Whither the MBA? Or the Withering of MBAs?1

This article employs a critical realist perspective to contextualize management education, including the MBA, and facilitate debate on the prospects for its reinvention. Two decades of substantive management education critique has not resulted in any fundamental change in models of content and proce...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inManagement learning Vol. 38; no. 4; p. 405
Main Authors Welsh, M Ann, Dehler, Gordon E
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Thousand Oaks Sage Publications Ltd 01.09.2007
Subjects
Business schools
Curricula
Education
Epistemology
Knowledge
Management training
MBA programs & graduates
Ontology
Outcomes of Education
Pedagogy
Postmodernism
Realism
Trends
United States > US
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Summary:This article employs a critical realist perspective to contextualize management education, including the MBA, and facilitate debate on the prospects for its reinvention. Two decades of substantive management education critique has not resulted in any fundamental change in models of content and process used to educate managers. We argue this is a matter of ontology and discuss the advantages of critical realist ontology for addressing this issue. A critical realist analysis identifies the generative mechanisms at work that both necessitate and constrain reinvention. We argue that one generative mechanism in particular, a legitimation crisis, could ultimately lead to the transformation of management education. This is explored systemically at the institutional, programmatic and pedagogical levels. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]
ISSN:1350-5076
1461-7307