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The purpose of this paper is to evaluate key implications of globalisation for business schools, and to put structural alignment of academic structures with the Bologna Declaration in a broader strategic alignment with the needs of a knowledge‐driven society and a socially sustainable development.

The analysis uses systems theory for analysing dynamic change in society and a synthesis of its influences on business education, as we see the Bologna Process is neither conceived nor implemented with sufficient care for holism in the European effort to become an innovative society.

Business schools should extend their transformation effort beyond the Bologna Process and align their strategic model of operation with societal needs by integrating social requirements into their strategic framework.

Research focuses on key external developments in business education at a transnational level. Future research should focus on the exploration of the business school response to social change in a local context.

A requisitely holistic picture of contextual change offers business school leaders deeper understanding of external implications for aligning schools with societal needs.

Emerging social challenges in Europe are taken as the starting point for realigning a strategic model of business school operation with societal needs and the business world with the aim to improve schools' accountability and their evolvement into socially engaged actors with innovative approaches.

The paper presents a systemic and requisitely holistic view of social change for aligning the business school model of operation with the broader needs of a knowledge‐driven society that stretches beyond the formal academic structures unification in the Bologna Process.

This paper aims to review the evolution of management education primarily over the last 50 years and seeks to identify the challenges and lessons learned in management education and to assess the potential for change. To gain insight into these issues the authors draw on the perspectives of around 40 key individuals from academia, professional bodies, media, business and students.

The content of the paper is based upon a qualitative analysis of around 40 two‐to‐three hour interviews of key global players in the management education field.

The key stakeholders in management education are identified as students, business and employers respectively. But in terms of relative stakeholder influence faculty, business and students are the top three influencers. Faculty represent the supply‐side whereas business and students represent the demand side of management education. There is evidence that higher tuition fees may increase the power of students and business relative to faculty. The individuals who have had the greatest influence on management education are academics such as Mintzberg and Drucker rather than business school deans or administrators. Institutions such as INSEAD, IMD and Harvard have had the greatest influence. The main issues and challenges identified in Management Education include information technology, globalisation, the role of faculty, competition and business model performance. Few game changing innovations in curricula have occurred in management education raising the question of how change will occur in the future.

There are few in‐depth, open‐ended interview studies of key participants in the field of management education. It adds insights to a range of more reflective literature studies from writers such as Khurana, Mintzberg and Pfeffer.

Professional schools, including collegiate business schools, are pulled in two opposing directions. The academy, where they live, pulls them to emphasize science and its values, and to focus on expanding the field of knowledge. The profession, into which their graduates move, pulls them to deal with immediately relevant, practical problems. The two also seek different characteristics in curriculum, the academy emphasizing that which will groom future scientists and the profession emphasizing that which will produce immediately employable practitioners. Collegiate business schools have not done a smooth, integrated job of balancing these competing claims for allegiance. Rather, history shows that they have satisfied one side and then, when the other side’s complaints became too loud, switched sides completely to the irritation of the constituency just jilted. This article describes what has happened and proposes a model which, if built into the accreditation standards, could reduce these unfortunate pendulum swings.

It is 50 years since the Gordon/Howell and Pierson reports substantially influenced and shaped management education. “Vision 50+20” offers an alternative future in management education for the next 20 years. The purpose of this paper is to provide insight into the suggested new purpose of business schools as role models in providing responsible leadership for a sustainable world. The article proposes a model of implementation of the vision in the domain of teaching and learning, with concrete best practice examples collected from around the world. The evolution of teaching and learning in business education is briefly reviewed in light of newly proposed “collaborator” method, hopefully launching a debate and further research in this important domain.

The 50+20 vision of management education for the world resulted from an 18‐month collective creative visioning and back‐casting process, looking into the future and based on explicitly normative assumptions about the need to change business education. The vision was thus primarily developed deductively from a vision of the future, rather than inductively from existing literature and theory. The scholarly assessments of business schools and business school education were used as a starting point for a normative approach, but cannot explain the vision which spans a broad area of topics and fields both within management and beyond. The author complements the vision with examples from around the world to illustrate the emergence of this vision and suggests a model for considering the implementation of vision 50+20.

Business schools need to fundamentally transform their purpose to serve society by providing responsible leadership for a sustainable world, embracing three relevant roles and becoming themselves a role model and a showcase for transformation.

The paper summarizes the result of the global co‐creative visioning process of project 50+20 offering an alternative vision of management education for the world. More importantly, the paper also suggests a model on how to implement the vision in the domain of teaching and learning by providing concrete applications and leading examples from around the world. As such, it provides a visionary guide for any business and management scholar interested in engaging the future of management education.

The paper summarizes the 50+20 vision and introduces a practical perspective for implementing a meaningful new approach to teaching and learning.

The authors call attention to the rising customer dissatisfaction with the strategic‐business‐advice industry. Looking at each segment they find that some aspect of its business model has broken down. .

