Re-thinking the History of Business Education

The historiography of business education has focused primarily on the rise of US business schools and the Americanization of business education after World War II. Challenging this narrow focus, the panel aims at re-thinking the history of business education by presenting new comparative perspectives on largely unexplored aspects of the history of business education outside the US. The four papers jointly explore the histories of management and entrepreneurship education in Germany (Viebig), Argentina (Amdam & Lluch), France and Vietnam (Passant), as well as Norway and Spain (Alvaro-Moya & Nygaard). Collectively, they argue that business education in its organizational setup, curricula, and legitimacy is influenced by different local and global institutions. Hence, re-thinking the history of business education on an international and comparative level requires to unravel those institutional influences and their interdependent relationship with business education in and across different geographical contexts. Specifically, the panel will discuss how current debates on the history of business education lack an understanding of the relationship between supply and demand for business school graduates (Viebig), the influence of the international labor organization (ILO) on management education (Amdam & Lluch), the colonial heritage of business education (Passant), and the relationship between engineering and business education (Alvaro-Moya & Nygaard). All four papers use historical methods and complement each other by employing new theoretical and empirical perspectives while comparing different underexplored aspects from different regions and times of business education.