Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-cb9f654ff-fg9bn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-08-06T16:46:29.152Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

2 - Business school identity and legitimacy: its relationship to the modern university and society

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 July 2013

Howard Thomas ,
Peter Lorange  and
Jagdish Sheth
Howard Thomas
Affiliation:
Singapore Management University
Peter Lorange
Affiliation:
Lorange Institute of Business
Jagdish Sheth
Affiliation:
Emory University, Atlanta
Get access

Summary

INTRODUCTION

In the modern university the business school is currently valued much more for its managerial expertise, cash-generation abilities and financial strength than its intellectual vigour and scholarship (Bok, 2003; Starkey and Tempest, 2008). Indeed, as indicated earlier, the legitimacy of business as a serious academic discipline is critically questioned by scholars in science, arts and the humanities (see, for example, Nussbaum, 1997). Further, with the mindset of the corporate university and corporate managerialism as fashionable metaphors for the commercialisation of higher education, many university critics (Bok, 2003; Angus, 2009; Menaud, 2010) have berated university presidents for abandoning the fundamental ideals and visions of universities as ‘thinking institutions’ and generators of knowledge.

They argue that university presidents have instead championed business schools and commercial relevance as criteria for university success and growth while ceding the values of the traditional, elite university to marketisation, market values and financial stability.

Information

Type
Chapter
Information
The Business School in the Twenty-First Century
Emergent Challenges and New Business Models
 , pp. 52 - 89
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2013

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Book purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Angus, I. H. (2009). Love the Questions: University Education and Enlightenment. Winnipeg: Arbeiter Ring.Google Scholar
Beer, M. (2001). Why management research findings are unimplementable: an action science perspective. Reflections, 2(3): 58–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bennis, W. G. and O’Toole, J. (2005). How business schools lost their way. Harvard Business Review, 83(5): 96–104.Google ScholarPubMed
Bisoux, T. (2003). The Zen of B-school branding. BizEd, November/December: 24–9.
Bloom, A. D. (1987). The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today's Students. New York: Simon & Schuster.Google Scholar
Bok, D. (2003). Universities in the Marketplace: The Commercialization of Higher Education. Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Bowen, W. and Shapiro, H. (1998). Universities and Their Leadership. Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cheit, E. F. (1985). Business schools and their critics. California Management Review, 27: 43–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cole, J. (2010). The Great American University. New York: Public Affairs Perseus Books.Google Scholar
Delanty, G. (2001). Challenging Knowledge: The University in the Knowledge Society. Buckingham: Open University Press.Google Scholar
Drucker, P. (1974). Management: Tasks, Responsibilities and Practices. New York: Harper & Row.Google Scholar
Durand, T. and Dameron, S. (2008). The Future of Business Schools. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Engwall, L. (2000). Foreign role models and standardization in Nordic business education. Scandinavian Journal of Management, 16: 1–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gabor, A. (2002). The Capitalist Philosophers: The Geniuses of Modern Business – Their Lives, Times and Ideas. New York: Three Rivers Press.Google Scholar
Ghoshal, S. (2005). Bad management theories are destroying good management practices. Academy of Management Learning and Education, 4: 75–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gladwell, M. (2002). The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference. Boston: Little, Brown.Google Scholar
Goodall, A. H. (2009). Socrates in the Boardroom: Why Research Universities Should be Led by Top Scholars. Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grey, C. (2007). Possibilities for critical management education and studies. Scandinavian Journal of Management, 23: 463–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hambrick, D. C. (2007). The field of management's devotion to theory: too much of a good thing?Academy of Management Journal, 50 (6): 1346–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hayes, R. H. and Abernathy, W. J. (1980). Managing our way to economic decline. Harvard Business Review, July/August: 138–49.
Hubbard, G. (2006). Business, knowledge and global growth. Capitalism and Society, 1(3): 1–10.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Khurana, R. (2007). From Higher Aims to Hired Hands: The Social Transformation of American Business Schools and the Unfulfilled Promise of Management as Profession. Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Khurana, R. and Nohria, N. (2008). It's time to make management a true profession. Harvard Business Review, 86(10): 70–7.Google ScholarPubMed
Kirp, D. (2003). Shakespeare, Einstein, and the Bottom Line: The Marketing of Higher Education. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Levitt, T. (1978, 18 December). A heretical view of management science. Fortune, 50–2.
Livingston, J. S. (1971). Myth of the well-educated manager. Harvard Business Review, 49(1): 79–89.Google Scholar
Locke, E. R. and Spender, J. C. (2011). Confronting Manageralism. London: Zed Books.Google Scholar
Lorange, P. (2008). Thought Leadership Means Business: How Business Schools Can Become More Successful. Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McGrath, R. (2007). No longer a stepchild: how the management field can come into its own. Academy of Management Journal, 50: 1365–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Menaud, L. (2010). The Marketplace of Ideas. Reform and Resistance in the American University. New York: W. W. Norton.Google Scholar
Mintzberg, H. (2004). Managers, Not MBAs: A Hard Look at the Soft Practice of Managing and Management Development. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers.Google Scholar
Moldoveanu, M. C. and Martin, R. L. (2008). The Future of the MBA: Designing the Thinker of the Future. Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Newman, J. H. (1852). The Idea of a University. London: Longmans Green.Google Scholar
Noorda, S. (2011). Future business schools. Journal of Management Development, 30(5): 519–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nussbaum, M. C. (1997). Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Peters, K. and Thomas, H. (2011). A sustainable model for business schools. Global Focus: The EFMD Business Magazine, 5(2): 24–7.Google Scholar
Pfeffer, J. (2007). What Were They Thinking? Unconventional Wisdom about Management. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.Google Scholar
Pfeffer, J. and Fong, C. (2002). The end of business schools? Less success than meets the eye. Academy of Management Learning and Education, 1(1): 78–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pfeffer, J. and Fong, C.(2004a). The business school ‘business’: some lessons from the US experience. Journal of Management Studies, 41: 1501–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pfeffer, J. and Fong, C.(2004b, 22 May). But can you teach it? The Economist: 61–3.
Podolny, J. M. (2009). The buck stops (and starts) at business school. Harvard Business Review, 87: 62–7.Google Scholar
Readings, B. (1996). The University in Ruins. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Rhodes, F. (1998). The university and its critics, in Bowen, W. and Shapiro, H. (eds.), Universities and Their Leadership: 3–15. Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Schoemaker, P. J. (2008). The future challenges of business: rethinking management education. California Management Review, 50(3): 119–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schumpeter, (2010, 2 September). Declining by degree. The Economist.
Sheth, J. N. (1988). Changing demographics and the future of graduate management education. Selections, Spring: 22–7.
Sheth, J. N.(2008). The Self Destructive Habits of Good Companies . . . and How to Break Them. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Wharton School Publishing.Google Scholar
Skapinker, M. (2011, 24 January). Why business still ignores business schools. Financial Times.
Starkey, K. and Tempest, S. (2008). A clear sense of purpose? The evolving role of the business school. Journal of Management Development, 27(4): 379–90, Special Issue on ‘Challenging the Purpose of Business Schools’, ed. H. Thomas.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Starkey, K. and Tiratsoo, N. (2007). The Business School and the Bottom Line. Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thomas, H. and Wilson, A. D. (2011). ‘Physics envy’, cognitive legitimacy or practical relevance: dilemmas in the evolution of management research in the UK. British Journal of Management, 22: 443–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Van Maanen, J. (1983). Qualitative Methodology. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Veblen, T. (1918). Business and the higher learning, in The Higher Learning in America. A Memorandum on the Conduct of Universities by Business Men. New York: B. W. Huebsch.Google Scholar
von Humboldt, W. (1970). University reform in Germany: reports and documents. Minerva, 8: 242–50.Google Scholar
Washburn, J. (2005). University Inc: The Corporate Corruption of American Higher Education. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Watson, S. R. (1993). The place for universities in management education. Journal of General Management, 19 (Winter): 14–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Watson, S. R. (2000). Why is it that management academics rarely advise on the management of their own institutions?Human Resource Development International, 3(1): 89–100.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Whitley, R. (1981). Women, business schools and the social reproduction of business elites: Britain and France, in Epstein, C. F. and Coser, R. L. (eds.), Access to Power: Cross National Studies of Women and Elites:185–92. London: George Allen & Unwin.Google Scholar

Accessibility standard: Unknown

Accessibility compliance for the PDF of this book is currently unknown and may be updated in the future.

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×