impact on those who are involved in initial encounters. In the case of students applying for undergraduate and taught postgraduate programmes, Adam Smith indeed often elicits an immediate response. There is also usually considerable enthusiasm when people realise that Smith was a student, professor and then, later in his life, rector at the University of Glasgow. Academics, perhaps applying to join the school, or as visiting speakers or attending conferences and workshops, tend to have more of a sense of where that legacy is positioned in our teaching and research. There is further interest within the school, among colleagues – both in professional services and academia – and students, of what can be done with and about Adam Smith. Our school has grown and developed considerably over the past decade, with many more people joining and thinking a great deal about Smith’s legacy in this regard. One insight from research into brands and reputation is to consider their involvement and impact from within; some of those who have had an initial encounter with Smith’s legacy and the school’s brand have indeed joined the school, with our students becoming graduates and then alumni. Few are, or will ever become, experts in the research and scholarship of Adam Smith, but the salient point here is the link between the Adam Smith Business School of today and fashioning a brand from a particular legacy. Latest developments In reflecting on legacy and the development of a brand, the school is not attempting to identify with Adam Smith, the person. Given the range and scope of Smith’s work, even if referencing only his two primary treatises, The Theory of Moral Sentiments and The Wealth of Nations , this is best left to research and scholarship specialists. Rather, we are attempting to develop a brand for the school with a view to the medium term, informed by some key ideas found in Smith’s work. The debates propounded in Adam Smith’s legacy help us achieve this, as these reflect both fundamental questions and the enduring openness of meanings and controversies attached to these questions. We worry about the relative roles and extents of markets and governments, models of economic development and the support for and consequences of international trade, peoples’ behaviour, their motivations and our understandings and evaluations of the same. Being called the Adam Smith Business School raises one essential question for all of us who are associated with it: “What about Adam Smith?” In other words, we are constantly being invited to reflect upon and consider our relationship with Smith. A focus uniquely on legacy leads us to discussions reflecting on that particular time, being rooted in the 1760s and 1770s, at the cusp of the Industrial Revolution, of criticising mercantile arrangements in international trade and supporting markets. In addition, there’s Smith’s opposition to slavery and his stance on abolitionism, his incorporation of stoicism and virtue in how he understands the way individuals behave in society. Our challenge is to connect Smith’s legacy to current debates and practices.
Adam Smith’s legacy still ignites lively debate at the school bearing his name
The brand is an entity that conjures up ideas about what the school is like, a spark to others’ imagination in advance of meeting us, a set of concepts and principles against which we and others continually evaluate our experiences of the school. It reflects Smith’s legacy and promises that we will all keep on engaging with it, recognising, extending, revising, making and remaking it. Adam Smith is already known widely and globally. Many others have contributed to public knowledge and understanding of his work, typically led by The Wealth of Nations . While I risk referring to stereotypes, Smith indeed supports free markets (albeit in contrast to a system of mercantilism) and deploys briefly the fabulous imagery and device of ‘the invisible hand’. In addition, he invites us to a pin factory to understand principles relating to the division of labour and specialisation and talks of self-interest rather than benevolence as the motivation for businesses in providing goods and services. The legacy of Adam Smith the person was already there a long time before the Adam Smith Business School came to occupy that space as a brand. The brand is by no means perpetuating a single or non-contested vision. The Theory of Moral Sentiments , for instance, deploys the ideas of sympathy and empathy, of the impartial spectator, of motivations in behaviour and action for people to gain the respect of others. Thinking back to being part of those initial years after the school adopted the Adam Smith name, it is perhaps easier to see the
16 | Ambition | MAY 2023
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