David D. Van Fleet TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY
and Daniel A. Wren
UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA

HISTORY IN TODAY’S BUSINESS SCHOOL

Abstract: Members of the American Assembly of Collegiate Schools of Business were surveyed to determine to what extent the history of various business school subjects (accounting, economics, management, etc.) was a part of today’s curricula. Findings indicated widespread teaching of history and the feeling that more should be done. However, the findings also indicate that much of the current teaching is not being done in separate courses by professional historians or even those interested in history. Implications for curricula development are discussed.

One authority has stated, “There is a growing recognition that a discipline which aspires to be a ‘profession’ must include its intel¬lectual heritage [i.e., its history] as part of the educational process.” Is this true for business, management, and related disciplines? In discussions over the past several years, it has become evident that most of us have little precise knowledge about what business schools are or are not teaching by way of history. In an effort to determine the extent to which the history of a discipline (account¬ing, business, management, etc.) is a part of today’s curricula, a survey was conducted of all member institutions of the American Assembly of Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB). To provide some comparative information, members of the Business History Conference were also surveyed. The purpose of this paper is to Present the results of that survey.

The Questionnaire

The questionnaire was kept simple. It asked only a few questions since it was designed as a first effort to get an overall view rather than an indepth probing of the situation. The basic questions asked included the following:

1. Is history, in some form, part of the program at your school?
2. How is the history taught in your program?
3. Indicate the type of history taught and the academic level at which it is taught now.
4. Indicate the type of history and academic level which should be taught.
5. Has the teaching of history in your program increased, stayed about the same, or decreased over the last 10-20 years?
6. Do you think that the teaching of history generally has increased, stayed about the same, or decreased over the last 10-20 years?
7. Make comments and suggestions.

The Sample

The AACSB population consisted of 64 institutions accredited at only the bachelor’s level, 17 accredited at only the master’s level, 217 accredited at both levels, and 346 non-accredited institutions for a total of 644. The Business History Conference list added an¬other 181 to the list. The overall response rate was 38% (313 re¬turned of 815 mailed); six of these were not usable, however. The response rate by subgroup was as follows: 45% for institutions ac¬credited at the bachelor’s level only; 41% for those accredited at the master’s level only; 38% for those accredited at both levels; and 39% for non-accredited AACSB institutions for 40% overall for the AACSB list. The Business History group did not respond as well— only a 32% response rate.

The addition of the Business History Conference list caused some duplication to result among institutions covered. If two or more responses were from the same business school, one was selected to “represent” all of them; an effort was made to choose one that was “average” or “typical.” This occurred for only nine institutions and resulted in 13 questionnaires not being used in the analysis. Thus 294 questionnaires were used in the analysis (313 returned ress 6 not usable and 13 duplicates).

Results

As shown in Table I, an overwhelming proportion of the respond¬ents felt that history was part of their programs, and, for those who felt that it was not, an even greater proportion said that they thought that it should be. However, the responses as to “how is it taught” suggest that it is usually taught as part of a course or courses rather than as one or more separate courses. In such cases, of course, it is highly unlikely that a history specialist will be overseeing the presentation of the history material. The “debate” as to whether the

Van Fleet and Wren: History in Today’s Business School
Table 1 Percentage Responses by Type of Institution

