowledge within the business school to shape behaviors around their own research-based interventions.

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Meanwhile, regarding the GRP focused upon productivity and the future of work, Warwick Business School research informs the development of a more receptive context within which the gains of policy investment are likely to ensue, through its Enterprise Research Center (ESRC), within which for example, research supports innovation, exporting and growth among UK SMEs (www.enterpriseresearch.ac.uk). Warwick Business School is not exceptional in the UK in engaging in interdisciplinary research to address grand societal issues. The recently appointed Dean at Said Business School stated their intention clearly, thus, ‘as a focus, our School is focused upon tackling complex worldscale challenges’ (www.sbs.ox.ac.uk). Mirroring the distinct University of Oxford collegial system where members from all disciplines live and eat together, the online Global Opportunities and Threats (GOTO) initiative located within Saïd Business School is a platform that includes current students, faculty from different disciplines including outside the business school, and alumni to discuss some of the most complex issues that the world faces today (www.sbs.ox.ac.uk/oxford-answers/goto-pro gramme). Indeed, the University of Oxford appears generally progressive in enacting interdisciplinary research, with Saïd Business School hosting the Martin Institute, which addresses grand challenges of climate change and energy policy, and the Oxford Digital Centre focused upon the challenges of the digital economy. In essence, for business schools to address grand societal challenges seems a matter of this being central to their strategies and instituting structures to facilitate impact of research.

Branding the Business School to Address Grand Challenges Third, business schools can drive a mission oriented toward interdisciplinary research to address grand challenges through their branding. I have already highlighted such an attempt at my own institution, Warwick Business School, as a “changemaker”. The most explicit statement of such a mission in literature is at the business school at Cardiff University, which prides itself on an avowed “public value” mission, through its engagement in interdisciplinary social sciences research to address grand societal challenges and be more consequential for society.

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To realize its mission, Cardiff Business School has partnered other university departments to establish the “world’s first social science park, SPARK”, within which a particular local orientation is evident to address an explosion in homelessness in the city, and which allows the university to deliver on its civic mission in the city and surrounding region (Kitchener and Delbridge 2020). Again, we see the importance of a business school’s strategic choice in such matters through which it engages in wider university structures to address grand societal challenges.

Addressing Grand Challenges Is an International Phenomenon And of course, interdisciplinary research within which business school research is central to address societal grand challenges is not limited to the UK. Most universities across the globe are keen to develop structures, inclusive of the business school, that encourage research to cohere around grand challenges. See Stanford in the USA (e.g., www.gsb.stanford. edu/stanford-gsb-experience/life/collaborative-environment) and Miami Herbert Business School that has developed research clusters focusing upon interdisciplinary dialogue, research, and teaching with other university departments in areas such as sustainable business where business faculty collaborate with colleagues in environmental economics, science, and engineering (www.herbert.miami.edu/faculty-research/res earch-labs). Copenhagen Business School particularly pushes interdisciplinary research where, for example, it is central to the Manufacturing Academy of Denmark (www.cbs.dk/made-manufacturing-academy-ofdenmark). While increasingly evident, for business school faculty to engage in such interdisciplinary initiatives to address grand challenges may continue to prove challenging at the individual level. I offer my personal reflections upon my own such research attempts in the next section of the chapter.

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Personal Reflections To emphasize, I argue strongly for, and indeed engage in, research within a business school oriented toward addressing grand challenges of society, specifically improving health and social care services. I offer reflective lessons from my personal experiences for those that wish to follow suit.

Incentives for Research to Address Grand Challenges There are new incentives for academics like myself to work across disciplines as governments (such as in the UK) provide large-scale funding for, and encourage the creation of interdisciplinary institutes and research programs. More specifically, in the UK, through the research excellence framework (so-called REF), business schools are rated according to the policy and practice impact of their research (www.ref.ac.uk). As business school faculty, at least in the UK, you are thus increasingly evaluated against criteria that assess the impact of your research, as well as your journal publications, during the progress of your career (Currie et al. 2016). Hence, there is some degree of career self-interest to pursue interdisciplinary research in my empirical field of study, health care, where I have encouraged academic researchers to “dance” across different disciplines (Currie et al. 2012).

Career Trajectories for Researchers to Address Grand Challenges On a personal level, I enjoyed secondment from the business school at mid-career stage to the Institute for Science and Society at University of Nottingham, which might have constituted a career risk. Might I have been better “merely” pursuing publications in a specialist field? I feel not, since, working in an interdisciplinary research institute, my gaze was lifted up to consider how my narrow business school expertise could be applied to address grand societal problems at scale and through collaboration with, not just other social scientists, but also clinical scientists. Further, I was not sure where my disciplinary membership lay, even in

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my PhD as a mature student; one supervisor was drawn from sociology and social policy, the other from the business school. Are such career moves a risk? Generally, yes for early career scholars (Currie et al. 2014), but such a career trajectory may prove a “slow burner”, with progression further down the track for the interdisciplinary scholar that wants to address grand societal challenges enhanced (Bozeman and Boardman 2013; Currie et al. 2014). I want to emphasize here, particularly to those at earlier career stages, that you need to “ride two horses”. Doing applied research to address grand societal challenges, such as those in health, cannot come at the expense of publication in high-quality peer-reviewed journals. Indeed, readers might note that the mainstreaming genetics study led to a stream of such publications, including in the esteemed Academy of Management Journal (Lockett et al. 2014), and the children’s network study in Organization Studies (Currie and White 2012). However, admittedly, more recently, while continuing to publish in high-quality business and management journals, my CV might look somewhat bizarre to others in business schools following more specialist publication paths, as I also publish in clinical science journals. My own favorite currently is a journal called Implementation Science, which allows me to “profitably” publish with clinical science collaborators. Indeed, my clinical research colleagues characterize me as an “implementation scientist”, and I describe myself as this when relevant so they can locate me in their epistemological categorization of who I am. In essence, it is not just a strategic choice for business schools to focus upon addressing grand societal challenges, but also an individual career choice, and linked to the latter, a matter of your academic identity.

Engaging Other Departments in Your Research to Address Grand Challenges The prospects of the business school being involved in interdisciplinary research to address grand challenges is also shaped by other departments’ motivation to invite them in (Wright et al. 2009). My first

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steps involved me inviting colleagues in the medical school to collaborate on research bids where I did much of the “leg work”, such as an early grant funded by the UK Department of Health that I successfully led focused upon “mainstreaming” genetics advances in healthcare delivery. This may, at first sight, appear to be a clinical matter, but I convinced them it was more a matter of organization and management, to which I could bring business school expertise in leadership, knowledge mobilization, and human resource management. Following which, opportunities arose for my medical school colleagues to invite me into their large-scale research bidding, now understanding what I could offer. One of the large-scale successes as my interdisciplinary collaboration gathered pace, was the gaining of funding (around £10 mn) in 2008 for establishing a translational health research center, within which they ceded its directorship to me, even though it was largely based in the medical school. I have continued with such interdisciplinary research since then, and thoroughly enjoyed acting as a mentor for a succession of early career researchers enjoying postdoctoral funding from the UK’s National Institute for Health Research, who showed interdisciplinary research tendencies toward business school research. Following which, more recently I have extended my research activity toward supporting the delivery of social care, most recently through leading large-scale funded research programs to support care leavers’ transition into adulthood (UK Economic and Social Research Council funded) and service improvement for children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities (Department for Education funded). Business schools themselves are pluralist, and I have always been sensitive to epistemic divides regarding use of theory, method, and language within our academy. Nevertheless, the epistemic divide between business schools and medical schools did come as somewhat of a surprise to me, and still does to some extent, even some 20 years after my first interdisciplinary engagement. In particular, the procedural assessment criteria applied to research in a medical school, which privileges statistical significance and the experimental intervention, continue to put me at a disadvantage. As a qualitative researcher, I may be perceived as a mere storyteller, whose output does not rank equally with that of clinical science, more so when one considers the disparity in impact factors of

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journals (relatively low in social science), the metrics around which clinical scientists highly value. Similarly, while in my own business school, I might be lauded for the amount of research income I bring in, this represents standard practice for colleagues in clinical science. It can be galling for the ego to swim the medical school pool, when reporting successes, given they regularly and successfully bid for multi-million pound grants. Moving across to the social care episteme also provided surprises. Social care academics have a more pluralist view of evidence that drives interventions in their empirical field; it appears more values-based, rather than derived from the type of statistical evidence prevalent in the medical school field. Their research methods are more qualitative, hence aligned with my own preferences, but of more novelty for me, co-production of research with service users is prevalent (Lynch et al. 2021). This is something I have added to my own interdisciplinary armory and have employed care leavers transitioning into adulthood as research associates on an ESRC-funded program of research focused upon innovation in the area. As your career matures, as highlighted earlier, trying different things maintains, even re-invigorates, your interest in research. You may have to enact different methods, engage with different issues, learn to present in different ways, as you engage with different disciplines to address grand societal challenges. “They” (clinical scientists) need some convincing that “we” (business school academics) offer value. Some clinical areas more than others may prove somewhat cynical about the contribution a business school academic can make, and for different reasons. Some, such as acute specialisms, derived from their power and status (Freidson 1970), may ignore our input, unless it directly relates to their professional concern, such as surgeons concerned about how do you support the adoption of evidence-based clinical guidelines across multi-morbidities that are subject to many such guidelines? Others, such as midwifery, do not enjoy such status and power, yet culturally resist our intrusion because they are historically inward looking. So, how have I gone about this? I have already set out the implementation science resource I bring to the table for clinical scientists above. Let’s further consider how I managed to work this perspective into collaboration with medical school faculty even in one of the most clinically resistant areas above, that of

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midwifery, where I have sought to impact quality of care (a domain of considerable concern in the UK, see Ockenden Review December 2021, which was damning about maternity services (www.ockendenm aternityreview.org.uk). Most obviously, you need to develop relationships with the key academics and practitioners in the area, and this takes time. The nuance I offer on this, is that you might identify someone with whom you might profitably engage, and suggest you search out the tempered radical (Meyerson 2001). The tempered radical is someone who has status within the academic community (they are in, rather than out of the boat), but are disposed toward more radical change (they are prepared to rock the boat). Hence, they are likely to be more open to external ideas, i.e. from business school academics. I suggest clinical science is largely an empirical subject, hence the value they put on statistical significance, and largely eschew esoteric theory. So, while open to external ideas, when engaging clinical academics, the practical relevance of ideas must be clear to them. There were a couple of theoretical ideas that worked well with the academic midwifery research group I engaged in a domain I previously characterized as impervious to interdisciplinary research collaboration with business school faculty. The application of absorptive capacity theory to understanding why some maternity units were more or less receptive to an evidence-based triage intervention was intuitively grasped, as explaining why their research-informed triage intervention suffered from variable uptake (Currie et al. 2019). Meanwhile, we are currently working through the application of translation theory in the Scandinavian micro-institutional tradition (Spyridonidis et al. 2016), to explain what is translated of the triage intervention, by whom, and with what effect, in line with concern of the academic midwifery research collaborators that its core components are adopted, and only its peripheral components adapted. Working in such a way, addressing the empirical concern of clinical academics through organizational theories, then allows the interdisciplinary research team to meet publication needs that enhance their career trajectories. For the clinical scientists, they can bring organizational theory to their field journals, while for business school academics, we can use the empirical site as one that is exemplary for the development of theory in the area of absorptive capacity and translational theory. Reinforcing an earlier point, “riding

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two horses” to ensure specialist publication seems particularly important for those business school academics at early and mid-career stages that desire promotion to senior positions, but whose identity is one oriented toward addressing grand societal challenges.

Engaging with Practice to Address Grand Challenges Beyond engaging with other university departments, it is the connection I can form with executive managers in healthcare providers and commissioners that represents a “beer, other beers don’t reach” to quote the strapline of the Carlsberg lager advert. I invoke my intellectual expertise and talk in executive managers’ language of strategy, leadership, and the need for organizational development and cultivating supportive cultures for evidence-based service improvement. Such connection can leverage managerial engagement in clinical research intervention, and access to empirical sites for research and even additional resource for research, so that a clinical intervention found to be effective can be scaled up across a regional or national system. Where managerial engagement, implementation research, and clinical science go hand-in-hand, then interdisciplinary collaboration enhances its impact upon addressing the grand societal challenge so evident in health care. Otherwise, clinical research can be left on the shelf, rather than translated into frontline practice.

Addressing Grand Challenges Takes Time As a final note, I emphasize the time it may take for an academic to enact any research trajectory to address grand challenges, and this carries risks for career trajectories. Frankly, I can understand why some colleagues choose to “fly a desk” and engage in more theoretical research for specialist journals, without recourse to such interdisciplinary collaboration. But to restate my position, business schools need to address grand challenges if they are to sustain their legitimacy in society, and this is a result of faculty research activity.

