The future of management education and research: The role of institutions

Abstract

This special issue is dedicated to EURAM by its College of Fellows to commemorate EURAM's 25th birthday. It focuses on the future of the management educational and research (MERE) context and the role of institutions within it. As a professional academy, EURAM is one of those institutions that helps shape both organisations and individuals within it. A brief history of its ambition and contribution follows, and this is accompanied by an explanation of the evolution of this project. Primarily, it is designed to examine the world in which EURAM operates, shaped and controlled as it is by institutional pressures that can restrict strategic flexibility and reinforce a particular way of doing business. Faced with a portfolio of powerful external pressures, the future of the MERE is likely to change rapidly, and adaptability by business and management schools will be an important strategic weapon. Hence, the issue looks to explain the emergence of the shape of the present MERE domain through its moulding by institutional norms and the ‘rules of the game’ that they consciously or unconsciously reinforce. Then, the main papers in this collection are presented in an outside–in manner. They begin with the future imaginings of what the MERE might look like by examining the drivers of change that impact upon it. Then, through a series of articles that examine the types of business schools that might emerge into this new world, their responses to past and present institutional pressures, especially through accreditation, to new agendas in both sustainability and employability. The common themes are identified, as is the danger of ignoring impactful, localised responses in favour of uniform conformity and a prevalence for the status quo .