We Are Who We Teach

Abstract

It is argued that teaching is more important to shared understanding of management and organizations than scholars acknowledge. Teaching has been ignored in discussions of scholars' intellectual enterprise, in part, because of a practicality that violates Romantic Era ideals of intellectuals as otherworldly and pure. Yet teachers in conversation with their students have always been central to how students learn and develop their ideas. In the case of management professors, who they teach (students with management experience), the institutional context in which they teach them (tuition-dependent and rankings-focused university business schools), and the publishing industry (increasingly focused on lower-division books for teenagers) are as much causes of the fractured visage of management scholarship as are any actions of the field's elites. Implications for action include more open conversations about how MBA teaching influences our intellectual work and the development of coherent books for experienced adult students.