MANAGEMENT EDUCATION AND DUFF MCDONALD’S REPORT ON THE HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL

Abstract

Management education is a huge industry, reshaping undergraduate and graduate education and almost all universities’ strategies. But it also has many fierce critics. There is little evidence that management education conduces managerial effectiveness. It may foster social inequity. It may lead students into morally questionable opinions. Despite such doubts, in the precarious work situations that face young professionals everywhere, management education seems to offer great comfort as a possible path upwards. Why is this? We look at the history of management education through the lens of Duff McDonald’s recent book about the Harvard Business School (HBS). It opened for business in 1908 and quickly became the world-dominant player, exercising immense influence over management education elsewhere. HBS’s history illuminates how management education might evolve to deal with its critics and with the changing world situation. Around 1960 HBS began to lose curricular influence, though students struggled to get in as ever. Why? Part was the post WW2 project to transform management into a rigorous science. Whether ‘physics envy’ or not, HBS lagged, held back perhaps by its pedagogical commitment to the case method. Part was that the science aligned with neoliberal political notions, especially that business’s purpose was to maximize shareholder value. HBS was long committed to a business ethics with more socially oriented goals. McDonald showed how these debates have played out in the practical details of HBS’s history, providing today’s business school Deans and university administrators with much material for their own thinking.