The education of Spanish entrepreneurs and managers: Madrid and Barcelona business schools, 1950–1975

This article approaches the complex relationship between higher education, business modernization, and economic development. It focuses on the first and most influential Spanish business schools, created in the late 1950s in Madrid (Escuela de Organizacion Industrial, EOI, and Instituto Catolico de Administration y Direccion de Empresas, ICADE) and Barcelona (Instituto de Estudios Superiores de la Empresa, IESE, and Escuela Superior tie Administracion y Direccion de Empresas, ESADE). Like many of their European counterparts, the Spanish schools emerged, under the influence of American corporate culture and became instrumental in the modernization of the domestic business culture, as they helped to selectively transfer new managerial theories and techniques to local firms. In Spain, notwithstanding the comparatively poor development of big business and the concurrence of other educational institutions such as the traditional trade and engineering schools and the new faculties of economics and management, the pioneering business schools were strikingly successful. Almost fifty years later, most of them, particularly IESE and ESADE, are held in high esteem by the Spanish and international business communities. Our preliminary study shows that this success is closely related to the schools' ability to adapt foreign ideas and practices to the local geographic, economic and social environment, as well as to establish or strengthen links with both their supporters and clients. To what extent did business schools contribute, to the improvement of the education of Spanish entrepreneurs and managers? Were they really useful in accelerating Spain's economic growth? Our research does not give a definite answer to these questions. However, by empirically recreating the formative process of these schools, identifying their clienteles, and examining some case studies, it does explain the dynamics of the schools and their interaction with the economic and social modernization