Strategic capacities in US universities – the role of business schools as institutional builders

Guillaume Carton,Jeffrey Overall,Charles Mcmillan

doi:10.21511/ppm.16(1).2018.18

Abstract

The global expansion of the higher education and professional faculties like business schools offers a case study in the strategic capabilities of universities and professional schools like business to build academic strength, reputation, and legitimacy. The expansion of business schools reflects novel strategies like ecosystems collaboration and network advantages, presenting new challenges for quality, relevance, and competitive threats from the consulting industry, corporate universities, MOOCs, and highly-specialized business schools. The paper concludes with recommendations for business education.

Highlights

The growth of emerging market countries like the BRICS – Brazil, Russia, India, and China, plus countries like Vietnam, Indonesia, Nigeria and nations in Africa – has led to an explosion of university student enrollments
The immediate winners are leading American business schools and the main degree, the Masters in Business Administration (MBA), as more students enrolled in business
University-based business schools may enhance the global reach of the top universities via institutional reputations for student and faculty recruitment, but only if they have the strategic capacity of the university, like research programs, publication outlets, and network alliances

Summary

INTRODUCTION

The growth of emerging market countries like the BRICS – Brazil, Russia, India, and China, plus countries like Vietnam, Indonesia, Nigeria and nations in Africa – has led to an explosion of university student enrollments. With approximately 14,000 business schools worldwide, there are huge gaps between the biggest and the rest, and many faculty have limited (if any) practical experience (McMillan & Overall, 2016) These challenges for business schools apply to other professional schools like medicine and engineering in the new digital era. This paper assesses these trends, with three aims. University-based business schools may enhance the global reach of the top universities via institutional reputations for student and faculty recruitment, but only if they have the strategic capacity of the university, like research programs, publication outlets, and network alliances. In addition to strategic capacities of universities (Thoenig & Paradeise, 2016), top business schools display three vital characteristics, namely: ecosystem model of organization, network advantages, and tools of collaboration

THEORETICAL ISSUES IN

25 Divisions

Findings

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION