Adoption of managerial ideologies in Finnish academic management education 1960-2007

Abstract

The article analyses when and how different management paradigms have been adopted for teaching, in the subject of organization and management, by examining the curricula and study guides of the eight main business schools in Finland. The data was analysed in three ways: (1) the analysis of all the reading lists in curricula and study guides, (2) the analyses of subject descriptions in the study guides and (3) the analysis of individual course descriptions in the study guides. Theoretically, the study draws on the literature on German-style and American-style business schools, and on the literature on management paradigms and their dissemination. Our findings indicate that there are differences in the adoption of different management paradigms in management education in German-style and American-style business schools in Finland. For example, between 1980 and 1995, the most commonly used paradigm in teaching in German-style schools was the human relations paradigm, while in American-style schools the most popular paradigm was structural analysis. The results suggest that different traditions in arranging higher management education may have an impact on the content of teaching. This provides an interesting point of departure for investigating the contents of management education in other countries, too. © The Author(s), 2010.