Overview

A generation of aspiring business managers has been taught to see a world of difference as a world of opportunity. In Making Global MBAs, Andrew Orta examines the culture of contemporary business education, and the ways MBA programs participate in the production of global capitalism through the education of the business subjects who will be managing it.   Based on extensive field research in several leading US business schools, this groundbreaking ethnography exposes what the culture of MBA training says about contemporary understandings of capitalism in the context of globalization. Orta details the rituals of MBA life and the ways MBA curricula cultivate both habits of fast-paced technical competence and “softer” qualities and talents thought to be essential to unlocking the value of international cultural difference while managing its risks. Making Global MBAs provides an essential critique of neoliberal thinking for students and professionals in a wide variety of fields.  

Full Product Details

Author:   Andrew Orta
Publisher:   University of California Press
Imprint:   University of California Press
Volume:   47
Dimensions:   Width: 15.20cm , Height: 2.00cm , Length: 22.90cm
Weight:   0.499kg
ISBN:  

9780520325395

ISBN 10:   0520325397
Pages:   256
Publication Date:   01 October 2019
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Out of stock  
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Table of Contents

List of Figures Acknowledgments 1 • Wall Street Goes to the Ends of the Earth Masters of the Universe The MBA Boom and the Refiguring of Global Capitalism Anthropology and Capitalism Capitalism, Difference, and the Excess of Culture An Anthropologist among the MBAs Organization of the Book 2 • Fast Subjects: The Rituals of MBA Training Compression and the Paracurriculum Axioms of Capitalism Science and Art: Talent and the Management of Excess 3 • Accounting for Business From Clerks to Managers Managing the Modern Managing the Postwar World Managers Abroad 4 • The Currency of Culture Discovering Culture with First-Year MBAs Culture in Context Culturing the Ugly American Building a Better International Manager 5 • Managing the Margins Staging the Global Incompletely Short-Term Study Abroad 6 • Partial Answers: The Uses of Ethnographic Capitalist Realism The (Panic-Inducing) Hold Real Life Has Inventing the Case Method Working the Cases 7 • Frontiers of Capitalism Scaling Difference Two Parables of Social Entrepreneurship New Economies Arising Scaling the MBA Notes References Index

Reviews

A fascinating cultural portrait of future middle and senior managers as key players in global business. . . . The book will be a valuable reference to anthropologists interested in education and business culture. * Anthropology Book Forum * Orta does a service in offering this contextual overview of the MBA as a construct that has provided the essential building blocks and managerial class to help create and advance global business and culture. In essence, Orta posits that global business managers are schooled to employ a cultural lens that helps them transform local variables into global business opportunities. These opportunities create a global business culture that interacts with local culture and coexists with the neoliberal political culture that both manages risk and unlocks opportunities. In terms of both education and implementation, this is a sweeping vision that sees the MBA as underpinning the current era of globalization and business development. . . . Recommended. * CHOICE * Orta brings a particular expertise to the analysis of cultures, honed in earlier ethnographic studies of relations between Catholic missionaries and the indigenous Aymara communities of the Bolivian highlands. He notably delves into the growth in international business teaching on MBA courses, transmitted through case studies and short-term study assignments abroad. * Financial Times *

Orta does a service in offering this contextual overview of the MBA as a construct that has provided the essential building blocks and managerial class to help create and advance global business and culture. In essence, Orta posits that global business managers are schooled to employ a cultural lens that helps them transform local variables into global business opportunities. These opportunities create a global business culture that interacts with local culture and coexists with the neoliberal political culture that both manages risk and unlocks opportunities. In terms of both education and implementation, this is a sweeping vision that sees the MBA as underpinning the current era of globalization and business development. . . . Recommended. * CHOICE * Orta brings a particular expertise to the analysis of cultures, honed in earlier ethnographic studies of relations between Catholic missionaries and the indigenous Aymara communities of the Bolivian highlands. He notably delves into the growth in international business teaching on MBA courses, transmitted through case studies and short-term study assignments abroad. * Financial Times *

"""Orta brings a particular expertise to the analysis of cultures, honed in earlier ethnographic studies of relations between Catholic missionaries and the indigenous Aymara communities of the Bolivian highlands. He notably delves into the growth in “international business” teaching on MBA courses, transmitted through case studies and short-term study assignments abroad."" * Financial Times * ""A thick and vibrant description of the MBA experience that makes a contribution to an understanding of the MBA milieu and influence and to the anthropology of business."" * American Anthropologist * ""A sweeping vision that sees the MBA as underpinning the current era of globalization and business development. . . . Recommended."" * CHOICE * ""A fascinating cultural portrait of future middle and senior managers as key players in global business. . . . The book will be a valuable reference to anthropologists interested in education and business culture."" * Anthropology Book Forum *"

Author Information

Andrew Orta is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is the author of Catechizing Culture: Missionaries, Aymara, and the “New Evangelization.”  

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