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Spreading the Gospel of Change

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

This chapter examines the spread of the vision for change in business schools and management education in North America in the 1950s. It describes major developments in four different leading ... More

This chapter examines the spread of the vision for change in business schools and management education in North America in the 1950s. It describes major developments in four different leading business schools including Harvard Business School, the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, and the Stanford Graduate School of Business. This chapter also considers the evidence for diffusion of the changes through the whole population of business schools and the relevance of the changes in North America for the development of business schools in other parts of the world.Less

The World before (and Shortly after) Wharton: Getting a Business Education in the Nineteenth Century

Steven Conn

in Nothing Succeeds Like Failure: The Sad History of American Business Schools

This chapter examines why educational leaders and businessmen in the United States thought it was a good idea to establish business schools in the first place. The answer often offered at the time ... More

This chapter examines why educational leaders and businessmen in the United States thought it was a good idea to establish business schools in the first place. The answer often offered at the time was that American business itself had grown so big and complex by the turn of the twentieth century that a new university-level education was now required for the new world of managerial work. However, the more powerful rationale was that businessmen wanted the social status and cultural cachet that came with a university degree. The chapter then looks at the Wharton School of Finance and Economy at the University of Pennsylvania, which was founded in 1881 and became the first business school in the United States. All of the more than six hundred business schools founded in the nearly century and a half since descend from Wharton.Less

The Nineteenth-Century Business School: Fall of the Classical and Rise of the Vocational and School of Opportunity Traditions

in Creating New Knowledge in Management: Appropriating the Field's Lost Foundations

The collegiate school of business (CSB) was established to elevate business training and to make higher education practical. An example of the CSB was the Wharton School of Finance and Economy (WSFE) ... More

The collegiate school of business (CSB) was established to elevate business training and to make higher education practical. An example of the CSB was the Wharton School of Finance and Economy (WSFE) at the University of Pennsylvania. After five decades of experimentation, however, the business school did not integrate with the college and was used by students to take short courses and earn certificates that would allow them to obtain jobs and promotions in the near term, rather than to earn a degree. The WSFE's efforts in applied social science succeeded as professional social work but not as a business school. Out of the WSFE emerged the vocational school of business (VSB), which broke with the college and partnered with Extension and the School of Opportunity. The VSB attracted students in part by linking education to employment. Although the VSB succeeded with the public, it turned the business school into a rogue actor in the research university.Less