The Naming of Business Schools

Although the personal names associated with professional schools are sometimes known by the general public and easily matched to the university to which they are attached, it is difficult to find a convenient listing of names and schools. Such a listing of business schools and names is provided in an interesting article by Vikram Nanda and Timothy Burch: "What's In A Name? Hotelling's Valuation Principle and Business School Namings," Journal of Business, Vol. 78, No.4. 2005, p.1111-1136.

The paper "examines the economics of business school namings" in relation to a principle outlined by Harold Hotelling in: : "The Economics of Exhaustible Resources," Journal of Political Economy, Vol.39, 1931, p.137-75. Both articles are available to you in print or electronically (the latter, on JSTOR). Nanda and Burch have provided a list of almost 60 schools that have been named up to the year 2000. They discuss the difficulty in compiling such a list and they provide with it, details and explanations that need to be consulted.

For your convenience we offer some of the tabular information provided in the article. We do not include, for example, the information that is provided about the donor. The authors indicate that the list is not exhaustive and some of the spectacular examples we have seen in this century are not included (for example, the Garvin School of International Management at Thunderbird).

The list provided here is related to business schools in the United States. Back in Dec. 2002, we offered some information in our newsletter about Canadian business school names such as our own (Ivey) and that information is linked here - see "Canadian Business School Names". In the September 2003 issue we noted some more, including the naming of the Sauder School at UBC ( see "Notable Donations.)

Those interested in the general subject of management education may find useful our list of business school histories found in "Business Schools and Management Education: A Bibliography".

This information is from the Burch and Nanda article "What's In a Name..." Additional information is provided and the original article needs to be consulted. It is available in print in the Business Library, and electronically to members of the Western community.