Strategic management of offshore branch campuses in transnational higher education : global synergy versus local responsiveness

This research is at the intersection of strategic management, international business and internationalisation of higher education institutions (HEIs). It focuses on the managerial aspects of higher education institutions with offshore branch campuses. In the past couple of decades the number of offshore branch campuses established by HEIs - mainly universities - has increased dramatically, but most research carried out to date in this field has been anecdotal and the number of theoretical studies in this area is very limited. Thus, the aim of this research is to breach this gap by developing a theoretical framework that is capable of explaining the managerial aspects of foreign branch campus operations. The key research question in this study is how transnational higher education institutions (TNHEIs) strategically manage their offshore branch campuses. In order to address this question, the literature on TNHEIs with regard to managerial complexities is reviewed. By assimilating and reconceptualising this literature, a multidimensional framework is constructed, which encapsulates the most pertinent ramifications of managing an offshore branch campus. The framework has been constructed by drawing on a widely used paradigm in the international business discipline, known as the dichotomy of global integration versus local responsiveness (I-R dichotomy). It helps to portray the TNHEIs' strategic positions and positional change strategies on three dimensions of curriculum, research activities and staffing. The research, however, goes beyond identifying the positional strategies on the mentioned dimensions, which are undertaken by TNHEIs, by eliciting the internal and external factors that influence the strategic stance of an international branch campus on the I-R dichotomy. To this end, the literature of Multinational Enterprises (MNEs) focusing on subsidiary evolution is reviewed. Given that the majority of existing theories for MNEs are nesting on for-profit (mainly manufacturing) industries, whilst HEIs are hybrid organisations (partly for-profit, partly nonprofit), there is no appropriate MNE model that fits with this context. Therefore. by juxtaposing and resynthesizing a variety of elements from the literature, a new model. named the aggregated LIL, is developed. The model identifies subsidiary's stance on the I-R trade-off as a function of n'yo types of legitimacy imperatives, entrepreneurial response to the market initiatives and MNE network optimisation. Moreover, the model simultaneously captures the economic and social imperatives (given HET's hybrid nature), which impact the subsidiary's stance on the global integration-local adaptation continuum and hence, is suitable for analysing strategic change in the context of TNHE. Based on the constructed theoretical model and the multidimensional framework, a conceptual research model is built. Considering the explorative and explanatory nature of this research, in the empirical part of this study, the qualitative comparative analysis is employed to test this model. Following the guidelines of the adopted methodology, six cases were selected with the purpose of allowing investigation of causal relationships between the input factors (independent variables) and the output factors (dependent variables) that are identified in the conceptual model. Amongst the selected British and Australian international branch campuses, three cases are located in Malaysia and the other three in Singapore. The data set is collected from several in-person and telephone interviews that were conducted with the senior managers of the selected branch campuses who are - in research technical terms - known as corporate elites, as well as from a wide range of secondary sources such as business intelligence reports, governmental policy documents, the universities' websites and some related articles. Therefore, documentary analysis has also been performed to both complement and validate the primary data set. The findings. firstly, confirm the construct validity, suitability and applicability of the constructed model. Secondly, a number of insightful implications are yielded, which can be useful for managers of TNHEIs. The contribution of this research is twofold. On the one hand it contributes to the field of TNHE by developing a middle-range theory and providing some practical implications. On the other hand, it contributes to the fields of strategic management and international business by highlighting and demonstrating the weaknesses of current theories to explain the change dynamics in hybrid contexts. Accordingly, the research suggests that field-propriety models are a necessity to come to terms with the" idiosyncrasies of different industries.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo