Abstract
Business schools are a common and accepted feature of the university landscape. Many embody the characteristics associated with the ‘entrepreneurial university’, especially the emphasis it places on capitalising knowledge, being market-driven and adopting a ‘triple helix’ schema for modelling relations and interaction among university-industry-government (Etzkowitz, 2004). At the same time, responsibility is conferred upon enterprising business schools to create environments that nurture diverse inclusivity, potentially allowing hitherto marginalised groups of people to contribute to the successful running of these institutions. Indeed, it is crucial for such groups to have a say in shaping the business schools of the future. In that respect, one might hope, perhaps naively, that business schools would commit themselves to imagining and using categorical difference in ways that exceed market-driven versions of employees as ‘diversity dividends’ (Adkins, 2002). As I and some others see it, part of this endeavour must involve developing ‘openness to becoming’ different, permitting individuals to inhabit different identity categories, realities and possibilities (Petersen and Davies, 2010). This necessitates taking seriously the needs, interests and voices of peripheral groups of people who have struggled to be heard and validated. However, scholarly research in this area gives us reason to be worried (Morrish and O’Mara, 2011).
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Rumens, N. (2014). Queer Business: Towards Queering the Business School. In: Taylor, Y. (eds) The Entrepreneurial University. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137275875_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137275875_6
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