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Conclusion The facilitating forces at institutional level for business school faculty to engage in interdisciplinary research to address grand challenges of society are ascendant. I recognize individual faculty, particularly at early career stage, take a risk, more so at early and mid-career in devoting their efforts toward such a goal when their tenure and promotion might be better served by following a narrower specialist path toward publishing in high-quality per-reviewed outlets. Nevertheless, to sustain their legitimacy, business schools need to address grand challenges of society, and by extension their faculty need to engage in relevant research toward this. As part of this, individual faculty might reflect upon their identity, as I did so above. I was once described as “dirty practitioner” by a colleague. I take some pride in such a description. As a late entrant to academia, I came to business school research with the idea that research into organization and management may help the world from which I had come, that of the National Health Service in England. I describe myself as a practiceengaged and practice impactful academic. I encourage others to follow, depending upon their identity enactment, and whether their intent to address grand societal challenges is supported by their host institution. In this chapter, I hope I have offered a reflective note to generate lessons for those making the choice to engage in interdisciplinary research to address grand societal challenges. My position is that, overall, enacting interdisciplinary research will prove beneficial for both an individual’s career path, as well of course addressing grand societal challenges being something business schools should be central to. My chapter thus represents a “call to arms”, but also sets out how business school faculty might best be supported by their host institution to enact interdisciplinary research to address grand societal challenges and the individual level tactics they might engage in to do so.

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Part IV Defending Status Quo

14 Compared to What? A Realist Defense of Business School Jason Brennan

Critics claim that business school education is a joke. They are partly right. Nevertheless, even if business education is bullshit, so are the alternatives.1 If critics consistently applied their standards, they would not denigrate business education in favor of the liberal arts. (By “liberal arts education,” I mean to include both the traditional North American curriculum of broad exposure to a variety of courses in the humanities, fine arts, mathematics, and sciences, as well as more direct European-style curricula in which students study one such field extensively). Instead,

1 Here, I intend to use “bullshit” in the technical philosophical sense of being fluff that is unconcerned with truth (Frankfurt 2005).

J. Brennan (B) Georgetown University, Washington, DC, USA e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. Örtenblad and R. Koris (eds.), Debating Business School Legitimacy, Palgrave Debates in Business and Management, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-12725-0_14

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they would conclude that higher education does not serve its putative main purpose. Liberal arts critics of business schools are like socialist critics of capitalism. They compare a realistic critique of business school to an idealized, unrealistic account of the liberal arts. Real business schools are worse than ideal liberal arts schools just like real capitalism is worse than ideal socialism. Yet, I will argue, if we compare what real business schools and real liberal arts schools accomplish, there is little reason to favor liberal arts over business. Liberal arts education is grounded on a falsified theory of learning. Most students learn little and forget most of what little they learn. Most students cannot transfer what they learn in the liberal arts to novel contexts. Thus, this chapter will defend business education by debunking the putative advantages of liberal arts education. Liberal arts education promises something better, but it does not deliver. This chapter focuses on the educational mission of business versus liberal arts and science schools. I focus on teaching because most professors spend most of their time teaching; only a minority produce much research (Brennan 2020; Brennan and Magness 2019). Though I will not defend this claim here, I contend the same argument for research. Even if most research in business school is worthless, so is most research in other departments.

A Stylized Critique of Business School Education Criticisms of business education are manifold. Some are ideological, such as that business schools teach students “the inevitability of tooth and nail capitalism” (Parker 2018). This is not a serious criticism. In the United States and Canada, at least, the modal, mean, and median business school professor is moderately left-of-center (Kuvvet 2021). In fact, business schools teach pro-social-sounding, left-wing ideologies such as “triple bottom line management” or “stakeholder theory.” Business Ethics Quarterly, the leading business ethics journal, mostly publishes critiques

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of markets and business; it rarely publishes what I would consider a “promarket” piece. Business schools are not radically pro-capitalist places. They are instead less anti-market than the rest of the academy. Other widely-known and circulated criticisms are more plausible. These criticisms—which the rest of this anthology explores—include: 1. Students should focus not on developing applied or particular skills, but on developing their capacity to learn, to write, to engage in critical thinking, to reason, to synthesize ideas, and so on. These general skills and capacities are vital for all jobs, including business. 2. Students should learn big and lasting ideas that provide deep understanding of the natural world and the human condition rather than small and fleeting ideas about business practice, ideas that will become obsolete soon anyway. 3. Students should not focus on business skills because most businesses will train them in these skills anyway. 4. Business education is a waste because most business students use only a tiny fraction of what they learn in business school. For instance, the typical marketing professional will never use what they learned in their required accounting class. 5. Certain kinds of knowledge and certain skills—such as those taught in liberal arts schools—are valuable for their own sake. The knowledge and skills business schools impart mostly aren’t. Understanding Nobel Laureate novelist García Marquez is an end itself; understanding basic management theory is not. 6. In fact, studies find that most business students do not learn much in college and do not much develop any of their skills. 7. Business schools also spend too much time on abstract concepts or trivialities rather than genuinely useful business skills. Criticism 1 might be uttered by a liberal arts professor, while criticism 7 might come from an employer. For the sake of argument, I will grant that the critics are correct, but then ask, so what ? Liberal arts schools may promise to be better, but the evidence shows they do not keep their word.

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What Are the Liberal Arts For? Those who claim liberal arts education is superior to business education need to specify what kind of value they think the liberal arts have. They could argue that studying the liberal arts is intrinsically valuable, meaning that it is an end in itself apart from any consequences it generates. Or, they might argue that liberal arts education is instrumentally valuable, in that it generates good outcomes. They might say it has both kinds of values. To illustrate, consider these statements from different colleges. Amherst College’s homepage says: A liberal-arts education develops an individual’s potential for understanding possibilities, perceiving consequences, creating novel connections and making life-altering choices. It fosters innovative and critical thinking as well as strong writing and speaking skills. The liberal arts prepare students for many possible careers, meaningful lives and service to society.

Montclair State University’s webpage says, Study of the liberal arts prepares you for a career by instilling those attributes that employers repeatedly say they want when they hire college graduates—the intellectual skills of critical thinking, analysis of information, and effective expression of ideas. In this sense, the liberal arts provide the ultimate job training. The liberal arts prepare you not just for landing that first job, but for your promotion in a few years … and for your second and third jobs.

The University of California, Berkeley’s webpage on liberal arts asserts, To be liberally educated is to be transformed. A liberal arts education frees your mind and helps you connect dots you never noticed before, so you can put your own field of study into a broader context. It enables you to form opinions and judgments, rather than defer to an outside authority.

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Liberal arts schools everywhere make similar claims. It is instructive that these webpages do not link to scientific studies proving liberal arts education works as advertized. They focus more on the content of liberal arts education and what they hope students will take from it, rather than what students actually take from it. If it turns out that students do not perceive the intrinsic value of what they study, or that they barely study it, or that they do not learn much, or that they forget almost everything they learn, then these arguments for the value of liberal arts education fail. Consider an analogy: Suppose Guernica is an end in itself because of its expressive and symbolic value. We might argue that experiencing the painting and pondering its semiotics are good in themselves. We might claim that experiencing the painting can help enlighten us in various ways. But suppose, I show the painting to a baby, blind person, and a disinterested, disaffected teenager. The baby just sees weird colors and shapes. The blind person sees nothing. The teenager looks up, yawns, and then leaves the room to play with their phone, having learned nothing and not understood what they saw. Guernica might indeed be intrinsically valuable, and it might indeed potentially be instrumentally valuable, but these three people got nothing from it. If it had cost us $10,000 to “show” them the painting, that would be money well wasted. Similar remarks apply to liberal arts education. Some of the content of that education—the great works of philosophy, science, and literature— may well be ends in themselves. But it does not follow that exposing students to it is valuable. They might be like the baby, the blind person, or the teenager. They might not care about it and thus fail to get anything from it. They might not understand it. They might understand it briefly and then forget whatever they learned. It might have little to no longterm or even short-term effect on their moral or intellectual character. So, to defend the liberal arts or argue for their superiority to business education, we cannot rely on armchair arguments about the intrinsic value of their content, or armchair speculation about what aretaic benefits we think they provide. We need to check what liberal arts in fact do for most students. Unfortunately, though, insofar as scholars have

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checked, they find that most students are mostly like the baby, the blind person, or the teenager. Or so I will argue below.

The Psychological Basis of Liberal Arts Defenders of the liberal arts claim that liberal arts education makes you better at pretty much everything. They do not merely claim that the skills required to succeed in the liberal arts could be transferred to any area of life. Of course, they could . They instead claim that students will in fact develop those skills and will in fact transfer them. Are they right? Liberal arts education is grounded on the assumption that students will engage in “transfer of learning.” Educational psychologists used the term “transfer of learning” to describe when a student applies skills or abilities learned in one context or domain to a different context or domain. For instance, if analyzing chemistry equations makes one better at running an accounting firm that is transfer of learning. If writing analyses of Shakespeare makes one better at writing marketing memos that is transfer of learning. If doing differential equations makes one better at budgeting that is transfer of learning. One of the main purported reasons why liberal arts school is supposed to be superior to business school is that liberal arts supposedly teaches broad skills that are transferable everywhere, while business school teaches specific technical skills that are not transferable and may soon become obsolete. But whether students in fact engage in transfer of learning, or even could do so, is an empirical question open to scientific investigation. Unfortunately for defenders of the liberal arts, the research on this question is extensive, univocal, and damning. Instrumentalist arguments for liberal arts education rest upon the assumption that students transfer learning, but transfer of learning is largely a myth. As Bryan Caplan summarizes the extensive literature on transfer of learning: Can believers in the power of learning-how-to-think back up teachers’ boasts with hard evidence? For the most part, no. Educational psychologists who specialize in “transfer of learning” have measured the hidden

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intellectual benefits of education for over a century. Their chief discovery: Education is narrow. As a rule, students only learn the material you specifically teach them… if you’re lucky. (Caplan 2018, p. 50; see also Detterman and Sternberg 1993; Gick and Holyoak 1983; Haskell 2001).

Psychologist Richard Haskell (2001, p. xiii) summarizes: Despite the importance of transfer of learning, research findings over the past nine decades clearly show that as individuals, and as educational institutions, we have failed to achieve transfer of learning on any significant level.

Douglas Detterman (1993, p. 21) says: Transfer has been studied since the turn of the [20th] century. Still, there is very little empirical evidence showing meaningful transfer to occur and much less evidence for showing it under experimental control.

Terry Hyland and Steve Johnson (1998, p. 3) say: On the basis of the available evidence, however, drawn from many very different disciplines, we believe that the pursuit of [general transferable] skills is a chimera-hunt, an expensive and disastrous exercise in futility.

Again, these are summaries of an extensive empirical literature that has carefully tried to measure whether transfer of learning occurs. Overwhelmingly, these studies find that the vast majority of students do not transfer learning; only a tiny minority does so. Let us describe some of the research methods involve. Many educational psychologists test transfer of learning by running experiments which first teaching students how to solve a problem. After showing students can indeed consistently solve that problem, the psychologists then immediately give students a similar problem with a similar solution, but on a different kind of topic. Even under these ideal conditions, when no fading of learning has occurred, most subjects in most experiments fail to see the connection or to solve the second problem. Failure rates become even higher if they introduce a time delay between the first and

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second problem, or if they distract students with an unrelated problem, or if the problems are introduced by a different professor in a different context (Caplan 2018, pp. 50–59). In another famous study, Barry Leshowitz (1989) took hundreds of Arizona State University science students, and tested to see whether they would apply the scientific reason skills they learned in the classroom to problems they might read about in a newspaper. He gave them an easy question: Suppose that the majority of students needing psychological counseling at Arizona State University admit to having poor dietary habits. Does it follow that if these students eat better, their psychological problems would be reduced? Here were the results: Of the several hundred students tested, many of whom had taken more than six years of laboratory science in high school and college and advanced mathematics through calculus, almost none demonstrated even a semblance of acceptable methodological reasoning about everyday-life events described in ordinary newspaper and magazine articles. The overwhelming majority of responses received a score of 0. Fewer than 1% obtained the score of 2 that corresponded to a “good scientific response.” Totally ignoring the need for comparison groups and control of third variables, subjects responded to the “diet” example with statements such as “It can’t hurt to eat well”. (Leshowitz 1989, p. 1160).

Transfer of learning sometimes occurs for some limited skills (Caplan 2018, p. 56). Still, overall, the past hundred years of research find that in general and for most students, for both smart and not-so-smart students, learning is highly specific, particular, and compartmentalized. People acquire skills in narrow domains and apply those skills only to those narrow domains. That transfer of learning does not occur eliminates the main argument in favor of the liberal arts over business school. Sure, liberal arts schools teach general skills that in principle could be transferred everywhere, but in fact the overwhelming majority of students will not transfer those skills. It is hard to overstate how disastrous these findings are for liberal arts education. The central premise in favor of liberal arts education is completely mistaken.

