The Roots, Rituals, and Rhetorics of Change: North American Business Schools After the Second World War - Hardcover

Augier, Mie; March, James G.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0804776164 ISBN 13: 9780804776165

Verlag: Stanford Business Books,US, 2011

Inhaltsangabe

Some rather remarkable changes took place in North American business schools between 1945 and 1970, altering the character of these institutions, the possibilities for their future, and the terms of discourse about them. This period represents a minor revolution, during which business school are reported to have become more academic, more analytic, and more quantitative.

The Roots, Rituals, and Rhetorics of Change considers these changes and explores their roots. It traces the origins of this quiet revolution and shows how it shaped discussions about management education, leading to a shift in that weakened the place of business cases and experiential knowledge and strengthened support for a concept of professionalism that applied to management.

The text considers how the rhetoric of change was organized around three core questions: Should business schools concern themselves primarily with experiential knowledge or with academic knowledge? What vision of managers and management should be reflected by business schools? How should managerial education connect its teaching to some version of reality?

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

Mie Augier is a social science research associate at Stanford University and Research Associate Professor at the Naval Postgraduate School where she works on research for the Director of Office of Net Assessment, Office of the Secretary of Defense. James G. March is Professor Emeritus at Stanford University, where he has been on the faculty since 1970. He is best known for his writings on decision making and organizations.

Mie Augier is a social science research associate at Stanford University and Research Associate Professor at the Naval Postgraduate School where she works on research for the Director of Office of Net Assessment, Office of the Secretary of Defense. James G. March is Professor Emeritus at Stanford University, where he has been on the faculty since 1970. He is best known for his writings on decision making and organizations.

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The Roots, Rituals, and Rhetorics of Change

North American Business Schools After the Second World WarBy Mie Augier James G. March

Stanford University Press

Copyright © 2011 Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8047-7616-5

Contents

Preface.............................................................................ixChapter 1 An Introduction..........................................................1Chapter 2 The Contexts of Change...................................................14Chapter 3 A Legend of Change: Abraham Flexner......................................32Chapter 4 A Spirit of Change: Hutchins's University of Chicago.....................59Chapter 5 An Incubator of Change: The RAND Corporation.............................74Chapter 6 An Engine of Change: The Ford Foundation.................................94Chapter 7 A Poster Child of Change: GSIA...........................................123Chapter 8 Spreading the Gospel of Change...........................................145Chapter 9 The Rhetoric of Reality..................................................189Chapter 10 The Rhetoric of Relevance...............................................215Chapter 11 The Rhetoric of Professionalism.........................................240Chapter 12 The Lessons of History..................................................277Notes...............................................................................323References..........................................................................333Index...............................................................................351

Chapter One

An Introduction

Some rather remarkable changes took place in North American business schools in the twenty-five years between 1945 and 1970. The changes altered the character of business schools, the possibilities for their future, and the terms of discourse about them. They transformed the position of business schools in the academic community. They changed the balance between experiential knowledge and academic knowledge in management education. They clarified and articulated several concerns about university education for business and the rhetoric surrounding it. In many respects, the changes constituted a minor "revolution."

The changes in business schools were anticipated by issues that had agitated management educators before the Second World War; and the revolution was, for the most part, a gentle one. There was little sustained conflict. The old guard and old ways were supplanted with only minor whimpers. The traditional lubricants of peaceful change—money, growth, and evolving social consciousness—worked their magic. The resulting developments helped to shape the subsequent history of business schools, in particular a counterreformation that took place in the 1980s and 1990s.

James E. Howell described the transformation in an unpublished memorandum to the Ford Foundation in 1962 that became the basis for a subsequent report of the foundation:

Ten years ago collegiate schools of business, with a few notable exceptions, were regarded as the slums of the educational community.... Many business schools are today intellectually exciting places in which to teach and to study.

The significance of the changes was also acknowledged by business leaders. Looking back, John Reed, the former CEO of Citicorp and Citigroup, said:

There was virtually a revolution in the study of business and of decision making in organizations. That started I believe at Carnegie Tech at the time in the late 50s and the early 60s.... This changed business practice just as I think it has changed military and policy practice in this country.

The story of this "golden age" became part of the folklore of North American business schools.

1.1 The Unfolding of Change

During the 1950s and 1960s, coalitions of deans, faculties, foundations, and business executives sought to change business schools (Bach, 1958; Cyert and Dill, 1964; Simon, 1967). The effort was both reported and heralded by a well-known report written for the Ford Foundation by Aaron Gordon and James Howell (Gordon and Howell, 1959). Their report concluded:

The general tenor of our recommendations was that the business schools (and departments of business) need to move in the direction of a broader and more rigorous educational program, with higher standards of admission and student performance, with better informed and more scholarly faculties that are capable of carrying on more significant research, and with a greater appreciation of the contributions to be made to the development of business competence by both the underlying ... disciplines and the judicious use of ... materials and methods. (p. 425)

A Program of Reform

The reformers advocated programs of research that might lead to improvements in practice, not so much through diffusion of "best practice" as through changes in fundamental knowledge. They emphasized closer links with academic disciplines; more rigor, including the greater use of mathematical models and the research findings of psychology and economics; and the substitution of formal analyses for rules of thumb. They proclaimed the importance of problem framing more than problem solving, of a thoroughgoing augmentation of the commitment of business schools to fundamental research. They believed that there was a larger purpose of business education in contributing to society. They had a sense of empowerment and a vision.

The champions of changes in management research and education portrayed the goal of management education as being twofold: First, at all levels in the education of managers—undergraduate, graduate, and executive programs alike—the training of practitioners of management should be based on the foundational disciplines of economics and of behavioral science as well as the quantitative disciplines. The analogy was to the way in which the schools and practice of medicine were based on biology, physiology, and chemistry. Two well-known activists declared:

The student of management ... is expected to learn enough about mathematics, statistics, and the computer to be able to understand and use decision models from the management sciences and operations research. He is expected to understand the theoretical and research underpinnings on which economists base their advice to corporations and governments. He is expected to know the main findings and hypotheses about human behavior from psychology, sociology, and political science. (Cyert and Dill, 1964, p. 223)

Second, business schools should be seen, in particular at the graduate level, to be responsible for the education of future teachers and researchers of management and for research that is both relevant to management and respected in the underlying disciplines. The vision was that by doing problem-driven research (research driven by real-world problems but aiming more at understanding than at solving those problems in a specific context), business schools and researchers in management education would both help define and frame practical problems and help advance the disciplines from which they drew.

A Success

The efforts of the reformers were successful to a considerable extent. In the space of two decades, the cultures and practices of...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Stanford Business Books,US
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2011
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0804776164
• ISBN 13: 9780804776165
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 364
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar