The Business of Business Schools: Restoring a Focus on Competing to Win

Abstract

As business leaders worry about the decline of American competitiveness, business schools are responding by changing their curriculums. But are the topics and approaches taught in today’s business schools part of the solution or part of the problem? In this paper, I explore the possibility that four trends in current MBA curriculums - theory creep, mission creep, doing well by doing good, and the quest for enlightenment - are teaching students to be uncompetitive in today’s global markets. If this hypothesis is true, I argue that business school curriculums should be re-centered around the tough choices needed to compete - and to win.

Keywords: business schools, purpose of business schools, management education, business school curriculum, strategy execution, U.S. competitiveness, capitalism, management profession, innovation, competing to win