Perspectives on the mission, value and impact of the business school
The business school has been an important success story in the evolution of the modern university. Yet it is increasingly valued in that context “much more for its managerial expertise, cash generation ability and financial strength than its intellectual vigour and scholarship. Indeed … its legitima...
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| Format: | text |
| Language: | English |
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Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University
2023
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| Online Access: | https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/lkcsb_research/7191 https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/lkcsb_research/article/8190/viewcontent/EFMD_Global_Focus_Perspectives_on_the_impact_mission_and_purpose_of_the_business_school_pvoa.pdf |
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| Institution: | Singapore Management University |
| Language: | English |
| Summary: | The business school has been an important success story in the evolution of the modern university. Yet it is increasingly valued in that context “much more for its managerial expertise, cash generation ability and financial strength than its intellectual vigour and scholarship. Indeed … its legitimacy as a serious academic discipline is critically questioned by scholars in science, arts and the humanities” (Thomas, Lorange and Sheth, 2013, pp 52/3). Rakesh Khurana (2007) argues that business schools have become the ‘hired hands’ of business and have abandoned any pretence of fulfilling goals of developing a cadre of professional managers as proposed by early deans (e.g. Dean Donham at Harvard Business School). Therefore, when business schools evolved into “businesses” they framed their mission and vision around a dominant paradigm, a market-based view focused on market efficiency and the principle of shareholder value maximisation – essentially ‘market managerialism’ (Locke and Spender, 2011). However, after a number of catastrophic business failures such as Enron, the late Sumantra Ghoshal (2005) and other critics argued that business schools in their desire to be acknowledged as legitimate and serious academic players, had been guilty of perpetuating and teaching ‘amoral theories’ that destroyed sound managerial practices and produced profit-maximising managers and professionals. This, in turn, may have contributed to ethical and moral behavioural lapses in events such as the global financial crisis. A key consequence was that the principle of trust central to the operation of market capitalism has been called into question. |
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