From bookkeepers to entrepreneurs: a historical perspective on the entrepreneurial diversification of a French business school over 200 years

Although entrepreneurship is presently one of the core elements of business schools’ curricula worldwide, little is known about the emergence and evolution of this type of training outside the U.S.A. To bridge this gap, this paper examines entrepreneurship training in France drawing on the case of ESCP, the oldest business school in the world. Its contribution is threefold. First, it details the determining role of contextual factors on the emergence and evolution of entrepreneurship instruction within a business school. Second, it illustrates that there is no automatic correspondence between the intention or the content of entrepreneurship courses and their results, which questions the nature of entrepreneurship instruction. Third, it examines the role of business school students in defining the boundaries between business education and entrepreneurial education.