CBS Paper Development Workshop: "Educating for business – and the business of education" | Business History Conference, Detroit, March 16-18, 2023

CBS Paper Development Workshop: "Educating for business – and the business of education"
2023 BHC Meeting


Educating for business – and the business of education - Historical Perspectives and developments

CBS Paper Development Workshop

Business History Conference, Detroit, March 16-18, 2023

The past years have seen an increasing scholarly interest in the historicity of management learning and education. Studies on historical interrelations between business and education have appeared as journal contributions and special issues across diverse fields such as business history, management- and entrepreneurship studies, and didactical research (Bok, 2009; Bridgman et al. 2016; Clinebell, & Clinebell 2009; Khurana 2007; Spender, 2016; Wadhwani & Viebig 2021), as business schools and educational programs in management are increasingly seen as having a transformational potential to address present-day global challenges. Instead of merely educating for business, business school curricula and didactics are now focused on educating for sustainable solutions and addressing grand challenges (Gatzweiler et al. 2022).

In the PDW we focus on historicity of business education and, and we would like to explore recent developments as well as theories and methods that might shed new light on the historical development of business education.

The workshop offers an opportunity to get feedback and generate ideas of how to develop concrete paper drafts that deal, one way or the other, with historical aspects of business education. In addition, the PDW will serve as a forum where we can discuss future directions and opportunities for historical studies within the area. What questions and research that are yet to be explored? And what are the role for historians in shaping agendas and research questions?

Themes to be explored in the papers could include, amongst others:

The role and development of entrepreneurship education
The historicity of business- and management education
Historical responses to grand societal challenges
Future directions of business education
Business school pedagogy and didactics in historical perspective
The historical development of business education curricula
Theoretical and methodological perspectives connected to business education

Submitted texts could take form as extended abstracts or full paper drafts. The important thing is that readers can identify the key arguments, theories, and empirical material, for them to provide useful feedback, suggestions, and comments.

The PDW is developed in the context of a special issues call on entrepreneurship education in Management & Organizational History. Potential authors for the special issue are encouraged to participate in the workshop, but the PDW is not limited to contributions for this publication.

Participants are expected to read all circulated papers. Please submit a paper draft or extended abstract before January 10, 2023 to the workshop organizers.

Christoph Viebig CBS Centre for Business History: cvi.mpp@cbs.dk

Anders Ravn Sørensen, CBS Centre for Business History: ars.mpp@cbs.dk

Bok, D. (2003). Universities in the marketplace: The commercialization of higher education. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.
Bridgman, T., Cummings, S., & McLaughlin, C. 2016. “Restating the case: How revisiting the development of the case method can help us think differently about the future of the business school”. Academy of Management Learning & Education, 15(4): 724-741.
Clinebell, S. K., & Clinebell, J. M. (2009). The tension in business education between academic rigor and real-world relevance: The role of executive professors. Academy of Management Learning & Education, 7(1), 99-107.
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.
Khurana & Spender, J. C. 2012 “Herbert A. Simon on What Ails Business Schools: More than ‘A Problem in Organizational Design’. Journal of Management Studies, 49: 619–639.
Wadhwani & Viebig (2021) “Social Imaginaries of Entrepreneurship Education: The United States and Germany, 1800–2020“ Academy of Management Learning & Education 20(3).
Gatzweiler et al. (2022) "Grand Challenges and Business Education: Dealing with Barriers to Learning and Uncomfortable Knowledge", in Research in the Sociology of Organizations, Vol. 79, pp. 221-237.