Foreword Bernard Ramanantsoa CEMS and HEC, France
Thinking about education is always particularly challenging because it is so interconnected with who we are and who we want to be as human beings. In the end our memories from our days as students are contradictory: on the one hand, the world was waiting for us, it belonged to us; but on the other hand, we were constrained by rules which, at the time, seemed unshakable. That is precisely why we wanted to present this collection of reflections on the past, present and future of business schools: to discuss different voices on how business schools can and should contribute to a better and more sustainable society. Business schools have been challenged with reports of all kinds of wrongdoings: of conducting research without links to the ‘real world’, of being obsessed with rankings, of being incapable of developing cross-disciplinary learning, or preferring analytical competencies to the detriment of managerial aptitude … Not all these criticisms are accurate, but certainly there is something to be said about the need for business schools to address more fundamental questions, such as the sustainability of the economic model and the roles and responsibilities that businesses should have. As we see in this book, there are many business schools, as well as other relevant business actors, who have been reflecting on their responsibilities, vision and mission – not only in terms of the global crisis, but also as a more in-depth reflection of what type of society is needed for a sustainable world and the role business schools could play in achieving that goal. Some of these schools insist, for example, on teaching students that a long-term perspective is not merely a succession of short-term decisions. This means giving students the capacity to face new challenges that have not yet been identified, which forces schools to rethink the dialectical link that binds them to the economic world. In this regard, every day more business schools generate alternative ideas and models, rather than adhering to a single model. Thus, as the authors of this book point out, business schools aim to contribute to the emergence of a pluralistic vision, embracing contradictions and paradoxes as fundamental tools for creativity and innovation, and understanding that businesses are not only not the centre of the universe, but are also only a small and interdependent part of it. A little over two years ago, the Community of European Management Schools (CEMS) received the proposal to write a book on the challenges facing business schools, particularly
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