Deschooling business schools

January 17th, 2009

Most of the world is not well served by the structures or assumptions of financial capitalism. If we could lift our eyes from the financial chaos, we would see that the world is at the start of a huge technological upswing. (driven by us I might add). As a consequence, there is terrific, unsatisfied demand for people to manage this innovation in ways that benefit more than a tiny financial elite. Management, in the sense of ‘making a difference’, could be the enabling technology of the 21st century.

writes Simon Caulkin

And business-school researchers are concentrating on narrow technical questions rather than the larger social and political issues – the environment, war, workers’ rights, the distribution of wealth – which business has signally failed to provide answers to. In Speaking Out: The responsibilities of Management Intellectuals: A Survey

Stephen Dunne, Stefano Harney, and Martin Parker write

In 1967, Noam Chomsky issued a ringing condemnation of the American intellectual classes, especially university academics, with regard to the Vietnam War. In essence, Chomsky read their silence as complicity with the atrocities committed by an imperial regime. Certainly there are many things which intellectuals are silent about, but here we would like to discuss whether silence has become complicity in the realm of business and management studies. Let us consider some facts. In a survey we have conducted of the papers published within the top business and management journals over two years1 we found that over 98% did not acknowledge the relationship between business practice and war, global violence, or the displacement and dispossession of populations. Over 90% paid no substantial attention to unsafe or exploitative working conditions around the world. 2,296 of the top 2,331 articles we surveyed did not consider questions of race, international migration, or neo-colonialism. And despite the increasing attention being afforded to ethical business practices, almost 85% of the articles surveyed failed to examine the issues of corporate social responsibility or business ethics. In fact, our study found a remarkable lack of attention being paid to the pressing social and political issues of our day. Why is business and management scholarship so marginal to the central concerns of many people on our planet? Do such scholars have a responsibility to stop being silent?

Unfortunately, classical economics does not take into account the human condition, and as focused as these people are they are not looking upon the world and understanding its evolution and then what that means to us – you and me. We need to Deschool business schools as Ivan Illich argued we needed to Deschool society

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