Nothing Succeeds Like Failure
The Sad History of American Business Schools
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- $39.99
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- $39.99
Publisher Description
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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Miami University history professor Conn argues against the perceived success of American business schools in this rigorously documented, if agenda-driven, polemic. He recounts their origins, growth, and shifting ambitions, while bemoaning how the "professionalization" of education has affected educational standards. "Many of us," he claims, "simply don't believe teaching business techniques constitutes the real work universities ought to do" however, it's unclear who these "many" are and how widespread this distaste really is. Among business schools' sins, he argues, are constantly changing their curricula, leaning too heavily on economics departments for intellectual credibility and self-justification, and failing to choose and adhere to a singular mission. He criticizes these institutions for not directing business toward goals more high-minded than profit, but, since he admits that this has not been a stated goal of business schools for some time, it's hard to view their failure to pursue such an agenda as representing "unfulfilled promises and unmet aspirations across nearly 150 years." The book's greatest failing lies in its high-mindedness, as it never justifies the contention that MBAs should be primarily concerned with social change, rather than business best practices. It's unclear who the audience for this would be the subject is too niche and the tone too bitter.
