British business schools

The evolution of business schools in the UK is reviewed: three relationships exist: with the schools students, with their employers, and with on-going research to provide broader insights into the processes of management. Activities range from the comprehensive two-year multidisciplinary MBA Course, through those of shorter periods or part-time, to specialist modules in such fields as personnel management, marketing and operational research. There has been a move away from open courses in favour of bespoke programmes, which provide more immediate impact for a particular firm. In these, projects and in-company studies are prominent, supervised jointly with the firms managers. The stages of management studies should be related to stages in the career of the individual and to company requirements. There is now convergence in technological and business studies, further linked in postgraduate programmes. Senior programmes are available internationally. In the long term, a combination of reasearch projects and special programmes is likely to offer the most constructive basis for continuous education in management.