The globalization of professional management education, 1881--2000: Its rise, expansion, and implications

This study investigates the globalization of professional management education over the 20th century on three dimensions: the diffusion of the business school model, the rise of the MBA as the most visible degree, and the looseness of its organizational identity.; Recognizing shortcomings of prevailing explanations in the business education literature, which attribute the development of professional management education to economic development, I propose three additional factors. First, professional management education has developed as business became rationalized as "organization" rather than as substantive and technical work. Second, it rapidly expands as modern education develops as an institution of socialization and allocation. Third, globalization drives individual societies into a wider arena where their business organizations as well as education systems are forced to adapt to world models and to assume the identity of "actors", encouraging the rapid diffusion of professional management education worldwide.; An event history analysis of the initial adoption rates of the business school model at the country level from 1880 to 2000 shows that they were strongly affected by the rationalization of business environments and nation-states' participation in the world market and polity. Also, I found that adoption rates increased dramatically in the period after 1960, even after controlling for all the independent variables. A discourse analysis of publications in the field of management over the past three decades reveals that the MBA has increasingly become the most visible form of professional management education. Additionally, multivariate analyses suggest that countries with expanded education systems, more rationalized business environments and more linkages to world society are likely to establish more MBA programs. As illustrated by the analysis of historical documents and interviews, the MBA model, as it diffuses rapidly worldwide, remains a very loose organizational identity.