National position and the internationalization of higher education institutions: the case of France's elite engineering and business schools.

UNIVERSITY rankings; GLOBALIZATION; ELITE (Social sciences); ENGINEERING schools; BUSINESS schools; UNIVERSITIES & colleges; HIGHER education

With internationalization now an imperative for institutions of higher learning around the world, this article examines the specific case of how France's elite engineering and business schools, known as the grandes écoles, have taken on this challenge. Mobilizing work on organizational allomorphism and the "glonacal" approach, this article proposes rethinking the ways in which these different scales are interlinked, and, to this end, using the national position of these establishments as a starting point for understanding their internationalization. The national position may be thought of along three dimensions: material, symbolic, and geographic. By analyzing national press rankings and mobilizing a study of two schools located in the same geographic area, this article will demonstrate how these schools approach internationalization from their national position, as well as from the highly specific category of French grandes écoles in which they operate, showing how internationalization reinforces existing competition, rather than creating it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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