In the shadow of Americanization: the Origins and Evolution of Management Education and Training in Argentina (1940s–1960s)

LLUCH ANDREA; AMDAM, ROLV

Congreso; 11. 2nd World Congress of Business History, a cooperation between the 24th Congress of the European Business History Association (EBHA) and the International Congress of the Business history Society of Japan (BHSJ); 2021

European Business History Association (EBHA) and the International Congress of the Business history Society of Japan (BHSJ)

To explore the development of an Argentine system for making managers we combine the need for sorting out and mapping the key national and international actors with focusing on some key issues. As a starting point, we have included initiatives in the 1930s, and we show that they were well connected to international trends, such as the work of the ICSO. Then, we show how a national system for making managers emerged during the late 1940s and 1950s, when the direct influence from the U.S. on this topic was weak. For example, on the average one professor from a U.S, business school visited Argentina a year to teach business administration at a university, or at an event organized by an association. This number increased from the late 1950s, when typically, two US professors arrived annually, and then the number increased gradually from 1960. From ca 1960, strong but uncoordinated efforts were made to develop new institutions for management education. In these processes, some U.S. actors became involved, such as the Ford Foundation, Harvard Business School (HBS) and USAID. In addition to drawing the big picture, we focus especially on two cases: the introduction of the first bachelor program in business administration at Faculty of Economic Sciences (FCE) of the University of Buenos Aires in 1958, and the creation of Instituto para el Desarrollo de Ejecutivos en la Argentina (IDEA) in 1960 to offer executive education. Both projects involved strong local and international actors, and both projects ultimately failed to develop graduate programs, such as a full-time MBA.