Strategic, competitive, and co-operative approaches to internationalisation in European business schools

Abstract

Globalised educational environments and national pressures increasingly drive European universities and faculties within them to adopt both competitive (as opposed to co-operative) and strategic (rather than ad hoc) approaches towards the internationalisation of their activities. This study examines the degrees of implementation of competitive and/or strategic approaches to internationalisation of a sample of 92 European business schools. Several possible antecedents of competitive and strategic orientations towards internationalisation are considered including coercive, normative and mimetic influences, risk aversion, resource availability and institutional priorities. The level of a business school's autonomy from its host university is also hypothesised to affect internationalisation decisions. It seems from the results that engagement with internationalisation activities is widespread and that, apart from risk aversion, all of the above variables typically impact on the total extent of a business school's internationalisation activities. A number of these variables also appear to encourage the application of strategic and competitive approaches towards internationalisation. An important implication of this study is that business schools which to date have not fully recognised and accepted the implications of the Bologna Declaration will increasingly face severe disadvantages vis-à-vis international recruitment and operations as they become ‘left behind’ by rivals that have already taken Bologna on board.

Keywords:

• internationalisation
• business schools
• competitive versus co-operative approaches
• strategic orientation