European business school 'beat US'

American business schools are out of touch and are being overtaken by their European counterparts when it comes to teaching management.

This was the message from Leo Murray, director of Cranfield School of Management, on a visit to its United States partner business schools.

"There has been a tendency for US schools to export the American way of managing to overseas organisationsI with little regard for local culture," he told his American audience.

He suggested that because the US had dominated the business education market and global commerce, business schools had become blinkered. At the same time, European schools had developed a learning culture "closer to market" that provides "a variety of approaches to management".

This had led to a growing number of businesses with headquarters in the US to turn to European business schools to run management development programmes. Professor Murray added that there had been a steady rise in the number of US students taking MBAs at European business schools.

Almost one in five non-UK students in Britain studies business or management, according to the Association of Business Schools' annual report. It also found that there are more than twice as many UK schools in The Financial Times' top 75 international MBA programmes than from any other country except the US.