Howard Thomas, Dean and Professor of Strategic Management at Warwick Business School opens this special issue of the Journal of management development which focuses on the future of business schools. Despite the fact that the current business school model has been extremely successful, recent years have seen an increasing amount of literature questioning the roles and purposes of business schools. These recent criticisms prompted Michael Hay of London Business School and Eric Cornuel to specify the theme “Challenging the purpose of business schools” for the EFMD Deans and Directors Conference in 2007. The content presented in this special issue have largely been selected from papers and presentations made at that conference. Michael Hay, as conference Chair, argues that “put at its simplest, the purpose of a business school is to create value through three types of value, namely, academic value, through research and its dissemination; personal value through their teaching and public and social value in the form of knowledgeable and skilled graduates and through the way in which they engage in the societies in which they are based”. Overall these essays are offered to stimulate and open up debate about the future development of business schools and their curricula. The next decade is sure to present many challenges to business schools as they seek to re-define their purpose, visions and strategies to promote success for their schools.
The special issue of the Journal of management development (Vol.27:4) is available to current London Business School students, faculty, staff and alumni from Emerald Management Xtra which can be found on the A-Z list of library database (via Portal)
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