Overview

Business schools are institutions which, a decade after the financial crash, continue to act as loudspeakers for neoliberal capitalism with all its injustices and planetary consequences. In this lively and incendiary call to action, Martin Parker offers a simple message: shut down the business school. Parker argues that business schools are 'cash cows' for the contemporary university that have produced a generation of unreflective managers, primarily interested in their own personal rewards. If we see universities as institutions with responsibilities to the societies they inhabit, then we must challenge the common notion that 'the market' should be the primary determinant of the education they provide. Shut Down the Business School makes a compelling case for a radical alternative, in the form of a 'School for Organising'. This institution would develop and teach on different forms of organising, instead of reproducing the dominant corporate model, enabling individuals to discover alternative responses to the pressing issues of inequality and sustainability faced by all of us today.

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Reviews

'Business schools are at the centre of the malaise of financialized capitalism... Parker prescribes the nuclear option - termination. His replacement is a focus upon sustainable organising that champions alternatives to more-of-the-same hierarchical organisation, market-based forms of exchange and the necessity of management' -- Hugh Wilmott, Professor of Management, Cass Business School, City University London 'This is a tour de force of contemporary critical management thinking. All too often, the textbooks and the MBAs get in the way of what should be the future for business - participative, value-creating and sustainable. Read, learn... and shut down the business school' -- Ed Mayo, Secretary General, Co-operatives UK

'Business schools are at the centre of the malaise of financialized capitalism... Parker prescribes the nuclear option - termination' -- Hugh Wilmott, Professor of Management, Cass Business School, City University London 'This is a tour de force of contemporary critical management thinking. All too often, the textbooks and the MBAs get in the way of what should be the future for business - participative, value-creating and sustainable. Read, learn... and shut down the business school' -- Ed Mayo, Secretary General, Co-operatives UK

'This is a tour de force of contemporary critical management thinking. All too often, the textbooks and the MBAs get in the way of what should be the future for business - participative, value-creating and sustainable. Read, learn... and shut down the business school' -- Ed Mayo, Secretary General, Co-operatives UK

'A thoughtful and serious piece of work' -- Financial Times 'Business schools are at the centre of the malaise of financialized capitalism... Parker prescribes the nuclear option - termination' -- Hugh Wilmott, Professor of Management, Cass Business School, City University London 'This is a tour de force of contemporary critical management thinking. All too often, the textbooks and the MBAs get in the way of what should be the future for business - participative, value-creating and sustainable. Read, learn... and shut down the business school' -- Ed Mayo, Secretary General, Co-operatives UK

Author Information

Martin Parker has taught at business schools since 1995, including at Warwick, Leicester and Keele Universities. He is currently Professor at the Department of Management, University of Bristol. He is the author of Shut Down the Business School (Pluto, 2018) and co-author of Fighting Corporate Abuse (Pluto, 2014).

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