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

Constructing a national higher education brand for the UK: positional competition and promised capitals

“…Waeraas and Solbakk 2009;Chapleo 2010;Naidoo et al 2014). Empirical research on institutional HE branding has explored the internal dynamics (Waeraas and Solbakk 2009), leadership and branding (Naidoo et al 2014), achieving successful HE brands (Chapleo 2010), and brand communication on websites (Huisman 2007;Mampaey, Huisman, and Seeber 2015). However, little work has been done on higher education as a national brand, particularly in the context of the UK.…”

The determinants of university strategic positioning: a reappraisal of the organisation

“…Neo-institutional theory claims that university positioning is generated by the quest for legitimacy in order to comply with the external pressures of the surrounding environment (Van Vught 2008). Legitimacy is 'more important than efficiency in sustaining organizational survival' (Mampaey et al 2015(Mampaey et al , p. 1181, thus making universities heavily influenced by the exogenous pressures of the organisational field since adaptation and compliance provide resources and ultimately survival (DiMaggio and Powell 1983).…”

“…Deephouse suggests that distinctive positioning can only be 'as different as legitimately possible ' (1999c, p. 47). A university needs distinctiveness to secure resources, but it cannot ignore field norms, or it would lose the support of its main stakeholders (Mampaey et al 2015) and in particular of its funders (Morphew et al 2018).…”

“…Against this backdrop, scholars of organisation and higher education have analysed the processes of strategic positioning-strategic planning and decision making, sense-making and sense-giving in strategic change and branding and identity construction (Pedersen and Dobbin 2006;Frølich et al 2013;Mampaey et al 2015;Stensaker 2015;Seeber et al 2019;Paradeise and Thoenig 2018). Equally, outcomes of strategic positioning have been investigated to make sense of how universities locate themselves in the academic field according to their educational portfolio, research output, technology transfer and regional development (Bonaccorsi and Daraio 2008;Ljungberg et al 2009;Vuori 2016;Seeber et al 2019; .…”

Interdisciplinarity for sale: Logics of knowledge, labour markets and consumerism

“…A second assumption built into our analysis is that survival within this tumultuous environment, especially for new entrants who are not yet fully institutionalised components of the modern university (Pizarro Milian, ), requires a degree of agility or ambidexterity (see O’Reilly & Tushman, )—meaning the ability to adjust or reposition oneself in response to the dynamic demands placed upon them by a complex, multi‐stakeholder environment. Strategic positioning of this sort has been repeatedly examined in PSE research, but primarily at the organisational level (Branković, ; Fumasoli & Huisman, ; Mampaey, Huisman, & Seeber, ; Vuori, ). However, it also operates at the level of academic units, given that they must also actively adjust to environmental pressures.…”