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How Much Do Students Even Learn? How Much Do They Retain? The research on transfer of learning involves first proving that students learned some principles or acquired some skills, and then testing whether they can or will apply those principles or skills outside the narrow domain in which they learned them. Unfortunately for liberal arts professors everywhere, overwhelmingly they do not. (Remember, our question here is whether liberal arts is superior to business school, and so this chapter debunks the purported advantages of liberal arts education.) But it gets even worse, because it also turns out that students generally do not even learn these particular or narrow skills. Experiments show students do not transfer what they learn, but other research shows they mostly learn little and so have nothing to transfer. In 2011, Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa published Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses. Arum and Roksa studied 2,300 college students of all different socio-economic backgrounds, college preparation, and so on. They had students take the Collegiate Learning Assessment multiple times over their college careers: The Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA) consists of three open-ended, as opposed to multiple choice, assessment components: a performance task and two analytical writing tasks (i.e., to make an argument and to break an argument). According to its developers, the CLA was designed to assess “core outcomes espoused by all of higher education—critical thinking, analytical reasoning, problem solving, and writing.” These general skills are the “broad competences that are mentioned college and university mission statements.” (Arum and Roksa 2011, p. 21)

In short, the CLA tests the soft skills liberal arts curricula are supposed to “instill.” Arum and Roksa (2011, p. 121) find, “At least 45 percent of students in our sample did not demonstrate any statistically significant improvement in CLA performance during the first two years of college.” At least 36% walk away with no measured gains after four years of college.

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More conservative and cautious approaches to testing statistical significance yield worse results: at least 53% had no gains at all after two years (Arum and Roksa 2011, p. 219). The minority who did improve their CLA scores generally had very modest gains during college, and there’s no evidence these gains persist after college. The differences between business schools and liberal arts schools were mostly insignificant. As they summarize: …many students are not only failing to complete educational credentials, they are also not learning much, even when they persist through higher education. In general, as we have shown, undergraduates are barely improving their CLA-measured skills in critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing during their first two years of college. Even more disturbingly, almost half are demonstrating no appreciable gain in these skills between the beginning of their freshman year and the end of their sophomore year. In addition to limited growth, learning in higher education is also unequal. Students from less educated families and racial/ethnic minority groups have low levels of skills in critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing (as measured by the CLA) when they enter college. These inequalities are largely preserved—or in the case of AfricanAmerican students, exacerbated—as students progress on their journey though higher education. (Arum and Roksa 2011, p. 54).

In general, Arum and Roksa find that about half of students gain no general reasoning and writing skills in college, about 40% gain very modest skills (less than a sigma’s increase), and only the top 10% of students gain significant skills (Arum and Roksa 2011, p. 56). We do not have much evidence that students learn much in college, but we have significant evidence they do not. For instance, 18 universities created the Voluntary Institutional Metrics Project, which attempted to measure graduation rates, employment rates, and student learning, among other factors. After a few years, they were by their own admission unable to generate any good data on student learning outcomes (HCM Strategists 2013). The 2006 Spellings report on American higher education, commissioned by the US Congress, found that “the quality of student learning at U.S. Colleges and universities is inadequate and, in some cases, declining” (Miller et al. 2006, p. 3). It cites a range of

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attempts to measure learning across universities, most of which find modest to no gains. One paper found philosophy students improved their critical thinking skills slightly over the course of a semester, but the paper failed to show such skills persisted after the class ended (Burke et al. 2013). There are also a few studies on whether studying philosophical ethics improves students’ moral behavior, but the studies are also largely inconclusive (Schwitzgebel 2013). Defenders of mandatory foreign language courses claim that taking language classes imparts various hard-to-measure benefits. The transferof-learning literature shows otherwise. Worse, such classes rarely create fluent speakers of foreign languages, at least in North American universities.2 Among American adults, fewer than 2.5% claim that they can speak a foreign language “very well” or “well” as a result of instruction at school (Caplan 2018, p. 48). These are citizens’ self-reports, so—thanks to social desirability bias in self-reports—the real numbers are probably lower. Our best attempts to measure student learning find that most students learn little in college. They learn the concrete material for the exams and forget it, with little development of their soft skills. There is thus little point in asking if they retain what they learn, since one cannot save or transfer a euro never earned. While there is not an extensive empirical literature on loss of learning after college, empirical studies on primary and secondary school children overwhelmingly find significant and rapid learning loss when school ends (Cooper et al. 1996; Kuhfeld 2019). For instance, children generally do gain significant math skills during elementary school, but these fade quickly during summer breaks when they are not used. It would be surprising if college students retained most of their knowledge when primary and secondary school students do not.

2 One might cite that European universities are more successful in producing fluent speakers of English and other foreign languages. These universities often have more intensive language programs that meet more frequently. It is possible that the difference in curriculum design explains the superior outcomes, but another strong possibility is the difference in incentives. In Europe and many other places, developing fluency in English as a second language or certain other foreign languages has a large payoff; in most of North America, developing fluency in a foreign language has higher expected costs than benefits for almost every native English-speaker.

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Selection Effects and Comparing College Grads to Others On average, liberal arts college graduates are smarter, more conscientious, financially more successful, healthier, happier, and more likely to have happy marriages than mere high school graduates (Murray 2013). They are far less likely to get divorced, go to jail, become unemployed, or get hurt on their jobs (Trostel 2010). On a wide range of factors, college graduates are superior to high school graduates. But this does not prove that the “total value of a college education is thus considerably greater than just the higher earnings” (Trostel 2010). There is non-random selection which determines who goes to college in the first place, and who has the wherewithal and perseverance to finish college. Highly selective universities are, well, selective, admitting only those who have demonstrated they have superior skills, dispositions, and backgrounds. Even non-selective universities teach students who already have superior credentials compared to the citizenry as a whole, as the kind of person who has the wherewithal and conscientiousness to apply to and actually matriculate in college tends already to better off on most measures than those who do not apply or matriculate. Accordingly, if researchers want to know what college adds, we may not simply compare college grads to others and then presume any differences result from having attended college. We instead need to measure and control for selection effects. Even comparing college grads to college freshmen is not enough, because whether one finishes college is in part determined by students’ perseverance and conscientiousness. Some students have what it takes to finish and some do not. Thus, if we compare college graduates to first-year students or to students who fail out of college, we expect the former to be better off, but part of this has to do with the quality of the students themselves rather than what college did for them. To illustrate, imagine we assigned 1000 students to four years of tedious classes in which they learned nothing. For instance, suppose they spend all four years entering equations which they do not understand into Wolfram Alpha and writing down the answers. They are never taught what the equations mean or how to solve the problems. Now

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imagine half drop out from boredom, from a lack of perseverance, from partying too much, or from the inability to budget 30 h a week to this task. We would expect that the 500 who finish will likely be more successful, will have better marriages, and so on, not because the exercises helped them, but because the fact they finished means they were on average more conscientious. Conscientious people generally have better lives and better life outcomes. As far as I can tell, hardly anyone tries to measure or control for such selection effects when assessing what value college adds. Economists Stacy Dale and Alan Krueger are one major exception. They have published a few studies measuring whether it matters whether one goes to an elite college. To measure this properly, they control for selection effects. After all, the average student admitted to Harvard is more impressive and skilled coming in than the average student at Tufts, who is in turn more skilled than the average at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. To control for this, Dale and Krueger got data on students who were admitted to the most selective schools, but who then chose to attend a “lesser” school. They compared them to otherwise identical students who were admitted to the elite schools and also attended those elite schools. The results were stark: A few years after graduate, there were few measurable differences in the success rates or income between the two groups of students. What matters is that one is talented enough to get into Harvard, not that one attends Harvard (Dale and Krueger 2002 2011). All things equal, smart and conscientious people out-earn and tend to have better lives than dumb and unconscientious people (Der et al. 2009; Duckworth et al. 2012; Kern 2020; Kern and Friedman 2008; Martin et al. 2007; Sternberg et al. 2001). If the former are disproportionately likely to major in “hard” fields and the latter in “easy” fields (such as communications or business administration), then this will create the appearance that some fields are doing their students more good than others. Thus, if we wanted to know which majors are good for students, we would need to measure and correct for selection bias in different fields.

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Summary For the sake of argument, I have granted that critics’ criticisms of business education are correct. Even if so, that hardly makes much of a case for liberal arts education as an alternative. Proving that Audi stinks does not suffice to show BMW is better. Even if the content of liberal arts education is intrinsically good, we have little reason to think most students get much from it. They don’t seem to appreciate it themselves. They learn very little. They forget most of what they learn. They do not transfer what few skills they develop elsewhere. Insofar as we sometimes see better outcomes for certain liberal arts fields, these are likely to be selection effects. Accordingly, there’s little reason to favor liberal arts over business education.

References Arum, R., & Roksa, J. (2011). Academically adrift: Limited learning on college campuses. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Brennan, J. (2020). Good work if you can get it. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Brennan, J., & Magness, P. (2019). Cracks in the ivory tower. New York: Oxford University Press. Burke, B. L., Sears, S. R., Kraus, S., & Roberts-Cady, S. (2013). A comparison of critical thinking changes in psychology and philosophy classes. Teaching of Psychology, 41(1), 28–36. Caplan, B. (2018). The case against education. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Cooper, H., Nye, B., Charlton, K., Lindsay, J., & Greathouse, S. (1996). The effects of summer vacation on achievement test scores: A narrative and metaanalytic review. Review of Educational Research, 66 (3), 227–268. Dale, S. B., & Krueger, A. B. (2002). Estimating the payoff to attending a more selective college. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 117 (4), 1491–1527. Dale, S. B., & Krueger, A. B. (2011). Estimating the return to college selectivity over the career using administrative earnings data. National Bureau of

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Economic Research. https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w17 159/w17159.pdf. Accessed 6 Feb 2022. Der, G., Batty, G. D., & Deary, I. J. (2009). The association between IQ in adolescence and a range of health outcomes at 40 in the 1979 US National Longitudinal Study of Youth. Intelligence, 37 (6), 573–580. Detterman, D. (1993). The case for the prosecution: Transfer as an epiphenomenon. In D. Detterman & R. Sternberg (Eds.), Transfer on trial: Intelligence, cognition, and instruction (pp. 1–24). New York: Praeger. Detterman, D., & Sternberg, R. (Eds.). (1993). Transfer on trial: Intelligence, cognition, and instruction. New York: Praeger. Duckworth, A. L., Weir, D. R., Tsukayama, E., & Kwok, D. (2012). Who does well in life? Conscientious adults excel in both objective and subjective success. Frontiers in Psychology, 3(3), 356–362. Frankfurt, H. (2005). On bullshit. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Gick, M., & Holyoak, K. (1983). Schema induction and analogical transfer. Cognitive Psychology, 15 (1), 1–38. Haskell, R. (2001). Transfer of learning: Cognition, instruction, and reasoning. San Diego, CA: Academic Press. HCM Strategists. (2013). A better higher education data and information framework for informing policy: The voluntary institutional metrics policy. http://hcmstrategists.com/gates_metrics_report_v9.pdf. Accessed 6 Feb 2022. Hyland, T., & Johnson, S. (1998). Of cabbages and key skills: Exploding the mythology of core transferable skills in post-school education. Journal of Further and Higher Education, 22(2), 163–172. Kern, M. L. (2020). Conscientiousness. In B. Carducci & C. Nave (Eds.), The Wiley encyclopedia of personality and individual differences: Models and theories (pp. 123–127). Oxford: Wiley. Kern, M. L., & Friedman, H. S. (2008). Do conscientious individuals live longer? A Quantitative Review. Health Psychology, 27 (5), 505–512. Kuhfeld, M. (2019). Surprising new evidence on summer learning loss. Phi Delta Kappan, 101(1), 25–29. Kuvvet, E. (2021). Even finance professors lean left. National Association of Scholars, Summer. https://www.nas.org/academic-questions/34/2/evenfinance-professors-lean-left. Accessed 22 Feb 2022. Leshowitz, B. (1989). It is time we did something about scientific illiteracy. American Psychologist, 44 (8), 1159–1160.

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Martin, L. R., Friedman, H. S., & Schwartz, J. E. (2007). Personality and mortality risk across the life span: The importance of conscientiousness as a biopsychosocial attribute. Health Psychology, 26 (4), 428–436. Miller, C., Hunt, J. B. Jr., Stephens, R., Donofrio, N., Madrid, A., Sullivan, L. W., et al. (2006). A test of leadership: Charting the future of US higher education. A report of the committee appointed by Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings. US Department of Education. https://www. learningoutcomesassessment.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/SpellingsRep ort.pdf. Accessed 22 Feb 2022. Murray, C. (2013). Coming apart. New York: Crown Forum. Parker, M. (2018, April 27). Why we should bulldoze the business school. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/apr/27/bulldozethe-business-school. Accessed 2 Feb 2022. Schwitzgebel, E. (2013). Do ethics classes influence student behavior? http:// www.faculty.ucr.edu/~eschwitz/SchwitzPapers/EthicsClasses-131210a.pdf. Accessed 2 Feb 2022. Sternberg, R. J., Grigorenko, E. L., & Bundy, D. A. (2001). The predictive value of IQ. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, 47 (1), 1–41. Trostel, P. (2010). It’s not just the money: The benefits of college education to individuals and society. Lumina Foundation. https://www.luminafounda tion.org/files/resources/its-not-just-the-money.pdf. Accessed 2 Feb 2022.

Afterword: After the Business School Martin Parker

Introduction This book has presented a series of evaluations of the contemporary business school—a few positive, many reformist and many critical. In this short essay, after all those other words, I will explore what it might mean to live after business schools. What would happen if critics like me had their way and the business school disappeared? Are the arguments against closure epistemological ones, in the sense of there being a need for this form of knowledge, or are they primarily financial, because of the profits generated by b-school education? And finally, but most importantly, what might replace the business school?

