Methodology and Research Design

Abstract

In this section, three in-depth exploratory case studies of business schools in the United States, Germany, and Sweden will be presented. The purpose of the case studies is twofold. One objective is to highlight how the selected business schools deal with pressures from their institutional environments. In particular, the empirical study aims at examining how the stories about the development of business schools in their institutional context relate to the theoretical propositions of the neo-institutional framework developed in the previous chapters. As Eisenhardt (1989) noted, case studies can benefit from the use of certain a priori constructs orienting the development of the cases in order to increase the probability of constructing “rich” theoretical propositions. A second purpose of the exploratory case study is to increase understanding of how the theoretical concepts of neo-institutional theory need to be adapted to capture the distinctiveness of higher management education institutions. Several organizational characteristics are unique to business schools, and it is difficult to find an equivalent in other types of organizations. Considering the central importance of the social system of science for the development of business schools, this also concerns the integration of ideas from the sociology of science with the neo-institutional approach. In this respect, the case studies also have theory-building character (see Glaser and Strauss 1967, Locke 2001).