Making European Managers in Business Schools: A Longitudinal Case Study on Evolution, Processes, and Actors from the Late 1960s Onward

Abstract

There have been calls in recent literature for researchers to open up the “black box” of business schools to explore their dynamics and behaviors in-depth for a context-sensitive understanding of their evolution. Drawing on the case of ESCP, a leading business school in France, this article shows how European business schools’ curricula have evolved since the late 1960s in response to a combination of powerful actors’ demands and the emergence of new processes in the educational domain. This article finds that while European business schools’ curricula reflect the influence of internal and external forces, they do not converge to a common type, because of the different markets and political and cultural contexts in which they operate. It also finds that business schools in Europe purposefully do not imitate those in United States.