The Business School 'Business': Some Lessons from the US Experience

US business schools dominate the business school landscape, particularly for the MBA degree. This fact has caused schools in other countries to imitate the US schools as a model for business education. But US business schools face a number of problems, many of them a result of offering a value propo...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of management studies 2004-12, Vol.41 (8), p.1501-1520
Main Authors: Pfeffer, Jeffrey, Fong, Christina T.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Business education
Business management
Business schools
Business studies
Management science
MBA programs & graduates
Organizational behavior
Studies
Tertiary education
U.S.A
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Summary:US business schools dominate the business school landscape, particularly for the MBA degree. This fact has caused schools in other countries to imitate the US schools as a model for business education. But US business schools face a number of problems, many of them a result of offering a value proposition that primarily emphasizes the career‐enhancing, salary‐increasing aspects of business education as contrasted with the idea of organizational management as a profession to be pursued out of a sense of intrinsic interest or even service. We document some of the problems confronting US business schools and show how many of these arise from a combination of a market‐like orientation to education coupled with an absence of a professional ethos. In this tale, there are some lessons for educational organizations both in the US and elsewhere that are interested in learning from the US experience.
ISSN:0022-2380
1467-6486
DOI:10.1111/j.1467-6486.2004.00484.x