From Higher Aims to Hired Hands: The Social Transformation of American Business Schools and the Unfulfilled Promise of Management as a Profession
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.48 (829 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0691145873 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 568 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2014-02-10 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
A Gem of a Book! Shona What an invaluable book! As a part-time MBA student who has been in my program for a year now, I wanted a book to read to help build my "MBA mindset". Well I did not really get what I bargained for with this particular book. What started off as a nice summer read caused me to seriously look into the methods that are in place at my own business school as well as what exactly it is that an MBA stands for in the marketplace.Professor Khurana approaches the subject more as a academic than an common industry critic. This book reads very much like an academic journal. A lot of the text. Book with an important thesis, but terribly written. KT This book has something valuable to say.However, Khurana gets the organisation wrong.1. The epilogue should be put first.2. He layers on the details, but he should really state his thesis at the beginning of each chapter, since he is making a moral argument after all, and not a mere sociological study.Here is the main contention of his book.1. Every practice of a career has inadequacies, when practiced unfettered in an environment of free market capitalism. (e.g. quack doctors in American 19th century.)2. A profession exists to mitigate those inadequacies - for example enforcing . raghu said must-read for all b-school students. I came to this book with a prejudice - I thought business school professors mostly published inane statistical analyses of executive compensation and such other frivolous nonsense. This book definitely contradicts that stereotype and is a fine example of high-quality scholarship on an interesting and important subject.Khurana's main thesis is that the management profession in general, and the education it receives in business schools in particular, has lost its way in the last must-read for all b-school students I came to this book with a prejudice - I thought business school professors mostly published inane statistical analyses of executive compensation and such other frivolous nonsense. This book definitely contradicts that stereotype and is a fine example of high-quality scholarship on an interesting and important subject.Khurana's main thesis is that the management profession in general, and the education it receives in business schools in particular, has lost its way in the last 30 years or so. Here, Khurana uses the word 'profession' in its precise sociological sense, not in the l. 0 years or so. Here, Khurana uses the word 'profession' in its precise sociological sense, not in the l
from the late 19th century to the present.In the new volume, he strikes closer to home, concluding that 'fundamental questions exist as to whether business schools retain any genuine academic or societal mission'As Khurana supplies layer upon layer of evidence in this admittedly dense work, it becomes increasingly difficult to disagree with his conclusions."--Hardy Green, BusinessWeek"Khurana presents his argument in rich detail and the book is worth reading by anyone interested in the current trends in the commercialization of academia."--Donald Stabile, EH"Rakesh Khurana's sweeping history of American business schools offers a
Khurana begins in the late nineteenth century, when members of an emerging managerial elite, seeking social status to match the wealth and power they had accrued, began working with major universities to establish graduate business education programs paralleling those for medicine and law. Today, Khurana argues, business schools have largely capitulated in the battle for professionalism and have become merely purveyors of a product, the MBA, with students treated as consumers. Is management a profession? Should it be? Can it be? This major work of social and intellectual history reveals how such questi
He is the author of Searching for a Corporate Savior: The Irrational Quest for Charismatic CEOs (Princeton). Rakesh Khurana is associate professor in organizational behavior at Harvard Business School.