M. Parker University of Bristol, Bristol, UK e-mail: [email protected]

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. Örtenblad and R. Koris (eds.), Debating Business School Legitimacy, Palgrave Debates in Business and Management, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-12725-0

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Nearly twenty years ago, in a strange edited collection subtitled Manifestos for the Business School of Tomorrow, I wrote a little piece into which I inserted a mysterious coda which I didn’t fully understand at the time. It is spring. We approach through long grass, climbing through a hole in the fence, over what was some landscaped mound, and can see the ruins of other structures in the distance. From a distance, it still looks impressive, but as you get closer you can see that most of the windows are smashed, and some doors are hanging off their hinges. We crunch across broken glass and the building creaks and sighs. There is no one at the reception desk, and most of the offices contain rusting filing cabinets and the disembowelled remains of computers. There is graffiti: “AGAINST MANAGEMENT”, “FUCK THE BOSSES”—and what looks like piles of shit in some of the corners. Above, in the glass atrium, hang the remains of a mouldering modern mobile, and mounds of dry leaves and mouse droppings rustle in the corridors as we pass. There has been a fire in the Dean’s office, and we see dark stains on the desk of the Director of Research. One of the lecture theatres has a leak in the roof, and now small trees and crawling vines are growing amongst the seating. In the library, almost nothing has been touched, but the damp smell of decay is overwhelming. The books are fattening as they absorb moisture, and the worms and moths are feasting between the lines. A cemetery of forgotten books. We cover our faces with cloth and tip toe down the miles of aisles. The books are bulging, hairy and damp. One of them has been forced onto a puddle in the floor by the fattening of its companions. It was a small elegant volume, nicely typeset, published by Dvalin Press of Finland. It is called Manifestos for the Business School of Tomorrow, which we agree is an interesting title. Sadly, the pages are curled and the ink has run, so it is almost illegible now. All the pages appear to be smeared with the remains of their neighbours, and no sense can be made from such confusion. Tmesis. We drop it back in its puddle. The waterlogged roof groans a little, so we hurry to leave, afraid that we might never escape if the whole structure starts to collapse. Outside, the sun is shining, so we go and have some fun. (Parker 2005, pp. 49–50)

I don’t remember having any particular apocalypse in mind as the cause of this version of the end of the business school, there seem to

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be plenty to choose from nowadays, but it reminds me that there are still rarely accounts of what might actually replace these glassy cathedrals of commerce. As with so much “critical” work, within Critical Management Studies for example, the deficiencies of the b-school are loudly condemned but less often are there meaningful proposals as to what might take its place, if anything (Benner et al., 2017). So what might come after schools of business? To be clear, this afterword is not about reform.1 It is clear to me, as it is to many of the authors in this volume, that the business school teaches pro-growth corporate managerialism, and that the dominance of this economic model is producing eyewatering inequalities, systematic exclusions and a species threatening ecological and climate crisis. To suggest that teaching corporate social responsibility and signing up for the Principles for Responsible Management Education will be enough is endearingly deluded and shows little understanding of the gravity of the multiple crises that are facing us. It is not surprising that b-school apologists think this of course, because they earn their dinners by telling fairy stories, and they want to carry on earning their dinners. One of the commonest responses to my book Shut Down the Business School (2018) was to suggest that I was raising important issues, but that (first) business schools were already doing research and teaching that was addressing these questions and that hence (second) addressing these issues didn’t mean bulldozing the business schools. I beg to differ. It seems to me that (setting aside the excellent editors, authors and readers of this volume) the assumptions built into business school education and research in 95% of schools globally, 95% of the time, mean that we need to start again. Shuffling the deckchairs will not prevent the icebergs from melting, so what might happen if the doors to the atrium of the business school were padlocked? If degrees in business administration, management, marketing, were no longer offered by universities? Who would care? Would it matter?

1

Though, for some impressive thoughts on reform, under the banner of “public interest” and “public value”, see Ferlie et al. (2010), Kitchener and Delbridge (2020), and parts of CABS (2021).

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The Epistemology and Finance of Closure The earliest business schools are European ones from around two centuries ago, mostly teaching accounting and commerce, but even up to the 1970s such institutions were comparatively rare outside North America. The massive global expansion of the business school has happened over the past half century. It’s important to remember this because (to paraphrase Fredric Jameson) its sometimes easier now to imagine the end of higher education than the end of the business school.2 That’s largely because the b-school has become both the cash machine and the model for a particular relationship between state policy maker, research funder, university management, academic and student/customer. Universities, in the UK, themselves now operate on the logic and language of the business school, and this aspect of the present order of things is very often used as evidence that nothing can really change. How would universities be funded without the income from their business schools? What would happen to all those students and staff, to the publishers of textbooks and compilers of rankings, to the accreditation agencies and professional associations? If business schools closed, what would they do? That’s a profoundly conservative set of questions of course, because they are merely positing the inevitability and timelessness of now, when it is clear that the present order emerged out of a different set of orders and assumptions only a few decades ago. Universities emerge in North Western Europe in the early mediaeval period, but they don’t develop anything that looks like a business school for hundreds of years after mercantile capitalism and global trade begin to reshape the world. Universities used to teach degrees in natural philosophy, logic and rhetoric, and it wasn’t until the nineteenth century that the modern settlement between arts and social sciences begins to produce the subject divisions that we are familiar with now. Even then, it’s not until the twentieth century that subjects like sociology, psychology and economics

2 Jameson (1994) wrote that someone else said, “it is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism” (p. xii).

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become recognizable as separate disciplines with their own departments and degrees. The idea of the university is not a timeless one (Collini 2012), and neither are the epistemological divisions that produce some sort of distinction between politics and economics, let alone chemistry, biology and physics. We might sometimes fall into the trap of imagining that there are patterns in the world that divide geology from geography, or the arts from the social sciences, but these are artefacts of the way that this particular institution thinks, not of the way that reality is structured (Douglas 1987). Indeed, academics spend a huge amount of time policing the boundaries of the disciplines they inhabit, arguing whether a particular piece of research is really “organizational behavior” or “organization studies” in order to gatekeep the largely unread journals that they edit and publish in. Academic labour is very often merely an exercise in classification. This is not new. As the novelist and essayist Daniel Defoe suggested, back in 1726 I think our meer scholars are a kind of mechanicks in the schools, for they deal in words and syllables as haberdashers deal in small ware. They trade in measure, quantityes, dactyls, and spondaes, as instrument-makers do in quadrants, rules, squares, and compasses; etymologyes, and derivations, prepositions and terminations, points, commas, colons and semi-colons, etc. are the product of their brain, just as gods and devils are made in Italy by every carver and painter; and they fix them in their proper stations in perspective, just as they do in nitches and glass windows. (Hamilton & Parker 2016, p. 89)

It is academics who produce disciplines, not the shape of the world, so if the discipline of “business” or “management” was to disappear, there would be no particular epistemological problem, though there might be a financial one. It seems to me that this means that if the discipline of “business” was subtracted from the contemporary university, the adjacent disciplines—currently mainly sociology, psychology and economics— rather like lilies on the surface of a pond would simply unfurl and jostle to cover the temporary gap which was made. The absence of degrees called “natural philosophy”, “rhetoric” or “logic” from the curricula of the global university does not appear to have caused any particular

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problem. Neither, until 50 years ago, did the absence of “business” or “management”. There is no compelling epistemological reason for the continuation of the business school then, no distinctive question that only it can answer, or method that only specialists in that domain employ. The reasons for its continuation are more to do with the way that a particular assemblage of financial interests benefits from the present order, because it is a lucrative one. Business is the most significant knowledge product being sold by the global university system, providing fee income of at least $400 billion dollars in more than 13,000 schools globally (Parker 2018, p. 12). In 2018, UNESCO statistics indicate that the global national average percentage of students studying “business, administration or law” was 28.4%. According to Eurostat, in the same year, over one in five European students were studying the same combination. In the UK, one in seven students are currently studying “business or administrative studies”.3 These numbers are huge, though they do not reflect the epistemological importance of this form of knowledge but rather, its profitability. In the UK, it is the income generated by schools of business and management that have enabled universities to become less and less reliant on state funding. Without the very substantial fees being charged to students from China, India, Nigeria and so on, it would simply not be possible to keep the chemistry department and the veterinary school open. In other words, the very universalism of the comprehensive university now depends on the profitability of one part of it—the business school. Without the subsidy that it provides, universities in the UK would have to close all but the most lucrative or subsidized courses that they offer. So let’s be clear, the problem of the business school needs to be understood in terms of its centrality to an economic system in which knowledge is sold and bought within a market. It is not because there is a disciplinary gap in between economics, sociology and psychology that

3

Respectively, http://data.uis.unesco.org/; https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/ index.php?title=Tertiary_education_statistics&oldid=507549#Fields_of_education; https://www. hesa.ac.uk/news/17-01-2019/sb252-higher-educationstudent-statistics/subjects, all accessed March/April 2021

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we need the business school, it is because there is a financial gap in the university accounts. Filling this latter gap encourages a profound conservatism because it is assumed that the knowledge that sells must be knowledge that advertises its own attractiveness and usefulness to individual consumers. This is often a form of education that is marketed like a new mobile phone, suggesting that if you invest in this particular qualification from this business particular school you will be happier because you will have more money and friends. (Cue picture of some happily diverse young people walking out of a building, or pointing at a laptop.) Wicked problems are rarely mentioned, and the grim realities of climate change and ecological externalities, as well as existing massive inequalities of power and reward, are usually ignored. Business schools are now in the position of making immodest claims about their importance and usefulness, at the same time that they refuse to engage with systemic problems (CABS 2021). They are whistling in the dark. The system that keeps the business school in place is primarily financial, not epistemological. If the business school were to disappear, it would mean that policymakers in many countries would need to address the funding structures of higher education because the money would no longer be flooding in. It would also mean that millions of business school academics globally might need to retrain, and that the publishers of rankings, accreditations, case studies, textbooks and journals might need to find a more worthwhile way to earn a living. Students might also have to choose different subjects. These are clearly big changes for some people in the global north but compared with the species threatening threats of climate change, they are relatively small changes. In addition, I doubt that the majority of the world’s human population, those struggling on the sharp end of global capitalism, would have that much sympathy with an unemployed B-School professor. I have discarded reform and suggested that abolition doesn’t really matter, but there is a third option, which is to open new schools that will teach and research what the Business School does not and will not. So, if we want to imagine some form of higher education which focuses on organization and exchange, but that takes gigantic inequalities and our planetary existential threats seriously, what might that look like?

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The Politics of the “School for Organizing” Universities have often had rather a fawning attitude towards the powerful, and the Business School is no exception. From the Kings and Bishops who endowed the mediaeval universities, to the industrialists who built the Victorian ones, higher education has tended to have more of an interest in those with money and status. The wealthy pay better than the working classes. The Business School, with marketing that implies a ticket to the first-class business lounge, aims itself at the business organizations beloved by the global capitalist class—corporations, professional service partnerships, unicorn start-ups, big banks, hedge and sovereign funds. It does not, by and large, sell its wares to voluntary organizations, the third sector, charities, co-operatives and mutuals, businesses in the social and solidarity economy, trade unions or social movements and has an uneasy relationship with the public sector. This narrow focus results in a narrow conception of what business schools teach (and research). If Geography departments teach about space, and Medical Schools teach about the human body, then business schools should surely be teaching about organizations and organizing. That is their general subject matter—exploring the various ways in which human beings, technologies and non-humans have come together for collective benefit. Or have not. Starting off with assumptions about variety and diversity are key here because history and anthropology teach us that different people in different times and places have organized themselves in a staggering multiplicity of different forms. There are very few universals, and an endless encyclopaedia of ways in which human beings have grown, made and exchanged things, told stories about their ancestors and their futures, inherited land and distributed wealth, and justified power and authority. This would include communes and the Mafia, the Amish as well as the Zapatista, the Azande and the Balinese cockfight, and it is certainly not reducible to the recent invention of “Management”. (As if management and organization were synonyms, and all forms of human and non-human organization secretly long to be management.) Management is certainly a form of organizing. It isn’t the only form, or the end of history, but it’s pretty much the only thing taught within

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the contemporary B-School. This has at least one very obvious consequence. Any “alternative” forms of organizing are not taken to be serious alternatives at all and globalizing, speculative, externalizing capitalism is assumed to be inevitable. Other types of organization are assumed to be prehistoric relics or interesting curios, but not part of the main temporal sequence of innovation-investment-corporation-shareholder value. Now it clearly isn’t sensible to blame our current multiple crises on the Business School, as if it were the source of all evil, but the sort of knowledge sold by the Business School reflects and reinforces the common sense of those who currently have all their eggs in the basket of global capitalism. This means that if human beings want to cultivate a different relationship to “the economy”, one that tilts us towards a steady state low carbon, high inclusion and high democracy form of life, then it would very helpful if business schools were teaching and researching about that too. So let’s think about this in a different way. Can you imagine studying in a biology department in which they only taught you about animals with four legs, and ignored everything else? Or getting a degree in history based on only studying a small part of the seventeenth century? This is pretty much what business schools are doing. The “hidden curriculum” is everything that doesn’t fall into some very narrow conceptions of organization and exchange. Rather like a managerialist version of the Great Soviet Encyclopaedia, entire categories of organizing are being air-brushed from the official version. Browsing many B-School textbooks, you might assume that contemporary capitalism worked well for everyone on the planet, and that it had come into existence through a consensual form of social evolution. Listening to what many BSchool professors say, you could imagine that marketing really did help customers find the best products, that managers wisely choose their strategies balancing the needs of all stakeholders, and that the populations of countries in the global south have freely chosen to sell their cash crops at knockdown prices. But, most importantly, looking at the curriculum and the academic journals, you would have no idea about the history and practice of communes and co-ops; or the slow food movement and localism, the social economy, forms of micro-credit and mutualism, or anarchist, environmentalist, feminist and communist views on hierarchy and decision

