ABSTRACT

With business schools becoming increasingly market-driven, questionable trends have emerged, such as the conflation of academic and corporate management, and the notion that academics and students are market players, who respond rationally to market signals.

Using individual studies from leading scholars in a variety of disciplines and countries, this book identifies the global pressures behind these trends. It focuses on the debates surrounded the commercialization of business schools, and the rise of different methods of measuring their success. In their unique approach, the authors and editors discuss the impact of the confrontation between the timeless values embodied by Minerva, the Roman goddess of Wisdom, and the hard realities of competition and corporatization in modern society.

This book will be compelling reading for students and academics in critical management studies, organizational studies, public management and higher education, as well as for stakeholders in academia and educational policy.

chapter 2|14 pages

Business schools in their university setting

A historical perspective

chapter 3|22 pages

A mania for assessment

How an audit culture undermines the purpose of universities 1

chapter 4|18 pages

The university/bureaucracy complex

Accreditation, globalization and the corporatized business school

chapter 6|19 pages

(Un)Conditional surrender?

Why do professionals willingly comply with managerialism? 1

chapter 7|17 pages

Uncreative destruction

Competition and positional games in higher education

chapter 9|19 pages

From consumer to brand

Exploring the commodification of the student in a university advertising campaign

chapter 10|17 pages

The rise and fall of a management education programme

The tension between academic and vocational education in business schools

chapter 11|17 pages

Against idle complicity

Challenging the employability agenda in teaching and daily academic life

chapter 12|18 pages

Being edited

Academic journals and knowledge corporations

chapter 13|17 pages

Mixing oil and water

On the co-production of professional and disciplinary goals in the modern business school

chapter 14|12 pages

Minerva meets the market

From managerialism to critical reflexivity