Rethinking Business Schools

Business schools around the world have grown and prospered in the last few decades, but what does the future hold for business schools? This book explores the potential future disruption of the business school tradition by considering funding, value chains, strategic groups, value orientation, innovation and business models.

"Business Schools Face Test of Faith." "Is It Time to Retrain B-Schools?" As these headlines make clear, business education is at a major crossroads. For decades, MBA graduates from top-tier schools set the standard for cutting-edge business knowledge and skills. Now the business world has changed, say the authors of Rethinking the MBA, and MBA programs must change with it. Increasingly, managers and recruiters are questioning conventional business education. Their concerns? Among other things, MBA programs aren't giving students the heightened cultural awareness and global perspectives they need. Newly minted MBAs lack essential leadership skills. Creative and critical thinking demand far more attention. In this compelling and authoritative new book, the authors: · Document a rising chorus of concerns about business schools gleaned from extensive interviews with deans and executives, and from a detailed analysis of current curricula and emerging trends in graduate business education · Provide case studies showing how leading MBA programs have begun reinventing themselves for the better · Offer concrete ideas for how business schools can surmount the challenges that come with reinvention, including securing faculty with new skills and experimenting with new pedagogies Rich with examples and thoroughly researched, Rethinking the MBA reveals why and how business schools must define a better pathway for the future.

Business schools around the world have grown and prospered in the last few decades, but what does the future hold for business schools? This book explores the potential future disruption of the business school tradition by considering funding, value chains, strategic groups, value orientation, innovation and business models.

How do we create the business school and managers of the future? Rethinking Business Schools draws upon extensive case study evidence from both Russell Group and Non-Russell Group University Business Schools in the UK to answer some of these questions from a European perspective and stimulate a wider debate.

Business schools around the world have grown and prospered in the last few decades, but what does the future hold for business schools? This book explores the potential future disruption of the business school tradition by considering funding, value chains, strategic groups, value orientation, innovation and business models.

Business is the largest undergraduate major in the United States and still growing. This reality, along with the immense power of the business sector and its significance for national and global well-being, makes quality education critical not only for the students themselves but also for the public good. The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching's national study of undergraduate business education found that most undergraduate programs are too narrow, failing to challenge students to question assumptions, think creatively, or understand the place of business in larger institutional contexts. Rethinking Undergraduate Business Education examines these limitations and describes the efforts of a diverse set of institutions to address them by integrating the best elements of liberal arts learning with business curriculum to help students develop wise, ethically grounded professional judgment.

What do business school graduates learn, and how helpful is it for managing in the everyday, messy reality of organisations? What does it mean to apply 'best practice', or to take up 'evidence-based management' and what kind of thinking does this imply? In Rethinking Management, Chris Mowles argues that many management courses still largely assume a linear and predictable world, when experience tells us that the opposite is the case. He questions some of the more orthodox conceptual assumptions that underpin much management education and instead, encourages leaders and managers to take their everyday experience of working with others seriously. People in organisations co-operate and compete to get things done, and constrain and enable each other in relationships of power. Because of this there are always unintended consequences of our actions - uncertainty is inherent in the everyday. Chris Mowles draws on the complexity sciences, the sciences of uncertainty rather than certainty, and the social sciences to explore more helpful ways to think and talk about our lived reality. He takes concrete examples from contemporary organisations, to argue that understanding the radical implications of uncertainty is central to the task of leading. Rethinking Management explores narrative alternatives to the ubiquitous grids and frameworks that are routinely taught in business schools, and encourages management professionals and educators to recognise the importance of judgement, improvisation and the everyday politics of organisational life.

Takes us step-by-step through the business-to-business buying process.