Provocation: Business schools and economic crisis – The emperor's new clothes: learning from crises?

This paper argues that the lessons of previous crises have not been learned. Attempts to encourage the discussion and mainstreaming of business ethics in management education too often led to the emergence of incongruous parallel curriculum structures and a one-sided instrumentalist approach to learning about corporate social responsibility. When it comes to understanding governance of organisations, dominant agency theory and a focus on board composition also neglect a discussion of substantive issues. A proper agenda of responsibility will need a rethinking of underlying behavioural assumptions as well as simplistic governance prescriptions if both businesses and management educators are to avoid more crises and go beyond a shallow CSR agenda.