Nothing Succeeds Like Failure : The Sad History of American Business Schools

Do business schools actually make good on their promises of "innovative," "outside-the-box" thinking to train business leaders who will put society ahead of money-making?Do they help society by making better business leaders?No, they don't, Steven Conn asserts, and what's more they never have.In throwing down a gauntlet on the business of business schools, Conn's Nothing Succeeds Like Failure examines the frictions, conflicts, and contradictions at the heart of these enterprises and details the way business schools have failed to resolve them.Beginning with founding of the Wharton School in 1881, Conn measures these schools' aspirations against their actual accomplishments and tells the full and disappointing history of missed opportunities, unmet aspirations, and educational mistakes.Conn then poses a set of crucial questions about the role and function of American business schools.The results aren't pretty. Posing a set of crucial questions about the function of American business sch