A business model describes how a firm delivers customer value. While this definition usually applies to a firm and its strategic business units, it can be applied to an industry or segment. Thus, we could ask, “What is the extant business model for management education in the US?”

Academic researchers, seeking professional advancement, put methodological rigor and peer approval ahead of creating value for business leaders and organizations. B‐schools reward research that peer reviewers assert is scientifically rigorous and that other specialists often cite –without measuring its usefulness to managers or organizations. Academic research is usually communicated exclusively to its own constituency – instead of to the world of business. Consultants, though they clearly have a stake in the welfare and success of their clients, seldom face up to their inherent conflict of interest.

Some specific recommendations for each segment of the strategic‐business‐advice industry: Business schools. Collaborate with corporations to identify critical issues and priorities as a guide for faculty research. Consultants. Become more client‐centered and less sales‐oriented, focusing on what the client really needs and how that differs from what the consultant has to sell. Corporations. Collaborate actively with business schools in the design of curricula and the establishment of research priorities. Journal publishers. Accelerate the review process; slash the cycle time and get their information out quickly.

The article examines the strategic‐business‐advice industry as a set of business models that need rethinking and it suggests astute solutions..

The paper seeks to identify the key environmental forces and competitive drivers influencing the strategic management of a business school, and to give guidance about strategic choices as the business school evolves in the new knowledge economy.

Analytic tools such as PEST analysis and competitive analysis are used to provide a model and framework for dialogue about strategic choice.

The influence of demographic, technological, entrepreneurship and globalisation drivers provides a series of implications for competitive action and strategic choice. In the current environment it offers a school strategy of a rigorous academic research profile informed and guided by practice. This is favoured over a more professional agenda.

The paper reviews and updates the literature on future strategies and scenarios for business schools from an analytic perspective.

The purpose of this paper is to clarify whether UK business schools need to change their strategy, to adopt a more business-like approach, without compromising their role as providers of “quality education”. Business-like activities, as explained by Dart (2004, p. 294) are generally understood to be those characterised by some blend of profit motivation, the use of managerial and organisation design tools developed in for-profit business settings, and broadly framed business thinking to structure and organise activity.

Adopting a mixed methods research design, this study involved the review of quantitative data from questionnaires sent to senior managers within UK business schools, followed by the case-study analysis of five UK-based business schools.

Contemporary evidence suggests business schools have reacted to the current dynamic environment by adapting a more business-like approach, scanning the horizon and identifying new markets and opportunities for growth. However, some business schools remain ardently against a more business-like approach, considering it to work against academic clarity and research excellence, expected of universities.

This paper illustrates the current challenges influencing strategy within five diverse UK business schools. Therefore, the original contribution of the paper lies in the authors’ empirical investigations into the current thinking and practice of existing business school leaders, in light of the changing HE policies and reduced funding arrangements.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on different types of university-based business school dean (BSD) in a context of insecurities within the business school business and more widely with changing business and educational models and disruptions such as the global financial crisis and Brexit. The position of the BSD is contextualised within the industry sector, institutionally, and in relation to individuals’ tenures to make sense of how BSDs are operating on a burning platform. A well-established middle management strategic role framework is applied to the empirical data.

In total, 50 one-to-one interviews were conducted with deans and their colleagues. Deans’ behaviours were analysed according to attention paid to “facilitating”, “synthesizing”, “championing”, and “implementing” strategic activities.

Behaviours from primary professional identities as scholars and educators were identified as prevalent. It is suggested that to achieve greater legitimacy in declining mature markets, future deans will need to re-negotiate their roles to champion as public intellectuals the societal impact of business schools more widely in a context of shifting business and educational models.

The study is relevant to current and aspiring deans and for those hiring and developing business school deans.

The dean is conceptualised as a hybrid upper middle manager besieged by multiple stakeholders and challenges. Novel first-order insights into a typology of strategists are highlighted.

Business schools are facing unprecedented challenges, ranging from financial sustainability in some quarters to waning demand for the MBA to the potentially disruptive impact of massive open online courses. Given these challenges, how might the future of management education unfold? The purpose of this paper is to better understand how leaders in management education perceive these challenges and their likely impact on the evolution of the field.

The authors conducted in-depth interviews with 39 experts, the majority of who were in leadership positions at business schools. Each of these in-depth interviews was tape-recorded, transcribed and then content-analysed.

The authors asked the panel of experts for their insights on what they perceive to be the most likely, best-case, and worst-case scenarios in the next ten years. The modal response for the most likely scenario was one where intense competition pushes schools to specialise and better differentiate their offerings, as they attempt to strengthen their position in the market. The best-case scenario was one where schools move closer to the practice, in an attempt to regain relevance and legitimacy. Finally, the experts described the worst-case scenario as a situation where management education as a whole fails to respond to the criticisms and challenges, leading the field down the path of greater and greater irrelevance.

The insights gained from this research can be of strategic value to administrators and those in leadership positions in business schools who wish to anticipate shifts in the management education landscape and strategic responses of peer schools.