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making (Parker et al., 2007, 2014). Now I am not suggesting that this censorship is a deliberate attempt to crush dissent. I think it is usually just based on carelessness or ignorance. But either way, the result is the same. Students are being taught that there is no alternative, that there are no animals that do not have four legs, and hence that the present state of affairs is the best that we can collectively imagine. Then the happy graduate can collect their pass to the executive lounge secure in the knowledge that this really is the best of all possible worlds. In a few decades time, they might discover that the planet and its people have become a bit too lively for comfort, but now, their conscience is clear, because there are no choices to make. Hence, my proposal. Dissolve, bulldoze, lock up, shut down all the Management and Business Schools. (Turn the buildings into refugee centres or demolish them and grow crops where they once stood.) Or, shut them down, and then reopen them as “Schools for Organizing”, and ensure that they help to teach organizers (of all kinds) about the history and politics of organization. This would probably mean handing back the corporate sponsorship and perhaps renaming a shiny lecture theatre or building. It would also mean retraining some academics and explaining to potential students why you are going to stop telling them fairy stories from the 1950s. Then the classrooms will echo with courses on local exchange trading schemes, the legal structures of employee ownership and degrowth economics. If we are to learn anything from the present, it must be that business as usual is not an option and that radical change is necessary. If this book is to be useful in such a project, it must help its readers (many of whom will also be Business School employees of course) to understand the historical specificity of the place in which they work and study. It has grown so fast and become so big that it would be easy enough to imagine that nothing could replace it, and that the contemporary global Business School system is somehow inevitable. It is not, because it is only 50 years old, and nothing is inevitable. Imagine a reader who, in a few decades time, uses this book as a document of a system that is now in their past, and is looking for clues as to why it took so long to produce a form of higher education aimed at helping to produce a just transition. Perhaps they would conclude that business schools were

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rather like big tobacco and big oil—claiming that they cared and that they really were doing something whilst they carried on making money whilst the planet warmed and the rich got richer. Perhaps our reader might be wandering through the ruins of a Business School, but let’s hope it’s not surrounded by the ruins of much else too.

References Benner, M., Huzzard, T., & Kärreman, D. (Eds.) (2017). The corporatization of the business school: Minerva meets the market. London: Routledge. CABS. (2021). Business schools and the public good . London: Chartered Association of Business Schools. Collini, S. (2012). What are universities for? London: Penguin. Douglas, M. (1987). How institutions think. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Ferlie, E., McGivern, G., & De Moraes, A. (2010). Developing a public interest school of management. British Journal of Management, 21(1), 60–70. Hamilton, V., & Parker, M. (2016). Daniel Defoe and the Bank of England: The dark arts of projectors. Alresford, Hants, UK: Zero Books. Jameson, F. (1994). The seeds of time. New York: Columbia University Press. Kitchener, M., & Delbridge, R. (2020). Lessons from creating a business school for public good: Obliquity, waysetting and wayfinding in substantively rational change. Academy of Management Learning and Education, 19 (3), 307–322. Parker, M. (2005). Fucking. In C. Jones & D. O’Doherty (Eds.), Organize! Manifestos for the business school of tomorrow (pp. 45–50). Åbo, Finland: Dvalin. Parker, M. (2018). Shut down the business school: What’s wrong with management education. London: Pluto Press. Parker, M., Cheney, G., Fournier, V., & Land, C. (2014). The companion to alternative organization. London: Routledge. Parker, M., Fournier, V., & Reedy, P. (2007). The dictionary of alternatives: Utopianism and organization. London: Zed Books.

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Martin Parker is a professor of Organization Studies and Lead for the Inclusive Economy Initiative at the University of Bristol, UK. He writes and researches about unusual organizations and alternative economies. His latest books are Life After Covid (Bristol University Press, 2020) and Anarchism, Organization and Management (Routledge, 2020). He is also the author of Shut Down the Business School (Pluto, 2018).

Index

A

AACSB/The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business 131, 134, 148, 152, 168, 171, 172, 214, 229, 239, 240 abolition 295 absorptive capacity 265 absorptive capacity theory 265 academia 12, 13, 48, 51, 56–58, 82, 94, 111, 113, 117, 172, 199, 204, 242, 267 global academia 55 academic, academics business school academics 148, 264–266, 295 management academics 236 non-academic 8, 113 women academics 151, 160 women management academics 154, 160

academic capitalism 182 academic careers 57, 242 academic community 135, 203, 265 academic competence 177 academic departments 256 academic discipline, academic disciplines 4, 71 academic education 177 academic entrepreneurship 14, 111 academic excellence 247 academic faculty 51, 57, 90, 203, 265 academic freedom 13, 51, 90 academic ideals 116 academic identity 114, 262 academic institutions 49, 53, 55–57, 69, 113, 168, 174 academicization 5 academic job market 56 academic jobs 58

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. Örtenblad and R. Koris (eds.), Debating Business School Legitimacy, Palgrave Debates in Business and Management, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-12725-0

301

302

Index

academic journals 297 academic labor 147, 293 academic management education 8, 71, 160 academic outcomes 242 academic principles 116 academic ranking, academic rankings 185 Academic Ranking of World Universities/ARWU 170 academic research 13, 71, 200, 211, 242 academic researchers 261 academic resistance 100 academic rigor 127, 133, 203 academic staff 133, 155 academic standards 199 academic vacuum 242 academic values 14 academic work 152 academic workforce 160 accountancy 236 accountant, accountants 243 accounting 227, 238, 240, 275, 278, 292 accreditation, accreditations 6, 39, 40, 100, 131, 134, 150, 159, 168, 169, 171, 172, 178, 186, 200, 205, 206, 211, 213, 229, 256, 292, 295 international accreditation, international accreditations 50, 55, 131, 171–173, 229, 238, 239 accreditation standards 152, 172, 239 administer 53, 137, 236 administrative personnel 52 administrative staff 50

administrator, administrators 52, 53, 114, 127, 206, 227, 245, 246 agency 48, 157 agency theory 223 agent, agents 74, 75, 77, 82, 148, 175 principal-agent model 79 agent-principal theory 75 agile 74, 126, 192 agility 130, 182, 192 alumni 9, 41, 168, 174, 176, 201, 205, 210, 259 AMBA/Association of MBAs/Association of Master of Business Administration 134, 168, 172, 173, 229, 239, 240 ambiguity, ambiguities 114, 192 tolerance for ambiguity 191, 192 amoral 9, 222 anarchism/anarchist 297 Anglo-Saxon literature 90 anti-democratic 79 arms race 111 Athena SWAN 153 authentic communication 225 authoritarian 97 authorities/authority 51, 55, 76, 110, 276, 296 authorized 75 aware 224 morally aware 222 awareness 154, 160 moral awareness 117, 222, 223 self-awareness 184

B

bachelor 12

Index

Bachelor of Business Administration/BBA 201 balance/balanced 75, 134, 200, 211, 229 bandwagon 80, 81 barbell 200, 201, 210–212 barbell syndrome 40, 41, 200, 201, 203, 207, 210–213 barriers 176, 177 barriers to entry 176, 177 biodiversity 160 Black Lives Matter 96 B-school, B-schools 47–58, 173, 291, 292, 295, 297 building character 219–221 burnout, burn-out, burnouts, burn-outs 93, 97, 106, 109, 114–117, 188 organizational burnout 115 business. See international business; purpose of business business administration 208, 209, 285, 291 business citizen, business citizens 41, 117, 188, 217, 218, 226, 228–230 business decision, business decisions 220, 221, 223, 227 business education higher business education 176 institutions of higher business education 176 business education industry 202 business education institutions 167, 168, 171 business ethics 87, 98, 99, 223, 226, 274 business graduates 176, 178, 237, 242

303

business leaders 99, 140, 160, 183, 184, 191, 204, 218, 228, 241 business literature 173, 174 business school. See B-school, B-schools; international business school; legitimacy of the business school; neoliberal business school; public business school; purpose of business school; responsible business school business school academics 148, 264–266, 295 business school capitalism 69–72, 75–78, 80, 82 business school crisis 135 business school cultural change 159 business school culture 131 business school curricula 95, 96, 154, 182, 191, 194 business school curriculum 90–92, 95, 99 business school development 170 business school education 131, 181, 187, 230, 273, 274, 291 business school experience 219 business school faculty 70, 93, 94, 253, 258, 260, 261, 265, 267 business school graduates 7, 9, 109 business school ideology 69 business school leaders 149, 151, 157 business school legitimacy 7, 10–12, 15–17, 42, 105, 181–183, 188, 191 business school purpose 7 business schools. See elite business schools; ethical business schools; future of business

304

Index

schools; legitimacy of business schools; public business schools business school sector 243 business school teaching 243 business theories 221

C

CABS, Chartered Association of Business Schools 126, 138, 141 capital 95, 126, 184, 254 human capital 56 social capital 186 capitalism academic capitalism 182 business school capitalism 69–72, 75–78, 80, 82 conscious capitalism 82, 95, 97 global capitalism 295, 297 humane capitalism 96 knowledge capitalism 297 neoliberal capitalism 72, 78, 80 Nordic capitalism 98 racial capitalism 93 stakeholder capitalism 95 capitalist 40, 41, 95, 100, 296 post-capitalist 97 capitalist realism 88, 93, 94, 98, 100 career, careers 57, 96, 107, 133, 137, 152, 157, 159, 174, 178, 243, 244, 247, 261–267, 276, 281 career development 130 case study, case studies 5, 149, 157, 254, 295 cash cow, cash cows 131, 135, 147, 237, 238, 248 centrality

faculty-centrality 206, 213 student-centrality 206, 213 centralized 54 challenge, challenges. See grand challenge, grand challenges; grand societal challenge, grand societal challenges; institutional challenges; legitimacy challenges; moral challenges; societal challenge, societal challenges; stakeholder management challenges; sustainability challenge, sustainability challenges change, changes. See climate change; cultural change; ideological change; radical change; social changes; societal change, societal changes; systemic change; transformative change changemaker 254, 257, 259 character 41, 170, 171, 185, 193, 194, 200, 213, 218–222, 225, 229, 230, 277 building character 219–221 character development 221, 222 charismatic leaders 99 charities 135, 296 child, children 152, 262, 263, 283 child labor 90 chilly climate 153 circular economy 81, 141, 183 citizen, citizens business citizen, business citizens 40, 41, 117, 188, 217, 218, 226, 228–230 global citizen, global citizens 56, 183, 184, 188, 194, 254 citizenship

Index

corporate citizenship 89 global citizenship 184 CLA/Collegiate Learning Assessment 281, 282 classroom 100, 206, 210, 223, 224, 242, 280, 298 working class, working classes 94, 296 climate chilly climate 153 ethical work climate 223 work climate 223 climate change 78, 93, 101, 115, 117, 205, 254, 259, 295 climate crisis 291 clinical science 256, 262–266 clumpsy 16 CMS/critical management studies 101, 106 collaboration, collaborations interdisciplinary collaboration 257, 263, 266 research collaboration, research collaborations 137, 186, 265 colleague, colleagues 6, 14, 70, 113, 117, 126, 148, 258, 260, 262–264, 266, 267 college, colleges 7, 214, 275, 276, 280–285 college education 284 college graduates, college grads 276, 284 college students 281, 283 collegial 259 collegial decision-making 175 collegiality 55 colonization 111 communication authentic communication 225

305

intercultural communication 187 miscommunication 192 no-communication 192 communication studies 188 communism 97, 101 communist 100, 297 community, communities 4, 77, 82, 128, 129, 131–135, 153, 169, 199–201, 203, 204, 208, 211, 224, 226, 228, 229, 243, 246 local community, local communities 138, 139 competence, competences 14, 113, 132, 135, 227, 281 intercultural competence 191, 192, 194 competence development 128 competencies 184, 193, 219, 229 competition global competition 55, 176 perfect competition 73 positional competition 171 competition fetish 111, 116 competitive 111–114, 126, 139, 175, 194, 226, 243 competitiveness 7, 50, 53, 171, 221 concept, concepts. See grandiose concepts; management concepts conscious capitalism 82, 95, 97 constructive approach 182 control social control 97 state control 73 controlled 90 control mechanisms 111 conviction, convictions 13, 71 moral convictions 225 co-operation, cooperation 11, 40

