Global Mimicry: Putting Strategic Choice Back on the Business School Agenda
| Published date | 01 September 2011 |
| Author | Peter McKiernan,David Wilson |
| Date | 01 September 2011 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8551.2011.00765.x |
Global Mimicry: Putting Strategic Choice
Back on the Business School Agenda
David Wilson and Peter McKiernan
1
Department of Sociology, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, UK, and
1
Strathclyde Business School,
University of Strathclyde, Glasgow G1 1XQ, UK
Corresponding author email: peter.mckiernan@strath.ac.uk
Business schools
1
are subject to strong institutional pressures. In this paper we examine
university-based business schools in the UK. We argue that the result of such pressures
has been to render business schools isomorphic in a number of ways and to diminish the
potential voice of business school research in social and economic issues. We detail the
range of institutional pressures and then suggest that schools have choices in the ways
they might adapt their strategies to counter normative, coercive and mimetic pressures.
Drawing on Oliver’s notion of strategic behaviours, we suggest that business schools
should adopt a wider scholarly lens and turn its theoretical perspectives and empirical
research toward ‘big’ social and economic questions. The difficulties, advantages and
implications of changing strategic behaviours are discussed.
Introduction
How times change. Writing in 2005, Eric
Cornuel
2
argued that ‘in the future the legitimacy
of business schools will no longer be questioned’.
He developed the argument to say that business
schools had become ‘legitimised parts of society’
and that ‘their role was clear’ (Cornuel, 2005).
Just six years later, neither claim would seem very
robust or accurate. Both scholars and the media
have been critical of business schools, in parti-
cular of the business models they teach. Scholars
such as Currie, Knights and Starkey (2010, p. 1)
argue that the business model that has been
created by financial economics in business
schools is influential and suspect. They argue
that business schools are ‘complicit in the current
financial crisis’. In the media, the New York
Times printed several letters on 3 March 2009
reacting to a news story about the pressure that
trying economic times have exerted on the
teaching of the humanities. The letter writers
argued that ‘by studying the arts, cultural history,
literature, philosophy, and religion’, individuals
develop their powers of ‘critical thinking and
moral reasoning’. The letters continued to argue
that business schools rarely develop those skills,
which is allegedly why MBAs make short-sighted
and self-serving decisions. Podolny (2009) goes
further by arguing that the problem does not lie
solely with MBAs and the business models of
financial economics. He found that many busi-
ness school academics are not curious about what
really goes on inside organizations. Instead,
many prefer to develop theoretical models that
obscure, rather than clarify, the way organiza-
tions work. Many academics appear to believe
that a theory’s alleged relevance is enough to
justify teaching it as a solution to organizational
problems without further critical thought.
Alongside this critique of business schools sits
some evidence that business schools have reached
a plateau in their extraordinary growth trajectory
and may be in danger of impending decline
(Schoemaker, 2008; Starkey and Tempest, 2008;
Starkey and Tiratsoo, 2007). We argue that such
criticisms of business schools can be largely
1
Here, we refer to university-based, as opposed to
corporate-based, business schools.
2
The CEO of the European Foundation for Manage-
ment Education (EFMD), Brussels.
British Journal of Management, Vol. 22, 457–469 (2011)
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8551.2011.00765.x
r2011 The Author
British Journal of Management r2011 British Academy of Management. Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd,
9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA, 02148, USA.
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