Stop Blaming Gordon and Howell: Unpacking the Complex History Behind the Research-Based Model of Education

Published by the Ford Foundation in 1959, the Gordon–Howell Report has become part of the dominant narrative of the origin of the research-based model of education that dominates U.S. business schools and has led to the decades-long rigor–relevance debate. In answering calls for a more rigorous approach to the rigor–relevance debate and for management scholars to look to the past to think differently about the future, I conducted a critical hermeneutic analysis of the Gordon–Howell Report and the context in which it was written to construct a counterhistory to the dominant narrative. Whereas scholars have claimed that the Gordon–Howell Report was the origin of the current U.S. business school, my analysis shows that an intertwined set of forces acting on U.S. business schools during the 1950s, including the Ford Foundation, the Cold War, the adulation of science, and the search for legitimacy by these business schools, were also acting on Gordon and Howell and the readers of their report. Little in the report had not already been said. With a broader understanding of the history of the report, we create opportunities for re-framing the rigor–relevance debate moving forward, with new questions and a greater awareness of our own context.