Is Business Education at an Inflection Point?
Recent months have seen an outpouring of comments on the state business education is in, spurred largely by spectacular failures of international companies and the banking crisis. The presence of large numbers of business school alumni has highlighted the role of Harvard, Wharton and countless others in shaping a generation of leaders who have ushered their organizations into trouble. Emanating from top learning institutions, like HBS, widely accepted ideas have reached boardrooms and corridors of most majors firms around the world and granted academic legitimacy to actions which ended in what many describe as economic disaster. As a result of problems which are plain to see deans of tops schools and directors of consulting companies have started talking about the whole teaching industry being at the inflection point, facing its toughest challenges to date and being confronted by eventful choices. Is this serious tone justified? The impact of economic debacles that were partly engineer
