With almost a quarter of a million students, business administration is by far the largest department at German universities and technical colleges. The subject could celebrate its centenary as a scientific discipline on a wave of popularity - which the Association of University Professors in Business Administration in Düsseldorf will officially do next spring. This autumn, on September 22nd and 23rd, the Schmalenbach Society for Business Administration will also celebrate the 75th German Business Administration Day - the subject - and itself. But it won't be pure celebrations.
Like all social sciences, business administration suffers from the fact that its research hardly produces any laws of nature.
You can always feel the somewhat compassionate gaze of the natural sciences, including mathematics.
The accusation that economics is at best a higher level of advice runs deep and hurts.
The business administration tried vigorously to counteract this by doing mathematics to excess.
This brought her the accusation of losing sight of practice and life in her love of models.
Well-known allegations
The impasse was recognized as such, the purely mathematical discussion of curves and systems of equations were reduced. Nevertheless, the accusation persists that studying business administration does not adequately prepare for practical application, is still based on unreal ideal models (Homo oeconomicus), only focuses on corporations and neglects the family businesses that are so important for Germany. They also continue to pay homage to profit maximization. These allegations are not new.
Already at the 1st German Business Economists Day in 1935, the keynote speaker Carl Lüer complained "that it was with great injustice that business administration had been labeled a profit theory for many years". Back then, too, communication between practice and science was felt to be inadequate - however, at that time the accusation tended towards practice of paying too little attention to science. On the first post-war business administration day, the subject was addressed by the business administration graduate, who studied business administration and was then Federal Minister of Economics, Ludwig Erhard:
“In the days when I was still practicing, I came across scientists saying, Well, you are a good practitioner, and practitioners said you are a good scientist. You can imagine the inferiority complexes that led to. ”The accusation of excessive specialization in academic business administration runs like a red thread through the business administration days. In his celebratory speech on the 40th German Business Administration Day, Marcus Bierich, at that time chairman of the board of management of Robert Bosch GmbH, complained in 1986 "the dissolution of general business administration into special disciplines".