ABSTRACT
This paper examines the various efforts to launch business education in Britain and Italy, and evaluates the relative successes and failures of business studies in the two countries. It focuses on the fact that, despite the current entrepreneurs' assertion that 'managers are born not made', in both countries the forces materially financing many management training courses belong to the business community. In Italy, thanks to the Casati Act, university education was enriched with high technical schools, two of which were opened almost immediately in Milan and Turin. The business-education relationship was more controversial in the case of Britain. Britain's early industrial success had little to do with its educational institutions. Most of the personalities involved in the management movement of the two countries had come into contact with American business schools and had been impressed by the progress and the extension of the provision for management education in that country.
