American education is at a critical juncture because the traditional skills taught in schools and universities might no longer be valid to prepare students for a global economy. This is a prevailing argument in the education reform debate. Corporations are now being turned to for the solution. Regarding western educational discourse, transitional periods in education extend as far back as the Middle Ages in Europe. In America, since the turn of the century there has been an underpinning influence on education: the role of business. Yet, how often do we hold businesses accountable for their contributions to education? Business and education alliances can greatly benefit the system on both the K-12 and university levels. However, if the work that education is supposed to accomplish is underestimated and the plight of education is handed blindly over to a corporate paradigm, there might be more harm done than good. For some, it might seem unsavory that education has turned into a profitable business. For others, it is a dream come true. Although several scholars have analyzed the correspondence between education and the economy, few have examined it using a British pedagogical framework combined with an economic typology of power. The goal of this book is to explore the existence of certain capitalist realities in the American education system to find a balance between the distinct ideologies of education and business. This book is a theory-building exercise that centers on a descriptive multiple-case study of two senior high schools: a private, Jesuit school with a mission to educate students for university disciplines and a public charter school designed for career preparation, both located in Washington, D.C. A combination of survey, dialogic, observational, and documentary techniques was employed in a multi-methodological approach. This enterprise draws on Basil Bernstein's pedagogical theory of symbolic educational knowledge codes while attempting to fill a gap in its theoretical apparatus. The endeavor highlights some effects of alliances between business and education, while exploring concepts of power, critical thinking, and knowledge. A realist theoretical lens is a key component in this study where business norms are conceptualized as a social entity ontologically effectual to educational processes. Traditional forms of education are revealed to be in competition with alternative forms of education, where the high-technology age is perceived as a contributor to educational change. One of the unique analyses drawn from the research fieldwork elucidates differences between a religious paradigm and a careerist pedagogical approach. Ultimately, three contextual themes emerge from the data: entrepreneur ethics, social skills, and technology; all of these are indications of how business mores are apparent in education. The salient theme in this endeavor is the control of knowledge by institutions and/or individuals. The Imprint of Business Norms on American Education is an important book for social entrepreneurs, education reformers, education and sociological studies.

Do business schools actually make good on their promises of "innovative," "outside-the-box" thinking to train business leaders who will put society ahead of money-making? Do they help society by making better business leaders? No, they don't, Steven Conn asserts, and what's more they never have. In throwing down a gauntlet on the business of business schools, Conn's Nothing Succeeds Like Failure examines the frictions, conflicts, and contradictions at the heart of these enterprises and details the way business schools have failed to resolve them. Beginning with founding of the Wharton School in 1881, Conn measures these schools' aspirations against their actual accomplishments and tells the full and disappointing history of missed opportunities, unmet aspirations, and educational mistakes. Conn then poses a set of crucial questions about the role and function of American business schools. The results aren't pretty. Posing a set of crucial questions about the function of American business schools, Nothing Succeeds Like Failure is pugnacious and controversial. Deeply researched and fun to read, Nothing Succeeds Like Failure argues that the impressive façades of business school buildings resemble nothing so much as collegiate versions of Oz. Conn pulls back the curtain to reveal a story of failure to meet the expectations of the public, their missions, their graduates, and their own lofty aspirations of producing moral and ethical business leaders.

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.

Is management a profession? Should it be? Can it be? This major work of social and intellectual history reveals how such questions have driven business education and shaped American management and society for more than a century. The book is also a call for reform. Rakesh Khurana shows that university-based business schools were founded to train a professional class of managers in the mold of doctors and lawyers but have effectively retreated from that goal, leaving a gaping moral hole at the center of business education and perhaps in management itself. Khurana begins in the late nineteenth century, when members of an emerging managerial elite, seeking social status to match the wealth and power they had accrued, began working with major universities to establish graduate business education programs paralleling those for medicine and law. Constituting business as a profession, however, required codifying the knowledge relevant for practitioners and developing enforceable standards of conduct. Khurana, drawing on a rich set of archival material from business schools, foundations, and academic associations, traces how business educators confronted these challenges with varying strategies during the Progressive era and the Depression, the postwar boom years, and recent decades of freewheeling capitalism. Today, Khurana argues, business schools have largely capitulated in the battle for professionalism and have become merely purveyors of a product, the MBA, with students treated as consumers. Professional and moral ideals that once animated and inspired business schools have been conquered by a perspective that managers are merely agents of shareholders, beholden only to the cause of share profits. According to Khurana, we should not thus be surprised at the rise of corporate malfeasance. The time has come, he concludes, to rejuvenate intellectually and morally the training of our future business leaders.

"This book explores issues and developments in global business education from the perspective of the national and international socio-economic landscape and how engaging in changes and strategic disruptions associated with the Fourth Industrial Revolution and other forces and impacts"--

Do business schools actually make good on their promises of innovative, outside-the-box thinking to train business leaders who will put society ahead of money-making? Do they help society by making better business leaders? No, they don't, Steven Conn asserts, and what's more they never have. In throwing down a gauntlet on the business of business schools, Conn's Nothing Succeeds Like Failure examines the frictions, conflicts, and contradictions at the heart of these enterprises and details the way business schools have failed to resolve them. Beginning with founding of the Wharton School in 1881, Conn measures these schools' aspirations against their actual accomplishments and tells the full and disappointing history of missed opportunities, unmet aspirations, and educational mistakes. Conn then poses a set of crucial questions about the role and function of American business schools. The results aren't pretty. Posing a set of crucial questions about the function of American business schools, Nothing Succeeds Like Failure is pugnacious and controversial. Deeply researched and fun to read, Nothing Succeeds Like Failure argues that the impressive façades of business school buildings resemble nothing so much as collegiate versions of Oz. Conn pulls back the curtain to reveal a story of failure to meet the expectations of the public, their missions, their graduates, and their own lofty aspirations of producing moral and ethical business leaders.