The Business School and the End of History: Reimagining Management Education

Abstract

We contend that we underestimate the importance of understanding the history of ideas for pluralism and reflexivity in management education. We explain this failing through the lens of “the end of history” argument (Fukuyama, 1989) which suggests that there are no viable alternatives to current assumptions about business and society, making business schools too neoliberal in their core ideas and stuck in a time warp by this worldview. We contribute theoretically to debates about the role of history in helping us to better understand the creation of our ideas and dominant logics. In our disciplined provocation, we highlight the valuable role management education could play in raising historical consciousness for enhanced social imagination. In our call to action, we highlight how examining the history of our ideas combined with the humanities offers the possibility of a more nuanced and reflective approach to management education. We argue that a pluralism of social imaginaries and world-making would generate new debates and a deeper sense of management practice as a humanistic enterprise. This, we argue, is vital to developing more inclusive, hopeful, and humane social imaginaries for management learning that is more responsive to a context of complex business and social challenges.