Introduction

Abstract

Today, business schools constitute an integral part of many different national higher education systems. The need for academically informed management education is taken for granted, even though management is, in comparison to other fields, a relatively young academic subject. The first collegiate business schools were created at the turn of the 20th century in the United States and in Europe. Systematic academic research in management was not conducted until the 1960s (Porter and McKibbin 1988). During the 1980s and 1990s in particular, the number of business degrees and academic courses in management education increased significantly around the world. For instance, in 1996–1997, more than a quarter million undergraduate degrees in business were awarded by American institutions of higher education (Pfeffer and Fong 2002: 78), and business degrees constituted over 23% of all graduate degrees granted in the year 2000 (Statistical Abstract of the United States 2000, cited in Friga et al. 2003: 233). Particularly at Anglo-American universities, management education has become “big business” (Pfeffer and Fong 2002), and business schools at many of these universities have become “cash cows” that provide a substantial portion of their parent university’s revenues (e.g. Wilms and Zell 2002).