Branding of Flemish higher education institutions: a strategic balance perspective

Abstract

Branding of higher education institutions (HEIs) is an expanding area of research. The existing literature mainly draws on the strategic management perspective that argues that HEIs are pressured to develop brands which differentiate them from their competitors. Past studies, however, do insufficiently take into account that most HEIs are positioned in systems that contain both competitive pressures (to differentiate) and institutional pressures (to meet taken-for-granted expectations), where neither of the pressures is clearly dominant. Our multiple case study of the five Flemish universities finds that branding can simultaneously address competitive and institutional pressures and that the universities studied combine aspects of distinctiveness with elements of similarity.

Keywords:

• branding
• Flemish universities
• multiple case study
• strategic balance

Notes

1. The NI Indicator is a measure (normalised across the disciplines) of the average impact of the articles published by staff of the universities.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Fonds Voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek Vlaanderen.