"Tackling Grand Challenges by Offering an Alternative to the U.S. Business School Model in the Global South: The ILO Management Development Model"

This paper challenges the understanding of the development of post-war management education as a result of global transfer of the US business school model by exploring the ILO’s efforts to introduce management development as an alternative model in the Global South.
In 1958, the ILO launched an ambitious program to train managers in developing countries financed by the UN. This made the ILO the world’s largest provider of management knowledge in the Global South, serving several thousands of participants in more than 40 countries by the mid-1960. The ILO’s alternative form of organizing management training was an alternative to the US business school model in five ways. First, the targeted countries were exclusively developing countries. Second, the program translated the new concept of executive education offered by US business schools to the concept of management development. Third, while the source of the transferred management knowledge in the US model was US business schools, there were several sources in the ILO model due to the recruitment of experts from various countries with varied practical expertise. Fourth, the aim was not to develop new business schools to cooperate with US business schools, but to establish national productivity centers anchored in the ILO’s tripartite principle. Fifth, instead of using US-trained professors to teach in for example executive education programs, the alternative model used foreign technical experts with practical managerial experiences to train local business people.
By comparing ILO’s experiences in Argentina, Algeria, and India, the paper shows how this program developed as a new alternative to the US business school model. The paper draws upon the translation of knowledge theory within management literature as well as the concept “Third Space”.