Book review Mie Augier and James G. March. (2011). The Roots, Rituals, and Rhetorics of Change : North American business schools after Second World War. Standford, CA : Stanford Business Books.

Abstract

First of all, this is an excellent book. It represents yet another major contribution by March to the canon of management research to which he has already brought so much. The work is a careful, detailed, wideranging, superbly written and provocative analysis of North American business schools in the period after the Second World War, 1945 to 1970, a time that can justly claim to have been a golden age for a particular manifestation of the business-school idea. It was a time, briefly, as they conclude the book, of the business school as Camelot. Augier and March capture this period well, examining issues and events that have been discussed before but never from the angle adopted here, with a focus on the roots of change, and particularly how change manifested itself in legends, rituals and rhetorics. One of the authors, of course, has a privileged perspective on this period of change, as March was an active during the period under