The Manchester experiment

by J. F. Wilson

Management education has developed rapidly in the UK over the past twenty-five years. It was, however, only in November 1963 that the Franks Report recommended the establishment of two graduate business schools, one in London and one in Manchester. The Manchester Experiment describes the creation of Manchester Business School in 1965. It explains how the staff devised and altered strategy and structure, and analyses how the broad mission of improving management performance was tackled. Chapter 1 describes the attitudes to management education with which MBS had to contend. These attitudes influenced the kind of courses MBS provided. Chapter 2 relates how the "founding fathers" were instrumental in developing the approach, which they labelled the "Manchester Experiment". The following three chapters discuss the three main activities of MBS - post-graduate, post-experience and research - and assess how the outside world accepted these ideas. The Manchester Experiment can be defined as a