306

Index

co-operatives 296 co-ops 70, 297 cooptition 192 corporate citizenship 89 corporate-like institutions 54 corporate scandals 112, 255 corporate sector 71 corporate social responsibility/CSR 40, 87–92, 95–99, 182, 291 corporate sustainability 87 corrupted 8 corrupted societies 8 corruption 9 corruption scandals 9 cost, costs 77, 81, 97, 112, 129, 135, 152, 188, 211, 221, 240, 248, 277 cost efficiency, cost-efficiency 48, 50, 54 cost-efficient 8, 55 courage 220, 222, 225 moral courage 224, 225 Covid 202 COVID-19 after COVID-19 42 COVID-19 pandemic 57, 96, 182, 183, 185, 193, 237, 241 post-COVID-19 248 Covid health crisis 202 criminal scandals 7 crisis business school crisis 135 climate crisis 291 ecological crisis 100 economic crisis 74 financial crisis 89, 91, 95 legitimacy crisis 40, 47, 69, 87, 90, 91, 100 oil crisis 74

post-crisis 95 sustainability crisis 68 critical approaches 159 critically 7, 9, 16, 68, 100 critical management approaches 128 critical management education 7 criticism, criticisms 4, 6, 9, 16, 48, 57, 74, 181–183, 185, 186, 188, 203, 228, 274, 275, 286 criticize/criticized 3, 6, 15, 56, 57, 75, 106, 182, 203, 228, 242 critique, critiques 42, 48, 82, 87, 91, 92, 97, 115, 274 radical critique 99 cross-cultural 184 Cross-Cultural Management 187 CSR discourse 91, 96, 99 cultural business school cultural change 159 local cultural forces 177 cultural change business school cultural change 159 cultural values 187 culture, cultures business school culture 131 high-stress work cultures 110 individualistic culture 133 national cultures 187, 193 supportive working culture 57 curricula business school curricula 95, 96, 154, 182, 191, 194 hidden curricula 70 implicit curricula 80 liberal arts curricula 281 school curricula 95, 96, 154, 182, 191, 194

Index

curricular 89, 92 curricular element, curricular elements 87–89, 93 curricular response 87, 100 curriculum business school curriculum 90–92, 95, 99 hidden curriculum 93, 297 school curriculum 90–92, 95, 99 curriculum design 133 customer approach 207 customer choice 73 customer, customers students as customers 200, 206 customer model 214, 215 customer needs 74 customer orientation 55 customer-oriented 74 cynical 264 cynicism 115, 116

D

debatable 241 debated 48, 115, 182 debate, debates 4, 10, 13, 16, 17, 47, 68, 77, 87, 105, 107, 110, 115, 134, 142, 148–150, 152–156, 159, 175, 184, 242 debating 5, 12, 13, 80 debating position 128, 141 decent 150, 194 decent work 149, 156, 158 decision, decisions business decision, business decisions 220, 221, 223, 227 ethical decision 223 decision makers, decision-makers 224

307

decision making, decision-making 54, 55, 73, 137, 150, 185, 298 collegial decision-making 175 ethical decision-making 225 (de)legitimacy, delegitimacy 17, 48, 56 democracy 73, 108, 297 democratic 77 anti-democratic 79 demotivation 188 depressed 110, 127 depressing 112 depression 93, 106, 107, 109–116 depressive 110 destruction 88, 106, 222 destructive 40, 68, 97, 100, 107, 109, 116, 117 detached from practice 182 development. See business school development; career development; character development; competence development; historical development of business schools; management development; moral development; pedagogical development; personal development; professional development; organization development; organizational development; social capital development; socioeconomic development, socio-economic development; sustainable development; sustainable development goals; theory development

308

Index

development of business schools 49, 56, 149 dilemma, dilemmas 116, 200–203, 205–207, 212, 242 dilemmatic 210 dilemmatic issues 199–203, 213 dirty practitioner 267 disciplinary 107, 227, 243, 261, 294 inter-disciplinary, interdisciplinary 184, 187, 188, 191, 193, 194, 219, 228, 254–267 multi-disciplinary, multidisciplinary 71, 82, 126, 183, 188, 194 disciplinary boundaries 254 disciplinary silos 76, 82, 218 discipline, disciplines 52, 53, 71, 76, 178, 186, 188, 193, 218, 227, 235, 238, 245, 253, 256, 258, 259, 261, 264, 279, 293 academic discipline, academic disciplines 4, 71 discourse analysis 159 discourse(s) CSR discourse 91, 96, 99 political discourses 75 discrimination gender discrimination 150, 151 non-discrimination 155 positive discrimination 153 discriminatory 152, 157 dispositional legitimacy 54 dissertation students 137 distributing leadership 258 diversity biodiversity 160 gender diversity 160 doctoral 211 doctoral graduates 152

doctoral students 137, 152

E

ecological socio-ecological wellbeing 81 ecological collapse 97 ecological crisis 100 ecological economics 81 ecological economists 74 ecological problems 68, 70 economic crisis 74 Economic Man/homo oeconomicus 98, 99, 183 economic purpose 7, 10 economics 11, 71–74, 101, 187, 188, 207, 239, 256, 258, 260, 292–294, 298 ecological economics 81 economic sciences 167 economic sectors 127, 133 economic theories 11 economist, economists 6, 73, 75, 76, 96, 109 ecological economists 74 Economist, The 168 economization 91, 106, 108 economy circular economy 81, 141, 183 global economy 97, 184, 256 EDI/equity, diversity, and inclusion 159, 160 EDIR/equity, diversity, inclusion, and respect 149, 160 education. See academic education; business education; business education industry; business school education; college education; global education;

Index

intercultural management education; international education; leader education; learning-less education; liberal arts education; management education; moral education; responsible management education; specialist education; university education, purpose of university education educational institutions 72, 174, 181, 184–186, 193, 194, 209, 279 educational psychologists 278, 279 education and training sector 243 education reforms 237, 238 education sector education and training sector 243 higher education sector 54, 110, 244 tertiary education sector 238 effective 51, 56, 91, 138, 154, 206, 213, 229, 266, 276 effectively 40, 41, 134, 152, 200, 202, 213, 228 effectiveness 50, 152 organizational effectiveness 50 efficacy 129 inefficacy 115, 116 efficiency cost efficiency, cost-efficiency 48, 50, 54 efficient 55, 74 cost-efficient 8, 55 inefficient 74 efficiently 53–55, 228 EFMD/European Foundation for Management Development

309

148, 153, 168, 171, 172, 229, 239, 240 elite business schools 238, 248 embeddedness 185, 226 empathetic 57, 183, 191 empathy 191 empirical 126, 253, 261, 264–266 empirical evidence 155, 279 empirical insights 187 empirical literature 279, 283 empirical question 278 empirical research 126, 193 empirical studies 283 employee well-being 188 empower, empowers 151, 225 empowering 82 empowerment 57, 184 energy 17, 81, 212, 256, 257, 259 engineering 71, 171, 207, 246, 258, 260 Enron 95, 255 Enron scandals 91 entrepreneurs 70, 99 entrepreneurship 209, 248 academic entrepreneurship 14, 111 environmental 74, 77, 82, 91, 112, 182, 200, 212, 229, 236, 260 environmentalist 297 environmental purpose 10 environment, environments 16, 39, 41, 77, 80, 82, 109, 113, 129, 142, 156, 177, 187, 199, 202, 213, 227, 230, 240, 248 episteme 264 epistemic 263 epistemological 262, 289, 293–295 epistemology 82, 292 equality

310

Index

gender equality 150, 151, 153–157, 159 societal equality 150, 154 EQUIS/European Quality Improvement System 6, 134, 152, 172, 186, 229, 239 equitable 98, 150, 153, 154 inequitable 157 equitable societies 82 equity gender equity 155 inequity 152 ethical 8, 112, 115, 183, 218, 221, 223–226, 228, 229, 241, 242, 248 ethical behavior 10, 185, 223 ethical business schools 68 ethical decision 223 ethical decision-making 225 ethical leadership 154 ethical standards 200 ethical value 182, 188 ethical work climate 223 ethico-moral legitimacy 87 ethico-moral legitimacy crisis 87 ethics 98, 129, 218, 222, 223, 255, 283 business ethics 87, 98, 99, 223, 226, 274 ethnic minority groups 282 ethnocentric 191 ethnorelativism 191 ethnorelativist 191 evidence 69, 129, 178, 225, 256, 258, 264, 275, 279, 282, 292 empirical evidence 155, 279 evidence-based 71, 256, 258, 264–266 exam, exams 114, 283

examination, examinations 52, 111, 183 exchange-based legitimacy 52 executive managers 266 exhausting 107 exhaustion 114, 115 exhaustive 137 experience, experiences. See business school experience; lived experience, lived experiences; university experience experiential learning 185, 210 external legitimacy 149

F

faculty-centrality 206, 213 faculty, faculties. See business school faculty; female faculty; international faculty; management faculty; national faculty; women faculty management faculties 149, 184 faculty members 51, 52, 133, 149, 156, 158, 168, 175, 186, 200, 205, 206, 227 fad, fads 126 management fad, management fads 91 family, families 11, 152, 177, 209, 219, 222, 225, 282 fantasy, fantasies social fantasy, social fantasies 95, 97 female faculty 148, 150, 151, 153, 156, 157 female, females 57, 148, 155 female students 156

Index

finance 70, 74, 76, 83, 101, 227, 236, 247, 292 financial 42, 71, 75, 93, 95, 115, 131, 186, 202, 203, 221, 254, 289, 293–295 financial class 94 future financial class 96 financial crisis 89, 91, 95 financial sector 75 Financial Times 149–151, 153, 156, 160, 168–170 Financial Times Global MBA rankings 155 flagship, flagships 177 flexibility 182, 185, 191, 201 flexible 209, 240 flexibly 185, 192 free market, free markets 75 free market ideology 73 Friedman, Milton 75, 99, 100, 228 funding 48, 55, 111, 127, 131, 133, 135, 141, 142, 157, 220, 261, 263, 294, 295 research funding 126, 133 future captains 88 future financial class 96 future generations 82 future graduates 178 future leaders 151, 205 future legitimacy 140 future managers 58, 76, 192, 222, 228 future of business schools 12, 140, 202, 244

G

gender 9, 96, 154, 156, 159, 187 gender discrimination 150, 151

311

gender diversity 160 gender equality 150, 151, 153–157, 159 gender equity 155 gender inequality, gender inequalities 9, 148–150, 152–154, 160 gender parity 160 gender segregation 149, 150, 152, 154 generate income 131 generating income 17, 115 generation, generations 16, 17, 111, 140, 230, 238 future generations 82 global 39, 48, 69, 77, 92, 94, 108, 131, 168, 172–175, 177, 186, 187, 202, 240, 241, 243, 247, 254, 257, 292–294, 296, 298 global academia 55 global capitalism 295, 297 global citizen, global citizens 56, 183, 184, 188, 194, 254 global citizenship 184 global competition 55, 176 global economy 97, 184, 256 global education 55, 186 globalization 75, 109, 168, 174, 177, 202, 229 globalize, globalized 177, 178, 187, 229, 230, 254 global labor markets 173 global market, global markets 39, 55, 126, 168, 173, 177 Global MBA rankings, Global MBA ranking 155, 157 global ranking, global rankings 55, 171, 240 global standards 247 global warming 93

312

Index

graduated 148, 177, 218 graduate, graduates business graduates 176, 178, 237, 242 business school graduates 7, 9, 109 college graduates, college grads 276, 284 doctoral graduates 152 future graduates 178 high school graduates 284 grand challenge, grand challenges 94, 140, 254–260, 262, 266 grand challenges of society 254, 256, 261, 267 grandiose concepts 91 grand societal challenge, grand societal challenges 41, 253–255, 257–260, 262, 264, 266, 267 grand societal issues 259 grand societal problems 261 grant, grants 214, 263, 264 research grant, research grants 112, 126, 157 Great Resignation 57 greenwashing 68, 70, 81

H

harmonious 98 harmonious markets 95 harmony perspective 27 healing 117 health Covid health crisis 202 health and social assistance sector 243

health care, healthcare 91, 171, 188, 219, 253, 256, 258, 261, 263, 266 health crisis 202 healthier 107, 284 healthier business schools 117 health issues 97, 106 health research 263 health services sector 246 hidden hidden curricula 70 hidden curriculum 93, 297 higher business education institutions of higher business education 176 higher education. See institutions of higher education higher education institution, higher education institutions 10, 81, 94, 220 higher education policy 72, 105, 111, 237 higher education reforms 237, 238 higher education sector 54, 110, 244 high quality, high-quality 126, 133, 136, 137, 173, 256, 262, 267 high school 280 high school graduates 284 high-stress work cultures 110 historical development of business schools 49, 56 homogeneity 237, 244 homogeneous 247 homogenization 5 homo sociooeconomicus 183 human capital 56 humane capitalism 96 humanist 106, 182, 184 humanistic 178

Index

humanities/humanity 14, 70, 89, 178, 188, 220, 227, 235, 245, 273 human resource management 258, 263 Humboldtian ideal 90 Humboldtian model 51 Humboldt ideal 183 Humboldt, Wilhelm von 51, 183, 194 hypocrisy 148, 150, 160 hypocritical 149, 150 hypocritical legitimacy 149–151, 153, 159 hypocritically 135

