A mixed heritage

The Czech Republic is a young country but in an old historical region. In modern European history Bohemia formed part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which collapsed in defeat in 1918. It broke into several ethnically diverse countries. One of them, Czechoslovakia, had no historical roots as a nation, its two main peoples having less than love for each other. The country lasted twenty years until it was effectively disarmed in the Munich Agreement between four powers (Germany, Italy, France and the United Kingdom) and then partitioned, after Hitler broke the pact and invaded the Czech lands in March 1939. Bohemia was absorbed into the Third Reich and Slovakia became a Nazi protectorate. Restored in 1945, Czechoslovakia fell behind the Iron Curtain after the coup d'état of 1948, where it remained until the revolutions of 1989 ended Communism in Eastern Europe. Then, in 1993, the Czechs and Slovaks split apart to form two separate nations.

Because it stayed behind the Iron Curtain for over forty years, the Americanization of higher management education in the Czech Republic is, compared with France and Germany, a very recent development. After 1989 the same forces that had been transforming Western Europe for the last half-century exerted themselves in Eastern Europe. But everything arrived on the doorstep of the Czech Republic at once: democracy, privatization, capitalism, the market system, educational reform, banking reform, management education and entrepreneurship studies.