Accredited
B M BM N NB TOTAL
Number of Responses 29 7 83 136 39 294
Is history, in some form, part of the program at
your school? yes 72 100 72 84 72 78
no 28 28 16 28 22
If no, do you think it should be? yes 75 83 86 82 83
no 25 17 14 18 17
HOW is history taught in your program?
(multiple checks used so total exceeds 100%)
as a topic within courses 68 43 47 61 24 52
as a separate course 37 71 24 43 41 37
in several separate courses 22 43 43 23 38 31
Indicate the type of history taught and the level
at which it is taught (indicate how things are).
Undergraduate
Accounting History 44 0 15 19 0 17
Business History 52 14 33 42 24 37
Economic History 59 43 52 56 46 54
History of Economic Thought 44 43 48 60 32 51
History of Management Thought 37 0 39 44 11 37
Graduate
Accounting History 19 0 22 10 0 12
Business History 26 43 19 9 11 14
Economic History 20 43 33 10 19 20
History of Economic Thought 33 43 30 14 19 22
History of Management Thought 26 14 23 21 16 21
Indicate the type of history which should be taught
and the level at which it should be taught.
Undergraduate
Accounting History 41 14 25 27 19 27
Business History 63 43 71 65 35 62
Economic History 63 71 59 65 51 61
History of Economic Thought 41 43 53 62 65 57
History of Management Thought 48 14 49 52 41 48
Graduate
Accounting History 26 14 33 20 3 22
Business History 30 57 46 29 22 33
Economic History 26 29 46 26 14 30
History of Economic Thought 41 43 48 32 35 38
History of Management Thought 33 71 46 39 32 40
Has the teaching of history in your program
increased, stayed about the same, or decreased
Over the last 10-20 years?
increased 30 14 21 25 26 23
stayed about the same 63 57 58 62 59 60
decreased 7 29 21 15 15 16

114 The Accounting Historians Journal, Spring, 1982
Table I Percentage Responses by Type of Institution (Continued)
Accredited
B M BM N NB TOTAL
DO you think that the teaching of history generally has increased, stayed about the same, or decreased over the last 10-20 years?
19 0 18 21 23 20
42 67 45 40 26 41
38 33 38 38 52 40
increased
stayed about the same decreased
NOTE: B — accredited at bachelor’s level only
M — accredited at master’s level only
BM — accredited at both levels
N — nonaccredited
NB — response from nonbusiness department
material should be within courses or in a separate course was also reflected in the open-ended question comments. Representative comments from those who felt that it should be within courses are:

“The history of a discipline should be in introductory courses.”
“Our students are vocationally oriented so that history has to be hidden within other courses to be at all successful.”
“I’m not sure that it is necessary as a separate course.” Comments from those who feel that this approach is not adequate are:
“How much history gets into classes is strictly a function of the instructor’s knowledge and interest.”
“I suppose that some faculty do build historical insights into their individual courses, but this would not be systematic and seems to have little impact on students.”
“When we say history is covered in a course, it may vary from one part of one class to several class sessions.”
Other comments from the open-ended question reflect an attitude that the way to meet AACSB standards for accreditation is by satis¬fying every requirement with a separate course. This would mean, of course, that there would be “no room” for history. Some of the comments reflecting that view are:
“Our undergraduate program leaves precious little time to focus on history.”
“The number of credits allocated in a BBA or MBA degree pro¬gram tend to crowd out areas such as this.”
“Increased quantitative requirements [have meant] less time for history.”
Van fleet and Wren: History in Today’s Business School 115
“We changed history from a required course in order to bring in Business and Society which AACSB wanted.”
“To add [history] would require displacement of some essential content from an already over-crowded curriculum.”
The pattern of responses to the “are” and “should be” items is interesting. More respondents indicated that they are teaching history at the undergraduate level than indicated that they are teaching it at the graduate level. Further, they indicated that this is the way it should be.

The responses about changes in the teaching of history over the last 10-20 years are also interesting. Most respondents felt that the teaching of history in their areas was staying about the same or perhaps even increasing, while the teaching of history in general was perceived to be decreasing if it was not staying about the same.

Caution must be exercised in interpreting these results across the categories of the respondents’ institutions. The “accredited at the master’s level only” category reflects the view of only seven re-spondents (there are only 17 of these in the population), hence, one person’s view becomes a fairly high percentage. The “nonac-credited” group contains numerous institutions which have no graduate programs and, hence, for which no response to the ques¬tions dealing with the graduate level was obtained. This lowered the frequency of response to those items. The “nonbusiness” group is composed mostly of faculty from history departments and eco¬nomics departments outside of business schools, therefore the absence of say, accounting history, should be no surprise for that group.

