Market Discipline and Management Education

Abstract

In the South, as in the North, the need to confront and escape poverty forces people to seek out administrative knowledge as a way of participating in economic activities. The current study considers one such group of individuals and provides a case study of a cooperative of single mothers in El Salvador (the Madres) that produces fairly traded and sweatshop-free clothing for sale in North America. The authors examine how the discipline of the market motivates the Madres to acquire specific educational capitals. Their thesis is that the production—consumption chain in which the Madres participate encourages certain management practices and hence certain forms of management education on the part of the Madres. Although the management knowledge demanded by the Madres is similar in some ways to the educational offerings of universities, there are some key differences in the form, content, and mode of acquisition.