Making Global MBAs

Andrew Orta is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is the author of Catechizing Culture: Missionaries, Aymara, and the “New Evangelization.”

• List of FiguresAcknowledgments1 • Wall Street Goes to the Ends of the EarthMasters of the UniverseThe MBA Boom and the Refiguring of Global CapitalismAnthropology and CapitalismCapitalism, Difference, and the Excess of CultureAn Anthropologist among the MBAsOrganization of the Book2 • Fast Subjects: The Rituals of MBA TrainingCompression and the ParacurriculumAxioms of CapitalismScience and Art: Talent and the Management of Excess3 • Accounting for BusinessFrom Clerks to ManagersManaging the ModernManaging the Postwar WorldManagers Abroad4 • The Currency of CultureDiscovering Culture with First-Year MBAsCulture in ContextCulturing the Ugly AmericanBuilding a Better International Manager5 • Managing the MarginsStaging the Global IncompletelyShort-Term Study Abroad6 • Partial Answers: The Uses of EthnographicCapitalist RealismThe (Panic-Inducing) Hold Real Life HasInventing the Case MethodWorking the Cases7 • Frontiers of CapitalismScaling DifferenceTwo Parables of Social EntrepreneurshipNew Economies ArisingScaling the MBANotesReferencesIndex

"Orta brings a particular expertise to the analysis of cultures, honed in earlier ethnographic studies of relations between Catholic missionaries and the indigenous Aymara communities of the Bolivian highlands. He notably delves into the growth in “international business” teaching on MBA courses, transmitted through case studies and short-term study assignments abroad."