ABSTRACT
Business schools have not been immune to these ideas. In their research and teaching, they have increasingly emphasised the role of heroic individuals and sought to recruit people into their MBA programmes with the promise that they will not only study transformational leaders but become ones themselves. However, this has occurred in a context where agency theories – emphasising self-interest – have also had a powerful impact on the wider business school curriculum. These theories also have leadership implications, some of them in confl ict with the nostrums of transformational leadership theory. It is these fundamental dynamics and contradictions that this chapter addresses. My purpose is to look at how leading business schools teach leadership, slavishly worship the claimed accomplishments of top business leaders such as Jack Welch, and also promote agency theories that stress the selfi shness of people and the consequent need for regimes of intense control.
