ABSTRACT
The aim of this chapter is to explore the contention that Western management education has entered a period of ‘crisis’ and to examine the implications of such a development. Drawing on historical studies of management education in America and Europe, four modes of management ‘formation’ are identified, each of which has been dominant in a particular period. From its pre-paradigmatic beginnings, management education has been successively transformed under an ‘old’ and latterly a ‘new’ paradigm. Current changes in and critiques of the ‘new’ paradigm imply that Western management education is entering a postparadigmatic mode. The implications of this post-paradigmatic turn are considered in relation to management practice, management knowledge and management ‘formation’.
