Internationalization strategies of business schools - how flat is the world?

Business school strategy has become more complex than ever, especially regarding internationalization. Using different paths, experiencing failure and success, business schools have internationalized, attracting many of the international students who contributed $27 billion 2 to the US economy in 2014. Some business schools are global, training global managers, others are more focused on national markets. How do business schools strategize about internationalization? Can we use existing models to explain this process? Are internationalization and globalization similar? Using a comparative analysis of six case studies in the US and Europe, we found that the engine of internationalization influences its paths and outcomes. We contribute to the body of IB research by discussing how business schools strategize their internationalization toward uniformity or diversity under isomorphic pressures from accreditation bodies (AACSB, 2011) and rankings. The so-called Uppsala model should be 1 Acknowledgements: the authors would like to thank two anonymous and rigorous TIBR reviewers for their detailed and useful feedback, as well as Prof. Richard M. Burton, professor emeritus of organization and strategy (Duke University), for his pertinent comments and continuous support. Also, we acknowledge that some of the findings in this paper were presented at peer-reviewed colloquia (EGOS 2013 and EGOS 2014). 2 Institute for International Education, Open Doors Data, http://www.iie.org/Research-and-Publications/Open-Doors/Data/Economic-Impact-of-International-Students 2 extended to deal with three tensions: internationalization vs. globalization, enacted dimensions of audiences, and respective risks of different internationalization pathways.