Crafting competition: Media rankings and the forming of a global market for business schools

Abstract

Rankings are elements of market governance of higher education and research. Despite the growing importance of these systems in global policy-making, little scholarly attention has been paid to the role rankings play as elements of governance. This paper presents an empirical study of the introduction of international rankings in management education and the responses to these developments among European business schools. The paper analyses how rankings have shaped perceptions of an international market and competition among business schools in this field via two important processes: constructing comparability and thereby consolidating views of the “customer” and the “product”in a perceived global market, and by crafting perceptions and mechanisms for competition among business schools in this field. This suggests that rankings have been important in shaping this field as global and competitive in character, contributing to what is commonly referred to as the increasing “marketisation” of the field.