Shaking the Status Quo: Business Accreditation and Positional Competition

Modern business schools exist in a complex world of rankings, ratings, and credentials. Some argue that in increasingly competitive global higher education markets, signaling status and quality has actually become more important than having them (Gioia & Corley, 2002; Trank & Rynes, 2003). For many contemporary business schools, international accreditations have become key means and first steps in pursuing legitimacy and global status. In this essay, we elaborate in detail on a business school’s international accreditation process, including its motivations and outcomes. We conclude that while accreditation processes are, at best, fruitful quality improvement exercises, the inherent motivat…

At the temporary-permanent interface: Overcoming knowledge boundaries with boundary objects

Abstract There is no shortage of literature on managing complex projects. However, we lack an understanding of projects in which the complexity goes beyond technical, financial and time-related challenges. We report on two Nordic business school accreditation projects, where the major management challenge is the knowledge boundaries institutionalized deep into the ethos of the schools. We focus on the project team’s use of boundary objects – a communication device across social groups – to expose and overcome knowledge boundaries materializing at temporary-permanent interface. We identify three progressively more challenging boundary object uses: informative, interactive and integrative. Co…

Tulevaisuuden kauppakorkeakoulua visioimassa

Emergence and early institutionalization of competition in higher education: evidence from Finnish business schools

AbstractThis paper investigates the emergence and early institutionalization of competition in higher education (HE), specifically in business schools. First, building on key contributions from economics, management studies, sociology, and HE research, we develop propositions on competition in HE and formulate our theoretical framework. Second, we apply this framework to explore competition in Finnish business schools. We argue that business schools constitute an interesting field for studying competition in HE because they are the frontrunners and champions of competition-based views in HE. Our main contribution is a novel explanation of the preconditions, emergence, and early processes of…

Accelerating the Americanization of Management Education

The Journal of Management Inquiry astutely predicted in 2004 that the Americanization of business education would not just continue but increase. Ten years later, it is arguable that the acceleration of the Americanization of management education has exceeded all expectations. To theoretically build toward understanding how and why the American business education model has been adopted to different extents, this comparative study builds on the institutional logics perspective, arguing that different institutional logics can potentially explain the various forms and patterns of Americanization and how they are manifested in the world’s business schools.

The “Dean’s Squeeze” revisited: a contextual approach

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to develop a conceptual framework for identifying the primary tensions that business school dean’s encounter when moving between different university contexts.Design/methodology/approach– The paper is part of a larger research project on the development of business schools. This conceptual paper builds on the studies and personal experiences of business schools and their management in a number of different countries, primarily in Europe, North America, Asia, and the Middle East.Findings– The present study argues that as a response to the increasing corporatization of higher education, the university sector has fragmented into at least three identifiable…