With these cautions in mind, then, some interesting results can be noted. The highest use of separate courses would appear to be at institutions with graduate programs or, quite predictably, in his¬tory and economics departments. The most optimistic respondents about history increasing appear to be those from institutions ac¬credited at the bachelor’s level only, while the most pessimistic ones are from either the group accredited at the master’s level only or from the history/economics group.

Table II shows differences between “should be” and “are” responses. Large differences suggest that more or less should be taught than is now being taught; small differences indicate a degree of satisfaction with current conditions. At the undergraduate level, only Business History appears to need more coverage. At the gradu¬ate level, Business History, the History of Economic Thought, and the History of Management Thought all appear to merit more cover- age. The groups, however, vary sharply both by topic and from one another.

In addition to the topics/disciplines provided on the question¬naire, respondents were able to add others. Table III shows those along with the percentage distribution for those. Marketing and labor history were the most frequently mentioned topics with gen¬eral history areas (U.S. History; state history; etc.) being next most frequently mentioned. Others tended to be more specific and/or unique: History of American Journalism; History of International Industrialization; History of British Classical Economics; and The Uses of History by Managers, for example.

Table II

Differences Between What Courses Should be Taught and What Are
(in percentages)

ted: ors redited ness
credi achel laster ¦5 nacc nbusi TAL
o CD 2 CD 0 0 O
< z z Discipline Undergraduate Accounting History - 3 14 10 8 19 10 Business History 9 29 38 23 11 25 Economic History 4 28 7 9 5 17 History of Economic Thought - 3 0 5 2 33 6 History of Management Thought 11 14 10 8 30 11 Graduate Accounting History 7 14 11 10 3 10 Business History 4 14 27 20 11 19 Economic History 0 -14 13 16 -5 10 History of Economic Thought 8 0 18 18 16 16 History of Management Thought 7 57 23 18 16 19 Note: A large positive value suggests that the respondents thought that more of the topic should be taught than is being taught. A large negative value suggests that the respondents thought that less of the topic should be taught than is being taught. Small values suggest that the respondents thought that what was cur¬rently being taught was appropriate in terms of amount. The basic conclusions from this rather tentative survey are both reassuring and disheartening. The reassuring conclusion is that an overwhelming number of respondents indicated that history is now part of their programs, and, of those who said that it was not, most said that it should be. The disheartening conclusion is that the his¬tory which is being taught is within the context of existing courses and not by or under the control of professional historians or even those interested in history. If this pattern is expected to continue, and the indications from this survey suggest that it is, then those of us who share an interest in history have an obligation. That obliga¬tion is to educate our colleagues so that those covering the material on history do at least an adequate job of it. Further, that obligation involves providing supplementary material to colleagues so that they can do a better job of presenting appropriate and necessary his¬torical material within the context of existing courses. Another conclusion is that a sufficient number of institutions appear to respond to AACSB accreditation standards with a "course per standard" mindset so that we have an obligation there as well. Table Ml Percentage Distribution of Responses for other Topics/Disciplines Are Being Taught Should Be Taught Topic/Discipline Undergraduate Graduate Undergraduate i Graduate Other Business Areas: Accounting Thought 0 0 0 0.3% Behavior/Personnel 0 0 0.3% 0.3 Business/Government 0.3% 0.3% 0.3 0.3 Finance 0.7 0 0.7 0.7 Labor 2.4 1.4 1.4 0.7 Marketing 3.1 0.3 1.7 1.4 Transportation 0.3 0.3 0.3 0.3 Unspecified 0.3 0.3 0.3 0.7 Other Business History 1.0 0.3 1.0 0.3 Education Areas 1.0 0 0.3 0 Other Economic History 1.0 1.4 0.7 0.7 General History Areas 3.1 0 1.4 0 Technology, Science, Computers 1.0 1.4 1.0 1.4 Miscellaneous 0.7 0 0 0.3 Our obligation there is to provide information to the AACSB about how to verify the existence of the quality presentation of historical material when it is a component of a course rather than a separate course. Our efforts in this regard might also serve the AACSB as a model for other standards as well—perhaps eventually such efforts would break the mindset which is so restrictive to academic inno¬vation as it presently interprets the accreditation standards.