I have a new favorite book! Ever read a book that comes at just the right moment, that seems to perfectly sum up how you are thinking or feeling about something, and then points a way forward? I had that experience this weekend with Martin Parker’s new book, Shut Down the Business School: What’s wrong with management education.

Parker is a Professor of Organisational Studies at the University of Bristol in the UK, and his  thesis is that much of what is wrong in the world can be traced back to the business school and how management is taught there. In his view, business schools can’t be reformed; they should be shut down, and in their place he proposes a new kind of school: a school of organizing that would study and teach about all kinds of organizations, not just capitalist corporations, and this would definitely include worker-owned firms. In fact, he uses the worker-owned organic food distributor, Suma Wholefoods, as one of his examples of the kind of organization that main-stream management education typically ignores.

Shut Down the Business School is a short book and I blazed through it. Parker sprints through some of the main theoretical debates in politics and organizational theory, but manages to keep the discussion largely jargon-free. And he is really funny and irreverent. This is a book (partly) aimed at academics, but it isn’t academic at all in tone. I was often laughing and underlining zingers as I read.

This is a theoretical book, or a manifesto perhaps, and for readers of this blog who are looking for practical advice for starting and managing a new worker-owned firm, you won’t find it here, but still I think you should pick up this book. You’ll be inspired. Parker’s vision of a new economy is so fresh and hopeful, even if you never plan to go near a business school, it is very much worth the read.

Martin Parker. 2018. Shut Down the Business School:What’s wrong with management education. London: Pluto Press.