Good in a Crisis?

Abstract

This chapter assesses how business schools have responded to periods of economic crisis—or have not. What is striking is how business schools seem to have been remarkably untroubled by any of the economic crises the nation has endured since business schools opened for business. Whether in the 1930s, in the 1970s, or at the beginning of the twenty-first century, there has been a collective shrugging of the shoulders inside most business schools. That nonresponse helps one understand that many at business schools and the business leaders with whom they interacted defined “crisis” in a different way. For them, the crisis was one of public relations—how to make business look better when it had lost the confidence of so many Americans—not one of what business had done to lose that trust.