Legitimacy, stratification, and internationalization in global higher education: the case of the International Association of Universities

Abstract

The International Association of Universities (IAU) is the only inclusive global university association, its membership barriers are low, yet few universities are members despite considerable benefits. What determines membership in this long-standing international university alliance? Reviewing recent trends toward a more networked, stratified and internationalized global higher education field, we argue that universities with a greater need for legitimation and those ‘born’ into a global era are more likely to become members of an inclusive international network like the IAU. Thus, we expect lower status and younger universities to be more likely to join. We apply regression models to test hypotheses implied by these arguments. Our findings are consistent with these hypotheses, even after controlling for other factors. We discuss these findings using neo-institutional arguments about legitimacy and imprinted logics and suggest potential analytical avenues for further research.

The European Universities initiative: between status hierarchies and diversity

“…Thus far, only a few studies have explored the composition and basis for alliance formation in the context of HE (Brankovic, 2018;Dusdal et al, 2021;Zapp et al, 2021). The research on the EUi itself by Charret and Chankseliani (2022) is most relevant to our inquiry.…”

The Framing of Diversity Statements in European Universities: The Role of Imprinting and Institutional Legacy

“…Although imprinting is well established in organizational and management research (for an overview, see Marquis and Tilcsik 2013;Simsek et al 2015), the theory has so far-despite a wide range of findings on the general importance of history for universities and their structures and practices (Christensen et al 2020;Ramirez and Christensen 2013;Townley 1997)-found only relatively rare application in higher education research (Oertel 2018;Oertel and Söll 2017;Zapp et al 2021). However, imprinting can be of great relevance in this context, especially with regard to the adoption of practices and constructs that are in line with specific institutional logics.…”

“…Although prior research in this realm has largely neglected large-scale cross-country comparisons, they are of great relevance to improving scholars' understanding how such concepts diffuse and national business systems and institutional legacies affect adoption rates (Greve and Rao 2014;Rao and Greve 2018). Second, despite the great importance of history for higher education institutions (Ramirez and Christensen 2013;Townley 1997) imprinting and institutional legacies have received only scant attention in this context yet (Oertel 2018;Oertel and Söll 2017;Zapp et al 2021). Consequently, we add to prior research on higher education by testing central arguments of imprinting theory and the institutional legacy approach (Greve and Rao 2014;Marquis and Tilcsik 2013;Rao and Greve 2018;Simsek et al 2015;Stinchcombe 1965).…”

Meta-Organizations: A Clarification and a Way Forward

“…Some studies of social movements have used the meta-organization concept (Karlberg & Jacobsson, 2015;Laurent et al, 2020). Highereducation meta-organizations and science meta-organizations with universities, business schools, or research centers as their members (Bor, 2014;Brankovic, 2018;Kerwer, 2013;Zapp et al, 2020) constitute other fields of study. A further field of application is international relations or international governance (Ahrne, Brunsson & Kerwer, 2016;Garaudel, 2020;Kerwer, 2013).…”