THE INTERNATIONALIZATION OF BUSINESS SCHOOLS BASED ON FACULTY ACTIVITIES: EXPLANATIONS FROM THE SOCIAL EXCHANGE THEORY

Abstract

The internationalization of higher education has gained in theoretical and empirical importance in recent decades. In this context, this article aims to describe and analyze the internationalization of business schools from the activities of their academics and basedon the propositions defended by the Social Exchange Theory (SET). To achieve our goal we conducted 39 interviews with academicsfrom business schools in the United States and Brazil, including Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Harvard, Getulio VargasFoundation (FGV) and University of Sao Paulo (USP). We found that: (i) there are individual rewards that are not addressed by SET; (ii)there are benefits to third parties not covered by SET; (iii) certain non-rational choices are not provided by SET; and (iv) the conditionof equivalence between costs and rewards provided by SET has its weaknesses. With these findings we add theoretical and empiricalcontributions to our theme