The Two Cultures in Business Education

Abstract

In the decades since the and the reports, business research and teaching have become increasingly scientific. Today the humanities are not well represented and, perhaps, not well understood in the business schools. This paper argues that the differences between the sciences and the humanities stem from fundamentally different philosophical views concerning knowledge and human nature, and, therefore, it is very difficult to develop a business school program in which the two can operate collaboratively. Both have a contribution to make to business education, and the proposal is advanced that a principal mission for the discipline of business ethics should be to provide a humanities-based counterbalance in what is now an almost entirely science-based education.