I

identity, identities 82, 266, 267 academic identity 114, 262 ideological 40, 68–70, 72, 80, 92, 99, 133, 139, 274 ideological bandwagon 80 ideological change 51 ideological prison 40, 81 ideology business school ideology 69 free market ideology 73 management ideology 49 managerial ideology 57 market ideology 73 neoliberal ideology 107, 141 illegitimate 220 immoral 221 impact. See moral impact impact agenda 39, 41, 128, 142, 148–154, 156, 159, 160 impact case, impact cases 136, 149, 151, 157, 257

313

impact factor, impact factors 116, 263 impact rankings 155, 157, 158 implicit curricula 80 inclusion 52, 137, 152, 154, 156, 159, 172, 297 inclusive 58, 150, 153, 154, 160, 260 inclusive leadership 149, 157 inclusiveness 57 income generate income 131 generating income 17, 115 individualism 182 individualistic 73 individualistic culture 133 individualization 152 industry, industries 41, 54, 73, 76, 88, 91, 94, 96, 131, 142, 176, 193, 201, 236, 238, 239, 242, 243, 247, 248 business education industry 202 publishing industry 133 inefficacy 116 inefficient 74 inequality, inequalities 89, 91, 93, 96, 108, 111, 115, 117, 152, 154, 159, 282, 291, 295 gender inequality, gender inequalities 9, 148–150, 152–154, 160 inequitable 157 inequity 152 inertia 16, 113, 174, 212 organizational inertia 160 influence-based legitimacy 53 innovation, innovations 14, 50, 73, 111, 126, 129, 135, 137, 148,

314

Index

152, 183, 210, 237, 248, 254, 259, 264 innovative 159, 185, 209, 257, 276 innovative leaders 204 innovativeness 185 insomnia 106, 107, 109, 112–114, 116 organizational insomnia 113 insomniac 113, 114, 116 institute, institutes 52, 261 institutional 48, 55, 69, 71, 77, 80, 111, 114, 115, 117, 125, 127, 134, 136, 149, 159, 176, 185, 200, 206, 219, 237, 247, 256, 257, 265, 267 institutional challenges 256 institutional isomorphism 245, 247 institutionalization 71 institutionalized 53, 68, 88 institutional legitimacy 149, 150, 157, 160 institutional theorists 130 institutions academic institutions 49, 53, 55–57, 69, 113, 168, 174 business education institutions 167, 168, 171 corporate-like institutions 54 educational institutions 72, 174, 181, 184, 185, 193, 194, 209, 279 higher education institution, higher education institutions 10, 81, 94, 220 public sector institutions 54 research-based institutions 53 institutions of higher business education 176

institutions of higher education 173–176, 178 instruments 81 management instruments 191 intercultural 187, 191, 193 intercultural communication 187 intercultural competence 191, 192, 194 intercultural management 186, 187 intercultural management education 40, 186–188, 194 intercultural perspective 185 interdisciplinarity, inter-disciplinary 184, 187, 193, 228, 254–267 multi- and interdisciplinarity 188, 194 interdisciplinary collaboration 257, 263, 266 interest groups 185 international accreditation, international accreditations 50, 55, 131, 171–173, 229, 238, 239 international business 169, 174, 187, 191 international business school 170, 172 international education 148 international faculty 168, 170, 175 internationality 169, 184 internationalization 14, 73, 137, 168–172, 175, 177, 178 internationalize 171 international market, international markets 171, 238, 239 international ranking, international rankings 169, 170, 240 international standards 171

Index

international student, international students 126, 134, 148, 168, 170, 175, 186, 202, 238, 239, 244, 245 isomorphism institutional isomorphism 245, 247 mimetic isomorphism 14 ivory tower 113

J

job, jobs 55, 57, 111, 112, 115, 176, 201, 221, 236, 241–243, 246, 275, 276, 284 job market, job markets 56, 112, 114, 176–178, 207 job-ready graduates package 237 judgement, judgment, judgements, judgments 48, 50, 108, 157, 220, 222, 276 moral judgement 223

K

Kant, Immanuel 51, 52 knowledge capitalism 297 knowledge interest 3, 13 Knowledge Transfer Projects 137

L

labor academic labor 147, 293 child labor 90 labor market, labor markets 152, 168, 174, 176 global labor markets 173 national labor markets 177, 178

315

language, languages 12, 74, 132, 135, 137, 175–178, 184, 191–193, 263, 266, 283, 292 language learning 192–194 law 71, 167, 245, 294 leader development 222 leader education 184 leader, leaders business leaders 99, 140, 160, 183, 184, 191, 204, 218, 228, 241 business school leaders 149, 151, 157 charismatic leaders 99 future leaders 151, 205 innovative leaders 204 responsible leaders 87, 89, 151 toxic leaders 109 leadership distributing leadership 258 ethical leadership 154 inclusive leadership 149, 157 responsible leadership 87, 89, 149, 151, 157 toxic leaders 109 lean organizations 56 lean production 126 learning. See experiential learning; language learning; limited learning; organizational learning; problem-based learning; transfer of learning; work-integrated learning learning-less education 34 learning objectives 80 learning outcomes 92, 282 legitimacy. See business school legitimacy; (de)legitimacy, delegitimacy; dilemmatic

316

Index

legitimacy; dispositional legitimacy; exchange-based legitimacy; external legitimacy; future legitimacy; hypocritical legitimacy; influence-based legitimacy; institutional legitimacy; moral legitimacy, ethico-moral legitimacy; moral legitimacy, ethico-moral legitimacy crisis; organizational legitimacy; pragmatic legitimacy; public legitimacy; societal legitimacy; structural legitimacy; substantive legitimacy; symbolic legitimacy legitimacy as a property 150 legitimacy-as-process 148–150, 157 legitimacy challenges 69 legitimacy crisis 40, 47, 67, 69, 90, 91, 100 ethico-moral legitimacy crisis 87 legitimacy of business schools/legitimacy of the business school 4, 8, 10, 13, 40, 68, 91, 117, 159, 181, 217, 253 legitimacy theory 49, 52, 53 legitimacy work 70 legitimate 16, 55, 83, 130, 199, 200, 230, 247 illegitimate 220 legitimate purpose, legitimate purposes 6, 7, 10, 11 less-profitable 238 liberal arts 273–278, 280, 281, 286 liberal arts curricula 281 liberal arts education 15, 42, 219, 273, 274, 276–278, 280, 281, 286

liberal arts school, liberal arts schools 274, 275, 277, 278, 280, 282 lingua franca 192 lip service, lip-service 241, 243 literature Anglo-Saxon literature 90 business literature 173, 174 empirical literature 279, 283 management literature 95 organization theory literature 138 sociological literature 107 transfer-of-learning literature 283 lived experience, lived experiences 148, 150, 153 local community, local communities 138, 139 local cultural forces 177 local, locals 127, 177, 236, 260, 298 local market 170 logic, logics 9–11, 54, 69, 77, 100, 116, 127, 137, 292, 293 lucrative 57, 294 lucrativeness 38

M

management. See cross-cultural management; intercultural management; responsible management management academics 236 women management academics 154, 160 management concepts 76 management development 202 management education 8, 9, 12, 39, 71, 72, 92, 106, 115, 154, 208, 235–237, 245–248

Index

intercultural management education 40, 184, 186–188, 194 responsible management education 87, 90, 154, 241 management faculty, management faculties 149, 184 management fad, management fads 90 management fashions 113 management ideology 49 management instruments 191 management literature 95 management scholar, management scholars 76, 91, 94, 148, 153, 154, 159, 160 management schools 208, 236 management science, management sciences 208 management theory, management theories 75, 275 managerial 7, 9, 48, 69, 76, 82, 111, 200, 205, 209, 213, 238, 255, 266 post-managerial 58 managerial ideology 57 managerialism 17, 47–49, 54–58, 69, 70, 72, 75–78, 80, 147, 291 managerialist 57, 297 managerial university, managerial universities 48, 54, 55, 57 manager, managers executive managers 266 future managers 58, 76, 192, 222, 228 practicing managers 69, 77 market ideology free market ideology 73

317

marketing 80, 113, 170, 182, 224, 244, 275, 278, 291, 296, 297 market, markets. See free market, free markets; free market ideology; global labor markets; global market, global markets; harmonious markets; international market; job market, job markets; local market; national labor markets marketization xiii MBA/Master of Business Administration/MBAs Global MBA rankings 155, 157 global ranking, global rankings 55, 171, 240 medical 109, 110, 115 medical school, medical schools 258, 263, 264, 296 medical science 112 medicine 52, 71, 167, 258 men 9, 154, 159 men students 9 metaphoric, metaphorical 113 metaphor, metaphors 48, 106, 109, 113, 200 mimetic isomorphism 14 minorities 149, 158, 160, 274, 279, 282 minority groups ethnic minority groups 282 miscommunication 192 mission, missions 49, 53, 56, 80, 113, 117, 127, 128, 150, 153, 183, 199, 201, 203–205, 208, 213, 228, 247, 255, 259, 260, 274

318

Index

mission statement, mission statements 68, 70, 200, 203, 205, 208, 213, 281 moral awareness 117, 222, 223 moral behavior 283 moral challenges 7 moral character 41 moral compass 218 moral convictions 225 moral courage 224, 225 moral development 218, 222 moral education 221 moral imagination 93 moral impact 8 morality 8, 188, 220, 222, 225, 255 moral judgement 223 moral legitimacy ethico-moral legitimacy 87 ethico-moral legitimacy crisis 87 morally 184, 224 morally aware 222 moral, morals amoral 9, 222 immoral 221 moral motivation 224 moral obligation 222 moral perspective 222 moral practice 7 moral reasoning 91 moral responsibility 9 moral standards 8 motivate/motivated 55, 106, 224, 225 motivation demotivation 188 moral motivation 224 multi- and interdisciplinarity 188, 194

multi-disciplinary, multidisciplinary 71, 82, 126, 183, 188 myopia 133, 220 myopic 230

N

narcissistic 109 narrow 141, 200, 218, 255–257, 261, 279–281, 296, 297 narrow-minded 9, 49 narrow-minded profit-seeking 11 narrow scope 78 nation 51, 244, 247 national cultures 187, 193 national faculty 175 national labor markets 177, 178 nationally 171, 174, 177, 184, 244 national, nationals 50, 55, 94, 127, 169, 174, 175, 177, 178, 187, 237, 244, 248, 257, 266, 294 neoliberal business school 159 neoliberal capitalism 72, 78, 80 neoliberal ideology 107, 141 neoliberalism, neo-liberalism 69, 70, 72–78, 80, 98, 130, 242 neoliberalist, neoliberalists 73, 75 neoliberal, neo-liberal post-neoliberal 138 neoliberal neurosis 40, 88, 89, 94–96, 100, 106 neoliberals neurotic neoliberals 95, 99 reformed neoliberals 96 networked thinking systemic and networked thinking 182, 193, 194 networking 186, 193

Index

network, networks 148, 172, 244, 247, 262 neurosis neoliberal neurosis 40, 88, 89, 94–96, 100, 106 neurotic 96, 106 neurotic neoliberals 95, 99 New Public Management 54 no-communication 192 non-academic 8, 113 non-discrimination 155 non-profit, non-profits 70, 172 non-Western 191 Nordic capitalism 98 not-for-profit 244

O

OECD/Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries 152 openness 4, 50, 128, 191 opinion, opinions 13, 39, 41, 96, 192, 225, 276 organization. See public organizations organizational behavior 188, 241, 293 organizational burnout 115 organizational conditions 76 organizational culture, organizational cultures 49, 221, 223 organizational development 266 organizational effectiveness 50 organizational excellence 56 organizational fields 149, 168 organizational form, organizational forms 70, 139 organizational goals 50

319

organizational inertia 160 organizational insomnia 113 organizational knowledge 113 organizational learning 225 organizational legitimacy 4, 47–51 organizational level 106, 109 organizational life 106, 115 organizational models 58 organizational scholars 100 organizational structures 50 organizational theory, organizational theories 265 organizational types 129 organization development 134 organization studies, Organization Studies 106, 113, 187, 188, 262, 293 organization theory 106 organization theory literature 138 organize, organized 100, 171, 206, 296 organizers 298 organizing school for organizing, schools for organizing 296, 298

P

pandemic COVID-19 pandemic 57, 96, 182, 183, 185, 193, 237, 241 post-pandemic 149 paradoxical 49, 105 paradoxically 236 pathological 107, 109, 110, 113 pathological pathways 105, 109, 116, 117 pathologies, pathology 95, 96, 106–108, 110

