Robert R. Locke

Business Education in Germany: Past Systems and Current Practice

Although the American contribution to business education is well-known, that of other nations has been largely overlooked. In this article, Professor Locke reviews the very different history of business education in Germany, which he traces from its early twentieth-century origins to the present. He concludes that, while the German model no longer has the international reputation it did before World War II, it continues to promote solid economic growth.

Management-Ausbildung im US-amerikanisch-deutschen Vergleich

Das Studium der Betriebswirtschaftslehre in Deutschland hat ideengeschichtlich andere Wurzeln als dasjenige an US‐amerikanischen Business‐Schools. Insbesondere die starke Orientierung der MBA‐Ausbildung am neoklassischen Paradigma steht einer Ausrichtung an Erfordernissen der Praxis entgegen. Dies wird in den unterschiedlichen Reaktionen der BWL und der Business‐Schools auf Herausforderungen der vergangenen Jahrzehnte wie der japanischen Art der Unternehmensfuhrung oder die Etablierung von Entrepreneurship in den Studiengangen deutlich. Ferner wird herausgearbeitet, dass die Business Schools im Unterschied zur BWL eine aktive Rolle bei der Finanzialisierung des zeitgenossischen Kapitalismus einnahmen. Der BWL wird eine Selbstvergewisserung ihrer Ursprunge angeraten.

Roundtable on Business Education

A consideration of Rakesh Khuranas From Higher Aims to Hired Hands: The Social Transformation of American Business Schools and the Unfulfilled Promise of Management as a Profession (Princeton, 2007).Khuranas book is an examination of the development of the university-based business school in the United States from the nineteenth century to today. He asserts that while the original goal of these schools was to train a professional class of managers in the mold of doctors or lawyers, university business schools no longer strive for this ideal. Instead, Khurana believes that business schools have become purveyors of a product –the MBA–sold to student-consumers. People should therefore not be surprised at corporate misconduct when managers are considered responsible only to shareholders. Khurana calls for a renewal of the professional ideal in the business school, in which future business leaders are trained to take their place as moral leaders in society. We asked each of the following authors to comment on the book and see if business education underwent a similar transition in other countries.

Reviews : Michel Bruguière, Pour une renaissance de I'histoire financière, xviiie- xxe siècles (Histoire économique et financière de la France: Animation de la recherche), Paris, Imprimerie National, 1991; xiv + 590 pp.; FF 199:

of its own quite apart from that of civil society. Unlike the British, therefore, who confounded state and civil society in their financial affairs (since the time of William of Orange the English system constituted an osmosis between the government, the Bank of England and the Kingdom’s chief capitalists [272] ), the state finance administration in France fought ferociously to keep private capitalists at arm’s length. Consequently, whereas the City of London must be the focal point for any investigation of British finance, in France that point of focus is the state’s finance administration.