Management Education's Unanswered Questions

Managers want the status of professionals, but not all managers want the constraints that go along with professions. Why? For more than 100 years, business education at the top universities has been searching for its soul. HBS professor Rakesh Khurana, author of a new book, says business school education is at a turning point. Key concepts include:
Is management a profession? After more than a century of business education, it remains an open question.
The founders of today's top business schools envisioned a world in which managers served the best interests of society, not narrow self-interests.
Management education is closely linked with the prevailing winds of society.
Elite business schools today are at a crossroads, especially since the rise of business education in China and India.

How has management education evolved, and where is it going? This question is of crucial importance for society, says HBS professor Rakesh Khurana. Business leaders are admired yet often distrusted, and the idea of management as a profession is similarly on shaky ground—as it has been for more than 100 years. The situation may be due in large part to the role of university-based business education from the founding of the Wharton School in 1881 and continuing right up to the present.
According to Khurana, the schools first emphasized that managers should carry out their work in ways beneficial for society. This theme was later replaced by preference for disciplinary knowledge, and finally by a market logic that regards business education as a marketable commodity rather than a professional education.

The founders saw a profession in terms of using one's knowledge for the advancement of societal interest.