Squeezing the Middle: the Consequences of Quality Oversight in Management Education

COVID-19: accelerator or demolisher of the RME agenda?

“…Furthermore, the call for its further strengthening is heard loudest from within business schools operating in structures with a strong corporatist flavour. Hommel and Woods (2018) explain this stylized fact by underlying field dynamics that position elite incumbents and mavericks sitting at the fringe of the sector as the drivers of change. Elite incumbents have not used their financial slack and degrees of freedom to act due to over-compliance; mavericks have not created departures from established rituals despite not being invested in the rules governing the management education field.…”

“…Whilst elite schools may have room to manoeuvre, their privileged stakeholders may lack the appreciation for RME. Other (lower-tier) incumbents may have the benefit of more welcoming stakeholders but have often exhausted their organizational slack after trying to stay in step with their competitive peer group and complying with external assessment frameworks (Hommel and Woods, 2018).…”

Revisiting Dubai’s Business School Mania

“…Therefore, the application of the OLI framework to cross-border management education requires careful assessment of issues related to the business school field in relation to the argued advantages. Furthermore, rather than treating all organizations as similar and without active agency, one should consider how the OLI factors affect different types of actors, or strategic groups, within the field (Dunning, 2001;McGee & Thomas, 1986;Hommel & Woods, 2018) to form a more accurate understanding of the complex phenomenon. Hommel and Woods (2018) argued that the dynamics that shape business schools stem from the power of external forces, largely by mimicking the effects of accreditation and rankings, which define strategic actions and force business schools to compete for their position within a hierarchy.…”

“…Incumbent schools typically hold an international accreditation, but they are simultaneously bounded by their accreditation (Hommel & Woods, 2018 (Nachum & Zaheer, 2005), which may stem from declining home markets and state support (Wilkins, He & Elmoshnib, 2018). However, incumbents' assumed global status granted by an international accreditation may not easily materialize in terms of successful operations in the host country, as will be discussed next.…”