A consideration of Rakesh Khurana's From Higher Aims to Hired Hands: The Social Transformation of American Business Schools and the Unfulfilled Promise of Management as a Profession (Princeton, 2007).
Khurana's 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.