The Harvard Business School story: Avoiding knowledge by being relevant

Almost a hundred years after its foundation, the Harvard Business School (HBS) continues to represent the epitome of general management knowledge. As an academic organization, it is both idiosyncratic and conventional; as an institution, it is admired for its position, longevity and power. This paper investigates institutional mechanisms that have allowed HBS to organize around a particular set of values and beliefs, which may account for its privileged standing. We argue that a complex institution like Harvard is mirrored somewhat in the written text it produces, the case and the case method, which can be deconstructed by "reading" the resulting predicaments in sustaining such a model of knowledge. What is produced at the HBS is specific to its own organizational structure but intrinsically linked through the notion of relevance to three business ideologies: managerialism, institutionalism and American capitalism. The case method as organizational artifact and methodological tool provides a basis for understanding these general institutional dynamics as a limit to HBS's ability to change.