The Emergence of Organisation Studies in Oxford (1949-1983): A Historical Unintended Ironical Consequence?

The purpose of the paper is to investigate the emergence of Organisation Studies in Oxford University and the extent to which it fitted into the 1960s studies of firms and industries – especially in the field of Industrial Organisation. This contribution moves forward on three fronts. First, it provides an account of the emergence of Organisation Studies (OS) in Oxford. While the Harvard Business School was founded in 1908, Oxford University only founded its version of a business school in 1991, with the creation of the University of Oxford School of Management Studies. Why was this development so tardy by international standards? The analysis starts in 1949, as this is when the first evidence exists that Business Studies was needed at Oxford, and ends in 1983 with the creation of Templeton College, which contributed to the official birth of business as an academic discipline . Secondly, the paper analyses the form taken by early management education at Oxford University. Specifically, it stresses the content of the teaching in OS during the 1960s, and seeks to evaluate how different the curriculum was from American business schools. Thirdly, this contribution shows how OS at Oxford struggled to establish itself as an independent discipline, separate from existing subjects also concerned with firm-related and organisational issues, such as Economics, Sociology and even Engineering Science, suggesting tensions between Oxford academics. This work argues that the main reasons for this struggle are found in the nature of Oxford's history and formal or informal academic institutions.