This article contributes to the debate on university organisational actorhood by surveying the drivers of university strategic behaviour and choice. Utilising organisational literature and interviews with senior leaders from three Canadian research-intensive universities, the article elucidates the dynamics underlying universities' behaviours…

Internationalization serves as a significant hallmark of world-class universities globally. Numerous studies have underscored the strong relationship between internationalization and university development, but few have succeeded in elucidating the mechanisms and modus operandi of internationalization for university excellence. Using a qualitative…

The academic ecology of China's elite universities has been deeply shaped by internationalization through the efforts of returnee faculty members. This study explores how to internationalize the Chinese academic ecology and create world-class universities by examining the experiences and perceptions of returnee faculty members in China's elite…

Pursuing world-class universities, China has emerged in recent decades as an increasingly popular destination for internationally mobile academics. The goal of this study was to identify current education policy dispositions toward foreign faculty at the national and institutional levels in China. Findings indicate that within China's higher…

The concept of the world-class university has proliferated throughout the world, yet there is no universal consensus on how to define these elite institutions. Without a unified definition, rankings have become a direct proxy for sense-making in the sector and a commensurate indicator that decision-makers have used to understand the world-class…

Methodological nationalism (MN) pervades higher education scholarship and practice, particularly in the arena of globalisation of higher education (HE) (Shahjahan and Kezar 2013). MN refers to the assumption that national boundaries define the natural category or unit of analysis for society. Drawing on affect theories, this conceptual article…

This paper studies the different biographic pathways to an economics and business studies professor position between 1957 and 2000 on the specific case of Switzerland. It focuses on the accumulation and conversion of capitals during academic trajectories, and their relation to three types of resources: scientific reputation, network relations, and…

This study utilises an institutional logic perspective to explore the dynamics and complexity of academic personnel system reforms at leading Chinese universities. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 32 participants from 10 highly ranked universities; these interviews obtained the views of key observers on four main reform initiatives:…

Creating world-class universities (WCUs) has recently become a significant policy and practice in higher education in China under the Double World-Class Project. However, some negative effects have encouraged decoupling from the policy goals. To identify the reasons, we conducted policy document analysis and purposive interviews at three elite…

Internationalization of higher education is considered to be among the most widely researched as well as one of the most misunderstood topics. In this study, we take a phenomenological approach to better understand what internationalization means to faculty members at a leading business school in India, as the country has emerged as one of the…

Abstract The academic profession is internally divided as never before. This cross-national comparative analysis of stratification in Higher Education is based on a sample of European academic scientists (N = 8,466) from universities in 11 countries. The analysis identifies three types of stratification: academic performance stratification,…

This paper explores the impacts of research excellence evaluation entailed in global ranking exercises, a control strategy characteristic of new managerialism, on Chinese Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS) academics. The enquiry combines the Critical Incidents Technique (CIT) and internet-based discourse analysis, drawing on mass media texts and…

In recent years, Master of Business Administration (MBA) programmes and their curricula have been subjected to substantial scrutiny. However, the majority of studies have been confined to business schools in Western countries. By comparison, much less research is available on MBA programmes in developing countries, particularly those in Africa. In…

The purpose of this paper is to carry out an empirical examination of the supply-side factors influencing dropout rates in MBA programs. We analyze the extent to which the resources and characteristics of the program (content, teaching methodology, course load, class size, partnerships, reputation) influence these rates. A GLM analysis was…

Employing a glonacal (global, national and local) heuristic as a theoretical lens, and a qualitative analysis with interview data, this study highlights how Chinese faculty members interpret the definitions and implications of pursuing world class universities (WCUs) and struggle with the multiple dimensions of their academic lives across global,…