MAY 2018

co-operatives, local markets, kinship systems, groups,
networks, communes, tribes, partnerships, local
exchange trading systems, hierarchies, democracies,
city-states, councils, teams, bureaucracies, trusts,
communities, collectives, enterprises, professions,
guilds, lineages, trade unions, states, clubs, cultures,
occupations, societies, matriarchies, solidarities,
associations, villages, sects, and utopias. Oh, and
private sector limited companies too.
We wouldn’t trust a medical school that
only studied certain diseases, or restricted its
research to people who had a certain skin colour. We
wouldn’t be impressed if a teacher of architecture
ignored all buildings that weren’t office blocks,
or if a biologist decided to ignore life forms that
weren’t antelopes or zebras. This is what the
business school is doing with organisations. It is
implicitly condemning all other organisational
forms as old fashioned or niche, and assuming
that market managerialism is the only and one
best way. Before the crash, this was an assumption
that might have been credible to many people.
Nowadays, we might instead suggest that it was the
people with degrees in management, finance
and accounting who got us into the mess
that we are in, and the business school
should not avoid its culpability.
Many business schools and their professional
associations have been busily trying to avoid this
unpleasant conclusion. Apart from wriggling a
lot about cause and effect, their only suggestions
for reform appear to involve compulsory modules
on corporate social responsibility, and perhaps
making some noises about diversity and
sustainability. This is tinkering, the equivalent of
the biologist agreeing to add rhinos and hippos
to the curriculum. Their fear of change is perfectly
comprehensible, but if the business school is
to rescue its tarnished image, it needs more than a
bit of public relations. it needs to become a proper
subject, and change its name.
Because we do need somewhere questions
of organisation are studied and taught. Whether
small worker co-op or multinational company,
issues of how co-ordination and control can be
achieved are central to our lives. So too are the
political issues that are necessarily part of any
OUR WORLD IS POPULATED
BY ALL SORTS OF ORGANISATIONS,
AND THEY ALL PRESENT DIFFERENT
SOLUTIONS TO THE PROBLEM
OF GOVERNANCE
patterning of power. Plato knew that leaders
needed to be trained not to become tyrants. So
perhaps it’s time for these schools to encourage
modesty and historical understanding in their
graduates. If this means they study how local
currencies are organised, and the skills required
in running a mutual, then so much the better. At
least the students will understand that there
are alternatives, and the School of Organising
can become more than just a place for
teaching capitalism.
Martin Parker’s book,
Shut Down the Business
School, is published by
Pluto Press in May.
p The book calls for an educational rethink
p Bristol Business School
MAY 2018 | 43