Getting (The Wrong/Right) Things Done – Problems and Possibilities in U.S. Business Schools

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this chapter is to make the case for significant change in the content and structure of undergraduate business education in the United States. The premise is that business education is generally effective at Getting Things Done – but that generally what it Gets Done is the Wrong Things – advancing destructive tendencies in capitalism – rather than the Right Things – fostering sustainable and democratic alternatives.

Design/methodology/approach

The chapter advances a viewpoint about the current weaknesses and potential strengths of undergraduate business education, relative to the goal of creating more sustainable, community-based economic and social organization. It is structured as a reflection on the history of business education in the United States and on the author’s experience as a professor at a public university.

Findings

The analysis suggests that while undergraduate business education in the United States serves largely to buttress unsustainable and fundamentally destructive tendencies in capitalism the social characteristics of the students and the fundamental nature of the material also makes it – in an apparent paradox – potentially a very rich process, system and venue for fostering more sustainable, community-based economic and social organization.

Originality/value

The value of the chapter lies in the author’s relatively rare perspective as an activist-oriented critical management professor in a U.S. business school. The combination of theoretical and political perspective and experience in the classroom and the larger University offers the possibility of stimulating new avenues of discussion, especially among academics and administrators dissatisfied with the current state of educational practice.

Citation

Stookey, S. (2014), "Getting (The Wrong/Right) Things Done – Problems and Possibilities in U.S. Business Schools", Getting Things Done (Dialogues in Critical Management Studies, Vol. 2), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 73-90. https://doi.org/10.1108/S2046-6072(2013)0000002009