Abstract
This chapter offers insights into the commercial drift that business and higher education is undergoing. It does so by imagining a dialogue, or better a controversy, between an academic and the marketing office of an imaginary business school stressing how marketing and marketing professionals have a greater say than academics in defining what counts as “good” knowledge and what does not in the context of business education. While the dialogue is imaginary, true is the social context in which dialogues like this surely happen every day in an organizational field which produces credentials rather than a truly critical educational experience.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
This is an expression coined in conversation with Gustavo Fishman to whom we are grateful.
- 2.
See Carruthers 1998 and her notion of orthopraxis, where belief is created through the performance of some learnt practice rather than by adhering to a text or a given social belief, as in orthodoxy.
References
Barthes, R. (1971). Sade, fourier, loyola. Paris: Editions de Seuil. (Engl. trans. by Farrar, Strauss & Giroux Inc., The John Hopkins University Press 1976).
Bauman, Z. (2001). The individualized society. Cambridge: Polity.
Carruthers, M. (1998). The craft of thought: Meditation, rhetoric and the making of images. 400–1200. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Czarniawska, B., & Sevón, G. (2005). Global ideas. How ideas, objects and practices travel in the global economy. Malmö: Liber & Copenhagen Business School Press.
DiMaggio, P., & Powell, W. (1983). The iron cage revisited: Institutional isomorphism and collective rationality. American Journal of Sociology. 48: 147–160.
Hansen, A., & Mouritsen, J. (1999). Managerial technology and netted networks. “Competitiveness” in action: The work of translating performance in a high-tech firm. Organization, 6(3): 451–471.
Khurana, R. (2007). From higher aims to hired hands: The social transformation of American business schools and the unfulfilled promise of management as a profession. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
MacKenzie, D. (2006). An engine, not a camera: How financial models shape the markets. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Mazza, C., Quattrone, P., & Riccaboni, A. (Eds.). (2008). European universities in transition: Issues, models and cases. Cheltenham, UK: Elgar publishing.
Noiville, F. (2010). J’ai fait HEC et je m’en excuse » (Editions Stock). (it. Trans., Ho studiato economia e me ne pento). Torino: Bollati Boringhieri.
Power, M. (1998). The audit society. rituals of verification. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Quattrone, P. (2009). Books to be practiced. Memory, the power of the visual and the success of accounting. Accounting, Organizations and Society, 34: 85–118.
Robinson, R., & Brown, I. (1994). Education and the economy. In N. Smelser & R. Swedborg (Eds.), Handbook of economic sociology. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Schofer, E., Ramirez, C., & Meyer, J. (2000). The effects of science on national economic development, 1970–1990. American Sociological Review, 65(December): 877–898.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Mazza, C., Quattrone, P. (2017). Living in a World of Foam: Global Ideas, Bubbles, Institutions and the Fairy Tale of Business Education. In: Izak, M., Kostera, M., Zawadzki, M. (eds) The Future of University Education. Palgrave Critical University Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-46894-5_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-46894-5_6
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-46893-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-46894-5
eBook Packages: EducationEducation (R0)