Management training without social sciences : a dead end ?

The assertion that private companies are institutions, central to our society, has been accompanied by an increasing number of discussions and management techniques with regard to social life. At the same time it has been observed that management teaching has returned to the technical dimensions of various disciplines of which it is a part. Do we not, therefore, risk educating "rational idiots" endowed with a completely erroneous vision of the functioning of organisations? Drawing on his teaching and research experience, Jean-François Chanlat puts the case for the integration of the social sciences (not only economics and sociology, but also history, psychology etc.) into the management teaching programme. The return to these disciplines should allow managerial action to base itself on genuine anthropology and thereby restore its true social dimension.