How Transferable are Management Learning Systems? Reflections on 15 Years of Large-scale Transnational Partnerships

Abstract

This article reflects on the largest, most sustained and widespread of the schemes to transfer `know-how' to Russia and eastern Europe. This programme introduced not only unfamiliar management ideas and pedagogy, but also a very different learning system. It operated through five partnerships that, from the outset, were intended to become sustainable. These therefore provide a set of `natural experiments' in the international transfer of a system of management learning. The article reviews the course of these partnerships and their varying achievements, highlighting the strains and dilemmas that those involved grappled with. The implications will be relevant to policy-makers as well as management educators.