Reframe business education around democracy, new book argues

Business schools must “take a stand” for democratic ideals that are under siege from right-wing populism, according to economist Carl Rhodes.

Rhodes, professor of business and society at the University of Technology Sydney, says the world’s 15,000-odd business schools have largely steered clear of the culture wars embroiling the broader academy while they focus on “shovelling knowledge workers into the economy”.

That is no longer tenable, because attacks on universities are also “attacks on democracy”, Rhodes argues. “You’re seeing it in Trump’s America, where we can barely teach sociology any more in Florida, for example. You saw it in Hungary when Orbán was there. You saw it with Bolsonaro in Brazil, with Erdoğan in Turkey.

“What role does a business school take…in preserving democracy? That’s a kind of unanswered question. And at a time where economic inequalities are widening, and as a result – to some extent – political populism is rife, what are business schools doing about that?

“The answer, currently, is most of them are not doing anything at all. Business schools need to…embrace the political situation they find themselves in, with support for democracy. Otherwise, they’re just going to be victims to a situation that they’re not addressing.”

In a new book, Rhodes and co-author Alison Pullen argue that business schools have “implicitly” supported the “global neoliberal political order” by confining their role to “advancing knowledge about how businesses and organisations work” and researching “managerially relevant problems”.

“That order is now under sustained attack, particularly from the rise of illiberal and parochial right-wing populism,” the pair write in The Good Business School. “In this new era…the value of higher education, including business education, is being questioned at its core.”

The book cites then US Senate candidate JD Vance’s 2021 observation that “the professors are the enemy”, Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro’s cuts to university funding and Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s “hostile takeover” of Boğaziçi University in Istanbul.

The onslaught has intensified following Donald Trump’s re-election as US president, with an “aggressive, multipronged campaign” of protest suppression, visa revocation, bureaucratic pruning and multibillion-dollar funding cuts. Australia has not been immune, the book argues, citing then opposition leader Peter Dutton’s 2025 threat to use federal funding powers to curb “woke” university curricula.

“Business schools are now entangled in debates about politics, expertise, identity and economic justice whether they choose to be or not,” the book says. “[They] can no longer plausibly present themselves as politically innocent technical institutions, devoted to expertise while standing outside the political fray.

“If business schools are to remain relevant, and perhaps even if they are to survive, they must be willing to rethink not only what they do, but what and who they are for. [This] is not a call for business schools to adopt a single political stance, right of this or left of that, but an invitation to confront the political realities that already shape their existence.”

Rhodes said this was arguably more an issue for business schools than for other faculties because the university practices that had come under most attack – such as diversity and inclusion policies and environmental, social and governance frameworks – were “business-type activities”.

Pullen, professor of feminist organisation studies at Macquarie Business School, said universities should train people to question the world and not simply to succeed within it. “Business schools have a particular responsibility because their graduates will make decisions that affect workers, communities and societies,” she said.

The book’s overriding message is that business schools need to “reimagine themselves” as “fundamentally democratic institutions”, where management is treated “not as a set of technical skills for job-ready graduates but as a civic practice that organises lives, allocates resources, shapes opportunities and distributes power”.

Business schools must also “take seriously” their role in “legitimating, reproducing or challenging the political economy of capitalism, rather than hiding behind the neoliberal fiction that markets are natural and managerial expertise is neutral”.

john.ross@timeshighereducation.com