How Business Schools as Learning Organizations Meet new Challenges: A Worldwide Study

Today there are more than 12,000 known business schools (hereinafter BS) across the globe, and the number is increasing every year. This is due to increasing demand from the global student population, people at work who wish to advance their careers and employers of graduates in business and management. BSs today are facing many challenges. Despite the positive impact of BSs on society, the current financial crisis and the eroding of corporate reputations have given rise to strong criticism of BSs and their role in those events. For these reasons, BSs will have to change if they want to keep having positive impact on people, firms and societies. The paper examines the organizational learning rate of BSs worldwide and dependence on various characteristics of the BSs. The authors measured, using a special instrument (questionnaire) elaborated by them, the learning rate of 105 BSs worldwide. The structure of the measuring instrument is based on Watkins' and Marsick's learning organization questionnaire DLOQ. The questionnaire comprises three dimensions divided into seven levels, which in turn are divided into 45 characteristics. The paper analyses the dependence of the general learning rate of BSs, as well as the dependence of its individual components (dimensions and levels) on the geographical-cultural region of the school location, ownership form and the international accreditations the school has. The most reliable statistically was the dependence on school's ownership form: private capital based BSs are more learning than state or public schools. Less significant is the dependence of learning on geographical-cultural region: BSs in Eastern Europe are slightly more learning than schools in other regions. A significant correlation was missing between the possession of international accreditations and the learning rate. The characteristics that gathered low scores in the questionnaire are addressed separately. Analysis of them enables to identify weaknesses in the organisational learning of BSs, indicating the ways for improving the competitiveness of BSs.