Description
Book SynopsisA generation of aspiring business managers has been taught to see a world of difference as a world of opportunity. In Making Global MBAs, Andrew Orta examines the culture of contemporary business education, and the ways MBA programs participate in the production of global capitalism through the education of the business subjects who will be managing it. Based on extensive field research in several leading US business schools, this groundbreaking ethnography exposes what the culture of MBA training says about contemporary understandings of capitalism in the context of globalization. Orta details the rituals of MBA life and the ways MBA curricula cultivate both habits of fast-paced technical competence and softer qualities and talents thought to be essential to unlocking the value of international cultural differencewhile managing its risks. Making Global MBAs provides an essential critique of neoliberal thinking for students and professionals in a wide variety of fields.
Trade Review"Orta brings a particular expertise to the analysis of cultures, honed in earlier ethnographic studies of relations between Catholic missionaries and the indigenous Aymara communities of the Bolivian highlands. He notably delves into the growth in “international business” teaching on MBA courses, transmitted through case studies and short-term study assignments abroad." * Financial Times *
"A thick and vibrant description of the MBA experience that makes a contribution to an understanding of the MBA milieu and influence and to the anthropology of business." * American Anthropologist *
"A sweeping vision that sees the MBA as underpinning the current era of globalization and business development. . . . Recommended." * CHOICE *
"A fascinating cultural portrait of future middle and senior managers as key players in global business. . . . The book will be a valuable reference to anthropologists interested in education and business culture." * Anthropology Book Forum *
Table of ContentsList of Figures
Acknowledgments
1 • Wall Street Goes to the Ends of the Earth
Masters of the Universe
The MBA Boom and the Refiguring of Global Capitalism
Anthropology and Capitalism
Capitalism, Difference, and the Excess of Culture
An Anthropologist among the MBAs
Organization of the Book
2 • Fast Subjects: The Rituals of MBA Training
Compression and the Paracurriculum
Axioms of Capitalism
Science and Art: Talent and the Management of Excess
3 • Accounting for Business
From Clerks to Managers
Managing the Modern
Managing the Postwar World
Managers Abroad
4 • The Currency of Culture
Discovering Culture with First-Year MBAs
Culture in Context
Culturing the Ugly American
Building a Better International Manager
5 • Managing the Margins
Staging the Global Incompletely
Short-Term Study Abroad
6 • Partial Answers: The Uses of Ethnographic
Capitalist Realism
The (Panic-Inducing) Hold Real Life Has
Inventing the Case Method
Working the Cases
7 • Frontiers of Capitalism
Scaling Difference
Two Parables of Social Entrepreneurship
New Economies Arising
Scaling the MBA
Notes
References
Index
