Debating Business School Legitimacy: Attacking, Rocking, and Defending the Status Quo

337 Pages·2023·6.837 MB·English

by  Anders Örtenblad, Riina Koris

PALGRAVE DEBATES IN
BUSINESS AND MANAGEMENT
Debating Business School
Legitimacy
Attacking, Rocking, and
Defending the Status Quo
Edited by
Anders Örtenblad
Riina Koris
Palgrave Debates in Business and Management
Series Editor
Anders Örtenblad, Department of Working Life and
Innovation, School of Business and Law, University of
Agder, Grimstad, Norway
This series will take a refreshing and creative approach to business
management research, consisting of a number of edited collections that
showcase a current academic debate. Each title will examine one specific
topic and shall include a number of chapters from authors around the
world, presenting their differing points of view on the question in hand.
The intention of this series is to take stock of controversial and compli-
cated topics of debate within business and management, and to clearly
present the variety of positions within it.
·
Anders Örtenblad Riina Koris
Editors
Debating Business
School Legitimacy
Attacking, Rocking, and Defending
the Status Quo
Editors
Anders Örtenblad Riina Koris
Department of Working Life Department of Marketing
and Innovation, School of Business and Communication
and Law Estonian Business School
University of Agder Tallinn, Estonia
Grimstad, Norway
ISSN 2524-5082 ISSN 2524-5090 (electronic)
Palgrave Debates in Business and Management
ISBN 978-3-031-12724-3 ISBN 978-3-031-12725-0 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-12725-0
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Praise for Debating Business School
Legitimacy
“This important and sobering collection of essays on the modern busi-
ness school will provoke debate and may inspire needed change. If you
believe, as I do, that today’s professional schools have an obligation to
help address society’s most pressing challenges through the pursuit of
actionable research and practical education, you will find much value in
this book.”
—Amy C. Edmondson, Professor, Harvard Business School, USA
“An intriguing read, this book offers different perspectives on the raging
debate, with only one solitary defence of the business school as is, despite
the criticisms. Provocative in parts but nonetheless evoking questions for
business school leaders to reflect upon in deciding what to change to
regain legitimacy where deemed lost; or what to retain to defend the
status quo where deemed apt. Brilliant!”
—Enase Okonedo, Professor, Vice-Chancellor, Pan-Atlantic University,
Lagos, Nigeria
v
vi PraiseforDebatingBusinessSchoolLegitimacy
“Business schools have become a key part of the landscape of contem-
porary higher education. However, their role is proving increasingly
controversial. This book demonstrates why this is so and what needs to
change. This includes a broader definition of purpose beyond a focus on
helping individuals and corporations to maximize only their own self-
interest. Business schools need to demonstrate that they can become part
of the solution to the excesses of a Darwinian form of capitalism that is
actually destructive of long-term value broadly defined. They need to
demonstrate that they have the potential to be a source of education
innovation responsive to the needs of business and society. Only then
will they have a legitimate claim to a continued existence. This book
takes us to the heart of the problems business schools face which are,
alas, very much of their own making.”
—Ken Starkey, Professor of Management and Organisational Learning,
Nottingham University Business School, UK
Contents
Part I Background and Introduction
1 Introducing the Debate on the Legitimacy
of Business Schools 3
Riina Koris and Anders Örtenblad
2 (De)Legitimacy of Managerialism Within Business
Schools 47
Katariina Juusola
Part II Attacking Status Quo
3 Business Schools in Their Ideological Prison: Why
Sustainability Challenge Is Our Next Legitimacy
Crisis 67
Kimmo Alajoutsijärvi, Katariina Juusola,
and Kerttu Kettunen
vii
viii Contents
4 The Reflexive Impotence and Neoliberal Neurosis
of the Responsible Business School 87
Nikodemus Solitander
5 Business School Burnout: Endangering Legitimacy
on Pathological Pathways 105
Volker Rundshagen
Part III Rocking the Boat of Status Quo
6 The Business School in Ruins: Navigating
the Multi-stakeholder Landscape of Contemporary
Management Scholarship 125
Brian Howieson and Ian Robson
7 Delegitimizing Women Management Scholars’
Underrepresentation in the Research Impact Agenda 147
Emily Yarrow and Julie Davies
8 The Myth of the Global Market for Business
Education 167
Lars Engwall and Linda Wedlin
9 On How Intercultural Management Education Can
Increase the Societal Legitimacy of Business Schools 181
Madeleine Bausch
10 On the Dilemmatic Legitimacy of Business
Schools: The Barbell Syndrome and the Dominance
of Business Degrees 199
Gabriel Hawawini
11 How Business Schools Can Graduate Business
Citizens 217
Yusuf Sidani
12 The Market’s Filthy Lesson: Disruption for Business
and Management Education in Australian Public
Universities 235
Owen Hogan, Michael B. Charles, and Michael A. Kortt
Contents ix
13 How Business Schools Address Grand Societal
Challenges Through Research: Personal Reflections
and a Call to Arms 253
Graeme Currie
Part IV Defending Status Quo
14 Compared to What? A Realist Defense of Business
School 273
Jason Brennan
Afterword: After the Business School 289
Index 301