Managing the margins: MBA training, international business, and "the value chain of culture"

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Global capitalism requires a world of manageable differences. U.S. business schools train MBA students in the reckoning of international space as a field of risk and opportunity. Focusing particularly on the short-term study-abroad trips that have become a staple of MBA training in the past decade, I examine the role of international knowledge and experience as a constitutive part of the managerial selves contemporary capitalism is explicitly thought to require. Through these and other internationalizing experiences, I argue, MBAs learn to manage the margins: converting the risks and uncertainties of social and cultural differences into value.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)689-703
Number of pages15
JournalAmerican Ethnologist
Volume40
Issue number4
DOIs
StatePublished - Nov 2013

Keywords

  • Area studies
  • Business subjectivities
  • Capitalism
  • Commensuration
  • Education
  • Globalization
  • International business
  • Locality
  • Management

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Anthropology

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