What Spain Learned from Harvard: The Making of Modern Management Education in Late-Francoist Spain

How did Spain come to develop business schools with an international reputation? Part of the story takes us back to the 1960s, when modern management education began to take root under Franco’s dictatorship. Spain was opening its economy to international markets, while its political system remained authoritarian. Drawing on archival research in Spain and the United States, this talk explores Harvard Business School’s influence on that process. It examines how American approaches to management education were adapted to Spanish circumstances and the role of personal relationships between professors in making this exchange possible.

Speaker: Elena San Román (Full Professor, Departamento de Economía Aplicada, Estructura e Historia, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain)