Should We “Bulldoze” the Business School?

The Guardian has recently published an interesting article with a provoking title: Why We Should Bulldoze the Business School. The author writes: “[In] the business school, both the explicit and hidden curriculums sing the same song. The things taught and the way that they are taught generally mean that the virtues of capitalist market managerialism are told and sold as if there were no other ways of seeing the world.” The author demands “an entirely new way of thinking about management, business and markets” and argues: “If we want those in power to become more responsible, then we must stop teaching students that heroic transformational leaders are the answer to every problem, or that the purpose of learning about taxation laws is to evade taxation, or that creating new desires is the purpose of marketing. In every case, the business school acts as an apologist, selling ideology as if it were science.” To what extent does that also apply for our SCM courses?

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About Andreas Wieland

Andreas Wieland is an Associate Professor of Supply Chain Management at Copenhagen Business School. His current research interests include resilient and socially responsible supply chains.

One response to “Should We “Bulldoze” the Business School?”

  1. Lydia Bals says :

    I think for SCM this is absolutely true if we consider, for example, how we (still most often) depict the supply chain – a linear “chain” (instead of a network or system that is interconnected) and with only a bit of reversed flows (instead of a circular system).

    Still a long way to go until we’ll see that paradigm shift in the textbooks.

    Until then it is on us educators to help them develop awareness, become critical of what the current mainstream contents look like and (hopefully) inspire them beyond that mainstream!

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