Abstract
Business schools see themselves as being in the business of producing leaders for both public and private sector organizations. For example, Harvard Business School’s mission, frequently articulated by the former dean, Kim Clark, is to educate leaders who make a difference in the world. Clark would begin presentations to the school’s visiting committee with examples of people who had graduated from HBS and held major leadership positions in organizations of all types and sizes. Many, perhaps most, other business schools have similar aspirations and take pride in their graduates who have gone on to hold significant leadership positions. This focus on educating leaders pervades not just business schools but is part of the mission of US colleges and universities more generally. Some observers have noted that educating leaders who could guide a new nation was one of the founding tenets of America’s first institutions of higher education (Gomez, 2007).
My thanks to Charles A. O’Reilly, III, Rakesh Khurana and Jordi Canals for their very helpful and perceptive comments on an earlier draft of this chapter, and to Beth Benjamin for some unpublished research she so generously provided.
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© 2011 Jeffrey Pfeffer
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Pfeffer, J. (2011). Leadership Development in Business Schools: An Agenda for Change. In: Canals, J. (eds) The Future of Leadership Development. IESE Business Collection. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230295087_10
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