"Business Schools Face Test of Faith." "Is It Time to Retrain B-Schools?" As these headlines make clear, business education is at a major crossroads. For decades, MBA graduates from top-tier schools set the standard for cutting-edge business knowledge and skills. Now the business world has changed, say the authors of Rethinking the MBA, and MBA programs must change with it. Increasingly, managers and recruiters are questioning conventional business education. Their concerns? Among other things, MBA programs aren't giving students the heightened cultural awareness and global perspectives they need. Newly minted MBAs lack essential leadership skills. Creative and critical thinking demand far more attention. In this compelling and authoritative new book, the authors: · Document a rising chorus of concerns about business schools gleaned from extensive interviews with deans and executives, and from a detailed analysis of current curricula and emerging trends in graduate business education · Provide case studies showing how leading MBA programs have begun reinventing themselves for the better · Offer concrete ideas for how business schools can surmount the challenges that come with reinvention, including securing faculty with new skills and experimenting with new pedagogies Rich with examples and thoroughly researched, Rethinking the MBA reveals why and how business schools must define a better pathway for the future.

Business schools around the world have grown and prospered in the last few decades, but what does the future hold for business schools? This book explores the potential future disruption of the business school tradition by considering funding, value chains, strategic groups, value orientation, innovation and business models.

How do we create the business school and managers of the future? Rethinking Business Schools draws upon extensive case study evidence from both Russell Group and Non-Russell Group University Business Schools in the UK to answer some of these questions from a European perspective and stimulate a wider debate.

We have assembled a distinguished international panel of leaders and scholars in management education whose contributions reflect diverse perspectives on management theory and practice. Gerald Ferris and his associates conceptualize political skill to include self and social astuteness, influence and control, networking and building social capital, and genuineness/sincerity. Their chapter describes methods for developing and shaping such skills. Nick Nissley examines how arts-based learning is informing the practice of management education. How artful ways of knowing are being practiced in organizations. Anne McCarthy and associates provide a cutting-edge balanced assessment of both service learning theory and its current practice. Godshalk and Foster-Curtis present four models of online MBA curricula focused on part-time students including curricular issues, technology requirements, and funding and institutional commitment requirements for each model. Sabine Seufert examines eLearning models of web-based education and web education support services. Her chapter offers a breathtaking, panoramic view of six landscapes for eLearning business models and best practices emerging from both the corporate and academic sectors. Eric Dent's chapter is a thought-provoking critique of doctoral education and innovative suggestions for developing doctoral programs more attuned to the learning requirements of executive managers seeking doctoral education. Tom Moore examines competition within the market for executive education and observes how three sets of rivals have enjoyed distinctive market place perceptions. Antonacopoulou penetratingly critiques the confusion of training with learning in management education. Reed examines the processes of globalization and how their effects should be incorporated into management education.

Business is the largest undergraduate major in the United States and still growing. This reality, along with the immense power of the business sector and its significance for national and global well-being, makes quality education critical not only for the students themselves but also for the public good. The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching's national study of undergraduate business education found that most undergraduate programs are too narrow, failing to challenge students to question assumptions, think creatively, or understand the place of business in larger institutional contexts. Rethinking Undergraduate Business Education examines these limitations and describes the efforts of a diverse set of institutions to address them by integrating the best elements of liberal arts learning with business curriculum to help students develop wise, ethically grounded professional judgment.

Business is the largest undergraduate major in the United States and still growing. This reality, along with the immense power of the business sector and its significance for national and global well-being, makes quality education critical not only for the students themselves but also for the public good. The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching's national study of undergraduate business education found that most undergraduate programs are too narrow, failing to challenge students to question assumptions, think creatively, or understand the place of business in larger institutional contexts. Rethinking Undergraduate Business Education examines these limitations and describes the efforts of a diverse set of institutions to address them by integrating the best elements of liberal arts learning with business curriculum to help students develop wise, ethically grounded professional judgment.

Two developments in the business world have brought to a head the crisis of ethics. On the one hand, against the backdrop of the astonishing success of global markets, major corporate scandals have raised concerns about integrity in business. At the same time, cultural and technological trends are questioning the philosophical assumptions about the human person upon which modern economics is based.""Rethinking Business Management: Examining the Foundations of Business Education"" draws together the work of distinguished scholars and professionals from history, medicine, law, economics, theology, philosophy, and business management. This groundbreaking book offers new, person-centered perspectives on business management and business education for the twenty-first century. This unique volume offers equally profound insights for practicing managers as for business educators, historians, theologians, political theorists, and philosophers.These insights include: effective management must be based on sound business science and robust ethical and anthropological conceptions of human flourishing; profit is an essential and indispensible element of success in business, and needs to be grounded in a broader understanding of human flourishing in business; cultivating an understanding of the moral life in business requires more than rules; and, developing virtuous character is needed to protect and promote human fulfillment rather than simply making business life more predictable.

What do business school graduates learn, and how helpful is it for managing in the everyday, messy reality of organisations? What does it mean to apply 'best practice', or to take up 'evidence-based management' and what kind of thinking does this imply? In Rethinking Management, Chris Mowles argues that many management courses still largely assume a linear and predictable world, when experience tells us that the opposite is the case. He questions some of the more orthodox conceptual assumptions that underpin much management education and instead, encourages leaders and managers to take their everyday experience of working with others seriously. People in organisations co-operate and compete to get things done, and constrain and enable each other in relationships of power. Because of this there are always unintended consequences of our actions - uncertainty is inherent in the everyday. Chris Mowles draws on the complexity sciences, the sciences of uncertainty rather than certainty, and the social sciences to explore more helpful ways to think and talk about our lived reality. He takes concrete examples from contemporary organisations, to argue that understanding the radical implications of uncertainty is central to the task of leading. Rethinking Management explores narrative alternatives to the ubiquitous grids and frameworks that are routinely taught in business schools, and encourages management professionals and educators to recognise the importance of judgement, improvisation and the everyday politics of organisational life.

This book challenges the roots and elements of the existing dominant paradigm of management, which can legitimize artless practices and result in dysfunction, and proposes an alternative based on a different understanding of human nature and social and economic life. This paradigm is designed to bring about the conception of organizations as wholes rather than assemblies of disembodied fragments, with managers as facilitators of the work of others and shapers of culture, with a clear sense of purpose and a moral compass. Such a paradigm would result in a practice of management that is more competent, more purposeful, and more ethical, based on a more accurate and complete comprehension of reality. This book sets forth a more optimistic understanding of human nature and collective life, and the hope that we can be and do better. It is a major contribution to the field of management and will benefit academics, managers, and consultants working in the fields of organizational development and strategic change.