Our concern in this book is to examine the business school in depth, placing it in its various contexts: as part of the university system, the practice of business and, ultimately, society as a whole. We feel that this is necessary and interesting for a pair of different but interlocking reasons.

The first stems from a simple reflection on the state of the literature. It is unarguable that business schools are very significant players in today's world. One recent study talks about their ‘irresistible rise’, characterises their milieu as ‘a sphere of immeasurable influence’ and argues that they are ‘among the great institutions of our age’. The point is well made. Business schools have a degree of authority that stretches surprisingly far and wide. Many leading chief executives and directors, it almost goes without saying, have the schools' prime Master of Business Administration degree. Prior to its victory at the 1997 election, the United Kingdom's Labour Party sent members of its shadow Cabinet to Oxford for business school training. George W. Bush is the first American president to have an MBA, this from Harvard. It may even be true that the business school and the MBA are defining characteristics of what it is for a country to have arrived at the global top table.

Yet, despite their importance, the schools have rarely attracted the serious study that they so manifestly deserve. There is, of course, a lot of coverage in the press, but much of this on closer inspection turns out to be spin.