Building a new Identity for Business Schools: Learning how to act with Authenticity through the Critical teaching of Leadership

Cries within Critical Management circles, that ‘Business Schools have lost their way’, suggest that not only are they failing to prepare graduates for the complex social and political terrain they are likely to encounter, but also in explaining how, as leaders, they come to act on the world around them. In this chapter I consider how, through the critical teaching of leadership, Business Schools might be more ‘critically reflexive’ about the value and applicability of business theory to practice inside the classroom, by supporting leader learners to a) understand the highly contested nature of the concepts they are dealing with and b) reflect critically on the impact their own professional practice might have on organisational outcomes. The chapter ends with my own reflections on the impact I feel this type of delivery has had on my own identity as an academic and past practitioner, and the unique contribution that this can have outside of the classroom, in achieving wider societal goals.