The Starting Point

The management guru Peter Drucker said, ‘the only thing we know about the future is that it will be different’. In recent times there has been a great deal of debate regarding what universities and their business schools should look like in the future. Much of this debate has centred on ‘what’ needs to be changed rather than ‘how’ things can be changed, given the current reality of university and business-school structures here in the UK. A great deal of this debate has also come from the USA, where there is increasing concern regarding issues related to funding for students and the perspectives of business schools. Many (Mintzberg, 2004; Bennis & Toole, 2005; Christensen & Eyring, 2011) have argued that change is needed vis-à-vis the focus of business schools and what they provide in terms of their education programmes and overall benefits to society. Many of the researchers feel that business schools have in some senses lost their way. The work presented in this book attempts to provide a UK-based perspective of how business schools and their universities need to change in order to meet ongoing challenges in the following areas: online technology; social media; the potential impact of MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses); changing student demands regarding value for money, employability and employer demands concerning the level of engagement that business schools and universities have with their organizations.