Humanities and Arts in Management Education

Abstract

The recent report from the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Rethinking Undergraduate Business Education: Liberal Learning for the Profession (Colby, Ehrlich, Sullivan, & Dolle, 2011) that has inspired this special issue begins with a gesture back toward the previous Carnegie report (Pierson, 1959). Half a century ago, business school faculty were urged to develop a scientific paradigm worthy of its place in the modern university. What happened then has been well researched (see Augier & March, 2011; Bobko & Tejeda, 2000; Chew & McInnis-Bowers, 2004; Datar, Garvin, & Cullen, 2010; Friga et al., 2003; Hatchuelle, 2013; Karakas, 2011; Khurana, 2007; Menand, 2011; O’Connor, 2011; Pfeffer & Fong, 2002; Podolny, 2009; Zald, 1996): An epistemological paradigm took shape among business academics that embraced logical empiricism (LE) as an account of the relationship between knowledge and the world, rational choice (RC) as an account of how people exercise knowledge in practice, and agency theory (AT) as an account of how people in organizations relate to each other. This so-called “LERCAT” paradigm has produced several generations of business school graduates who are “purely linear thinkers who see only oneway causation” (Colby et al., 2011, p. 31). This epistemological paradigm has