‘Talented student’, ‘future leader’ or ‘you’ – student naming in highly ranked business schools’ mission statements

Abstract

Organisations usually address their stakeholders in their external communication. We can argue, that in case of higher education institutions, the most important stakeholders are the students. Accordingly, to answer the question how students are addressed by business schools, we have investigated the mission statements of the top 100 business schools based on Times Higher Education list in 2019. These expressions are not only identity markers delineating the ideal students, but also invoke different feelings and images. Our results highlighted the complex nature of business schools balancing between academic and business-related professional language use.