320

Index

pedagogical development 133 pedagogic, pedagogical 210 pedagogy 133, 142 perfect competition 73 performance 54, 55, 76, 107, 108, 131, 138, 171, 203–205, 220, 256, 281 performance-oriented 111, 116 performance-oriented society 108, 110, 114, 116 performance versus purpose 203, 213. See also purpose versus performance personal development 50 personnel administrative personnel 52 philosophers 242 philosophical 107, 159, 242, 283 philosophies, philosophy 47, 51, 52, 80, 82, 99, 277, 283, 292, 293 policy higher education policy 72, 105, 111, 237 public policy 75 policy reforms 248 political 7, 53, 73, 74, 80, 91–93, 98, 99, 101, 191 political discourses 75 politicians 76 politicization 69 politicized 135 politics 73, 75, 90, 96, 98, 293, 298 positional competition 171 positive discrimination 153 post-capitalist 97 post-COVID-19 248 post-crisis, post crisis 95 postgraduate 127, 132, 137, 138, 244

post-managerial 58 post-neoliberal 138 post-pandemic 149 power 10, 12, 52, 55, 75, 107, 115, 159, 177, 225, 264, 296 powerful 70, 72, 222, 224, 296 powerhouses 219 powerless 117 powerlessness 94 practical relevance 41, 203, 255, 265 practice-engaged 267 practice-orientation, practice orientation 184, 193, 194 practicing managers 69, 77 practitioner, practitioners dirty practitioner 267 pragmatic legitimacy 51 private 4, 17, 48, 73, 74, 98, 108, 142, 185, 207, 237, 239, 244 private or public 6, 53 private sector 74, 129 problem-based learning 225 professional development 50, 218 professionalization 52 professional standards 240 profitability 11, 57, 81, 221, 294 profitable less-profitable 238 profitably 262, 265 profit above all 131, 141 profit maximization, profit-maximization 9, 48, 88, 97, 109, 218 profit maximizers 116 profit-oriented 184 profit, profits non-profit, non-profits 70, 172 not-for-profit 244 short-term profits 182, 192, 200

Index

profit-seeking narrow-minded profit-seeking 11 psychiatric 109, 110 psychic prison 106 psychoanalytic social theory 95 psychological 280 psychologically 154 psychological safety 225 psychologist, psychologists educational psychologists 278, 279 psychology 4, 187, 188, 223, 258, 292–294 psychopath 109 psychopathic 116 psychopathological 106 psychopathy 117 psychopolitically 114 psychopolitics 116 psychotic 109 psychotic university, psychotic universities 106 public New Public Management 54 public business school, public business schools 237, 239, 242, 245 public good 48, 53, 126, 150 public interest, public interests 291 public legitimacy 235 public organizations 70, 74 public or private. See private or public public policy 75 public sector institutions 54 public sector, public sectors 4, 54, 73, 113, 126, 127, 296 public university, public universities 185, 236–240, 243–248

321

public values 241, 259, 291 publishing industry 133 purpose of business 115, 117 purpose of university education 223 purpose, purposes business school purpose 7 economic purpose 7, 10 environmental purpose 10 legitimate purpose, legitimate purposes 6, 7, 10, 11 societal purpose 10, 70 purpose versus performance 213. See also performance versus purpose

Q

Quacquarelli Symonds/QS 170, 239 quality high quality, high-quality 126, 133, 136, 173, 256, 262, 267 quality assurance 137, 169, 171–173

R

race 96 racial 282 racial capitalism 93 radical 39, 92, 98, 254, 265 radical change 101, 265, 298 radical critique 99 radically 40, 88, 98, 100, 130, 275 radical theories 77 radical transformation 100 ranking, rankings academic rankings 185 Global MBA rankings 155, 157 impact rankings 155, 157, 158 international rankings 169, 170

322

Index

realism capitalist realism 88, 93, 94, 98, 100 realist 42 realistic 93, 98, 274 REF/Research Excellence Framework 131, 133, 151, 261 reflected 96, 218, 242, 257 reflect, reflects 68, 89, 99, 106, 108, 152, 177, 192, 222, 226, 258, 267, 294, 297 reflexive 94, 100 reflexive impotence 88, 89, 93, 94, 96, 100 reflexivity 88, 93, 159 reformation 240 reformed reformed neoliberals 96 reformers 96 reforming 82 reformist 289 reform, reforms education reforms 237, 238 higher education reforms 237, 238 policy reforms 248 regional 128, 174, 187, 236, 245, 246, 266 relativism ethnorelativism 191 relativist ethnorelativist 191 relativistic 193 relevance practical relevance 39, 41, 203, 255, 265 rigor versus relevance, rigor vs. relevance 116 societal relevance 114

reputational 50, 129, 133, 149 reputation, reputations 40, 111, 131, 138, 170, 173, 174, 176, 177, 202, 208, 211, 229, 240 research. See academic research; empirical research; rigorous research research agenda 203, 254 research-based institutions 53 research collaboration, research collaborations 137, 186 researcher, researchers 12, 13, 91, 111, 138, 152, 153, 159, 188, 205, 261, 263, 284 research funder 292 research funding 126, 133 research grant, research grants 112, 126, 136, 157 research impact 148–151, 155, 158, 160, 257 research impact agenda 39, 148, 149, 151–154, 159, 160 research output, research outputs 133, 135, 176, 203, 205, 240 research versus teaching 205, 213 resilience 16, 202, 213 resilient 16, 41, 89, 200, 213 resist 264 resistance 57, 100, 113, 177 resisting 100 responsibility, responsibilities corporate social responsibility/CSR 40, 87–92, 95–99, 182, 291 moral responsibility 9 social responsibility 10, 75, 223, 228 responsibilizing 99

Index

responsible 98, 110, 114, 185, 188, 243, 248 responsible business school 40, 68 responsible capitalism 92 responsible leaders 149, 157 responsible leadership 87, 89, 151 responsible management 154, 241 responsible management education 87, 90, 154, 241 responsible turn, responsible-turn 87–93, 95, 97, 98, 100 rhetorical 148 rhetoric, rhetorics 150, 151, 153, 155, 242, 292, 293 rigor academic rigor 127, 133, 203 rigor and relevance 117, 133, 149, 213 rigorous 137, 211 rigorous research 203, 211 rigor versus relevance, rigor vs. relevance 116 Rio Tinto 241 rocket science 160

S

salience 139 saliency 128, 129, 133, 139 salient 237 scandals corporate scandals 112, 255 corruption scandals 9 criminal scandals 7 Enron scandals 91 WorldCom scandals 95 scholar, scholars. See business school scholar; management scholar,

323

management scholars; organizational scholars school curriculum, school curricula 90–92, 95, 96, 99, 154, 182, 191, 194 school for organizing, schools for organizing 296, 298 school for public good 53, 126, 150 school, schools. See business school, business schools; liberal arts school, liberal arts schools; management schools; medical school, medical schools science, sciences clinical science 256, 262–266 economic sciences 167 management science, management sciences 208 medical science 112 rocket science 160 social science, social sciences 4, 70, 81, 82, 107, 130, 188, 227, 256, 259, 292, 293 Science, Technology Engineering and Mathematics/STEM 237, 239 scientific management 75, 76 SDG/sustainable development goal/SDGs/sustainable development goals 68, 80, 148–151, 155, 157, 160 sector business school sector 243 corporate sector 71 economic sectors 127, 133 education and training sector 243 financial sector 75 health and social assistance sector 243

324

Index

health services sector 246 higher education sector 54, 110, 244 private sector 74, 129 tertiary education sector 238 tertiary sector 242 third sector 129, 296 university sector 244 segregation gender segregation 149, 150, 152, 154 selection effects 284–286 self-awareness 184 self-interest, self interest, self-interested 75, 93, 109, 182, 261 self-referential 253, 257 shaman, shamans 117 shareholder approach 129 shareholder interests 192 shareholderism 69, 70, 72, 74–78, 80 shareholder, shareholders 74, 75, 80, 228, 242, 254 shareholder value 97, 109, 112, 297 shareholder wealth 75, 77, 80 short-term profits 182, 192, 200 shut down 12, 298 silos disciplinary silos 76, 82, 218 Smith, Adam 6 social assistance sector health and social assistance sector 243 social capital 186 social capital development 186 social changes 73 social control 97 social fantasies, social fantasy 95, 97

socialism 97, 274 socialist, socialists 97, 274 socialization 219, 223–225 socialize, socialized 53, 116 social responsibility, social responsibilities corporate social responsibility/CSR 40, 87–92, 95–97, 99, 182, 291 social science, social sciences 4, 70, 81, 82, 107, 130, 188, 227, 256, 259, 260, 264, 292, 293 social theory psychoanalytic social theory 95 social value, social values 89, 94 social well-being 73 societal 8, 11, 72, 80, 88, 107, 109, 152, 200, 212, 218, 226, 228, 229, 240, 243 societal challenge, challenges 41, 211, 253–255, 257–260, 262, 264, 266, 267 societal change, societal changes 8, 148 societal contract 82 societal equality 150, 154 societal legitimacy 40, 181, 184, 186, 194 societal perspective 6 societal purpose 10, 70 societal relevance 114 societal well-being 74 society of negativity 107 society of positivity 107 society, societies. See performance-oriented society corrupted societies 8 equitable societies 82 Western societies 53

Index

socio-ecological 81 socio-ecological wellbeing 81 socioeconomic development, socio-economic development 50, 53 socioeconomic, socio-economic 242 sociological 107 sociological literature 107 sociology 4, 187, 188, 262, 292–294 specialism, specialisms 257, 264 specialist education 41 specialist, specialists 41, 241, 246, 261, 262, 266, 267, 294 specialization, specialisation 142, 244, 246 specialize, specialized 5, 236, 247, 248, 278 spiritual figure 117 staff academic staff 133, 155 administrative staff 50 international staff 186 stakeholder approach 129 stakeholder array 130, 131, 134, 135 stakeholder capitalism 95 stakeholder groups 50, 74, 127, 129, 130, 138, 139 stakeholder management 129 stakeholder management challenges 131 stakeholder management perspective 129 stakeholder perspective 139 stakeholders of business schools 130, 237 stakeholder, stakeholders 4, 15, 39–42, 48, 49, 52, 55–58, 71, 75, 77, 116, 125–131, 133–135, 137–139, 142, 159,

325

186, 192, 193, 210, 211, 220, 227, 228, 246, 254, 255, 297 stakeholder theory 128, 129, 138, 274 standardization 172 standards academic standards 199 accreditation standards 152, 172, 239 ethical standards 200 global standards 247 international standards 171 moral standards 8 professional standards 240 state control 73 status 127, 135, 138, 170, 173, 194, 248, 264, 265, 296 status quo 153, 237 structural legitimacy 53 student-centrality 206, 213 students as customers 200, 206 student, students. See college students; dissertation student; doctoral students; female students; international student, international students; men students; women students substantive legitimacy 148, 153, 156, 160 supportive 154, 266 supportive working culture 57 sustainability corporate sustainability 87 sustainability challenge, sustainability challenges 77, 81, 83 sustainability crisis 68 sustainable development 10, 70, 81, 82

326

Index

sustainable development goal/SDGs 39, 68, 82, 148, 151, 155, 241 symbolic legitimacy 148, 150, 153 systemic and networked thinking 182, 193, 194 systemic change 40, 87, 89 systems thinking 184

T

Taylor, Frederick W. 75, 76 Taylorism 6 teach 6–10, 58, 82, 112, 141, 194, 247, 274, 279, 284, 291, 292, 295, 296, 298 teacher, teachers 178, 205, 206, 243 teaching business school teaching 243 research versus teaching 205, 213 technology 52, 132, 237, 243, 244, 257 tertiary education sector 238 tertiary sector 242 THE/Times Higher Education 155, 160, 170, 239 theorists institutional theorists 130 theory and practice 183 theory development 41, 255 theory, theories. See absorptive capacity theory; agency theory; agent-principal theory; business theories; economic theories; efficient market theory; legitimacy theory; management theory, management theories; market theory; organization theory; organizational theory,

organizational theories; psychoanalytic social theory; psychological theory; radical theories; social theory; stakeholder theory; translation theory third sector 129, 296 Times Higher Education university impact rankings 155, 157, 158 tolerance for ambiguity 191, 192 toxic 222 toxic leaders 109 training sector education and training sector 243 transfer of learning 278–281 transfer-of-learning literature 283 transformation radical transformation 100 transformative 184 transformative change 88, 89, 101 transgender 155 translation theory 265

U

UN/United Nations/United Nation/United Nation’s 39, 68, 70, 80, 148, 150, 151, 154, 155 undergraduate, undergraduates 127, 132, 137, 138, 170, 218, 282 underrepresentation 39, 148, 153, 154, 159 underrepresented 101, 154 university education purpose of university education 223 university experience 221, 226

Index

university impact rankings 155, 157, 158 university sector 244 university, universities. See managerial university, managerial universities; psychotic university, psychotic universities; public university, public universities utilitarian 7, 77, 111, 114, 228 utility 138 utilized 229 utopia 101 utopian 88, 92, 100, 117 V

value systems 219, 220 value, values cultural values 187 ethical value 182, 188 public values 241, 259 shareholder value 97, 109, 112, 297 social value, social values 89, 94 VUCA world (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and agility) 182, 191, 193

social well-being 73 societal well-being 74 socio-ecological wellbeing 81 Western non-Western 191 Western ideal 182 Western societies 53 Western world 73, 105 window-dressing 40, 70, 81 wisdom 220 women 7, 9, 41, 147, 148, 150–157, 160 women academics 151, 160 women faculty 149–151, 156–158 women management academics 160 women students 150, 151 work climate ethical work climate 223 work cultures high-stress work cultures 110 working class, working classes 94, 296 working culture supportive working culture 57 work-integrated learning 244 world-class 173 WorldCom 91 WorldCom scandals 91, 95

W

well-being, wellbeing employee well-being 188

327

Z

zeitgeist 117