1. ¹William Paterson University, Email: mirr@wpunj.edu
2. ²William Paterson University, Email: mira@wpunj.edu
3. ³New School University, Email: srinivan@newschool.edu

^*Raza Mir is Associate Professor of Management at William Paterson University, New Jersey, USA. He published articles in several journals including Strategic Management Journal, Organizational Research Methods and Journal of Business Communication, and is on the Editorial Board of Group and Organization Management and Critical Perspectives on International Business. He is interested in studying the transfer of expertise across national boundaries through multinational corporations, especially their institutional, discursive and coercive elements. Email: mirr@wpunj.edu

^†Ali Mir is Associate Professor of Management at William Paterson University, New Jersey, USA. His research focuses on the transformation of work in late capitalism. He is currently working on the new forms of international division of labor in information technology industries. His research has appeared in such journals as Cultural Dynamics, Information Systems Management, and Management Learning. He has written and consulted for the World Wide Web project of Encyclopedia Britannica. Email: mira@wpunj.edu

^‡Nidhi Srinivas is Assistant Professor of Nonprofit Management at the Milano Graduate School of Management and Urban Policy, New School University. His research interests include strategic management and governance of third-sector organizations, the intersection between management and science fiction, discourses of citizenship and clientele in third-sector organizations, knowledge transfers of management theory and pedagogy and mobilizing commitment to organization strategies. Email: srinivan@newschool.edu

Abstract

In this paper, we analyze the manner in which universities have been deployed as institutions to privatize knowledge. We use the example of the establishment of management institutes in India in the 1960s by US institutions such as the Ford Foundation. The import of management education into India served to delegitimize local managerial practices, and to produce a workforce capable of serving the interests of multinational corporations rather than addressing local priorities. We conclude through this example that management pedagogy has constantly been deployed to render certain forms of public knowledge appropriable by private institutions such as corporations. We end by suggesting that management pedagogy should act to restore a new concept of knowledge, where it is presented not merely as a resource, but as a public consciousness..