Anthony Lowrie

Accreditation Sickness in the Consumption of Business Education: The Vacuum in AACSB Standard Setting:

This article examines peer-administered accreditation in business education, taking AACSB (Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business) as its focus. Attention is directed to the educationally unhealthy consequences of an established regional mode of accreditation becoming an international benchmark for business education consumption. At the heart of the AACSB’s mission-linked approach is an evacuation of core content from business education. The change to a mission-linked architecture was motivated, it is argued, primarily by expansionist, rather than pedagogical, considerations. It coincided with a reduction in the number of US research-based schools unaccredited, the inability of many US-business schools to meet AACSB’s previous standards, the emergence of a rival accreditation agency (Association of Collegiate Business Schools and Programs) formed to target this market, and international competition from other accreditation bodies. We note that the mission-linked approach, underpinned by peer-review, has been good for AACSB growth but has, we suggest, been restrictive and unhealthy for business education that does not fit its ostensibly flexible and accommodating mould.

Investor Reactions, Social Implications and Layoff Announcements in the UK: A Comparison between Periods

This study examined the effect of layoffannouncements on shareholder wealth. Second, itfurther discusses the social implications oflayoffs and the extent to which investorreactions towards layoffs may have changed overtime. Details of layoff announcements for UKlisted companies were gathered for the periods1980 to 1984 and 1990 to 1995 inclusive.Comparative to prior U.S. findings, the resultsshow that UK investors do respond negatively toannouncements categorised as reactive. Twofindings not established by prior researchwere: (1) UK investor reactions appear to bemuch more sensitive to layoffs in the 1990s asopposed to the 1980s, and (2) UK investorsappeared increasingly sensitive toward layoffscompared to their US counterparts.

Marketing higher education: The promotion of relevance and the relevance of promotion

This paper examines the marketization of higher education. It takes the curriculum development for a degree sponsored by industry as a focus for exploring the involvement of industry and, more specifically, prospective employers, in shaping higher education provision. Empirical material gathered from a three and a half‐year ethnographic study is used to illustrate how mundane promotional work associated with sponsored curricula operates to reconstitute higher education. It is shown how, in the process of introducing sponsored curricula into the university, a market relevance discourse is merged with traditional discourse to promote a new discursive order and thereby contribute to the reformation of university education. This hybrid discourse (of tradition and relevance) makes traditional resistance to the encroachment of “relevance” into university education more difficult to justify, and perhaps impossible to sustain. Nonetheless, it produces new antagonisms that provide future sites of resistance.

This thing called marketisation

Marketing and marketisation are not the same. However, it is not a simple task to disentangle one from the other. At one end of the distribution of meaning, marketing may be taken to be about the provision of information to help people make decisions, while at the other end of this distribution, marketisation challenges stakeholders with radical change encompassing issues of power, funding, labour, markets, and complexity. Nor is this a comprehensive list (see, e.g., Hemsley-Brown & Oplatka, 2006). Indeed, the idea of a definitive list is misleading. Meanings and lists tend to chop and change according to the particular perspective slicing the dialogue.While it is difficult to get an intellectual handle on what is happening with regard to marketing higher education – never mind what to do about it – the reader might like to think that that is rather the point: the complexity keeps the stakeholder guessing at what is difficult, if not impossible, to predict, and so this keeps us on our academic toes. Nevertheless, there are three very important characteristics evident in the literature to describe the situation and help us to develop an intellectual understanding of marketisation: (1) higher education is characterised by plurality; (2) it is competitive and likely to get even more competitive; and (3) it is rife with contestation. More than anything else in our research into marketing and the marketisation of higher education, we need analytical concepts to deal with these highly prominent yet not all-embracing characteristics. As the complexity and diversity of the literature in the subject area suggests, this is not going to come from a single disciplinary source. With regard to these characteristics, it is not simply a question of a variety of institutions of higher education competing, but these varied institutions are occupied by academics with competing theories. So institutional plurality and intellectual plurality add to the competitive fuel. Burning themes arising from these characteristics set within academic contestation are: increasing complexity, the rise of consumerism, rankings, the promotion of relevance, and identity. With regard to the second characteristic, it is irrelevant whether you like or approve or not; competition will define higher education and its being in the world and where that being is placed. Higher education’s identity and how stakeholders identify with it will alter radically. Indeed, it is already inaccurate to speak of the identity of higher education rather than identities. In consideration of the third set of characteristics, none of these goes unchallenged. Consensus is a long way off. The way forward is paved with many possibilities and potential directions. The plurality and competitive characteristics have multiple implications that work their way through how we approach marketing for higher education, understand it, and then deal with it. The articles in this special issue are just some of the research outcomes that link the major themes emanating from the characteristics. It would be impossible, of course, to cover all these themes in one special issue. Nevertheless,the articles in this special edition of the Journal of Marketing Management illustrate how marketing for higher education research is intricately bound up with (a) the characteristics and (b) the themes, and (c) how researchers break these themes down into manageable research topics such as marketing strategy, services marketing, consumer behaviour, and so on.

The relevance of aggression and the aggression of relevance: The rise of the accreditation marketing machine

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to illustrate how language functions to construct relevance at moments of articulation and how language functions as an aggressive marketing practice to promote a self‐regulated (production‐oriented) system of accreditation.Design/methodology/approach – Drawing on the political theory of Laclau and Lacanian psychoanalytical theory of desire and aggressivity, a linguistic case study is used to illustrate the construction and promotion of accreditation and relevance.Findings – Aggressive competitive behavior in the area of higher education accreditation sets up inter‐institutional antagonisms at the local and global level which may prove socially divisive and restrict the distribution of knowledge for the social good with the possible implication of restricting economic growth for competitively weaker countries.Research limitations/implications – The micro analysis of language restricts the size of the data set considered in a single article.Practical implications – St...

The Co-Creation and Co-Destruction of Value Through Language: An Analysis of University Service Provision to Industry Within Shifting Paradigms

‘In a service-centered model, humans both are at the center and are active participants in the change process’ (Vargo and Lusch 2004:12). Central to human activity is language. This paper takes empirical material from a three and a half-year ethnographic study to explore the co-creation and co-destruction of value through language. The language of the service provider I customer relationship is explored through an innovative application of systemic functional linguistics and Lacanian psychoanalytical theory. The paper illustrates the destruction of value in the service provider I customer relationship which has broader theoretical and practitioner implications for managing service marketing relationships. Academics and practitioners have no hesitation in paying attention to the most minute of statistical analysis in the pursuit of increasing value yet fail miserably when comes to understanding what customers and service providers may in fact be saying. The paper addresses a gap in marketing theory and practice and draws attention to the implications of language functioning in the production/consumption process of value creation/destruction at the moment of articulation.

Theory, curricula and ethics: is it the ‘Time and Being’ for a radical approach?

At the recent American Marketing Association (AMA) Educators’ conference in Boston, a pre-conference session on marketing theory was followed up in the main conference with a discussion on the same subject. Both sessions were standing room only. In fact, the former had to turn away members wanting to attend. Not only is this an indication of the growing interest in marketing theory but the debate in the conference session moved on to the issue of what is to be done to improve the situation and how the problem with theory could be addressed in graduate curricula. The possibility of setting up a committee to investigate was raised. Whether this possibility was floated in order to ‘kill’ the issue or to gain critical insight into the problem with theory is an open question. Will the usual suspects be rounded up for service to ‘resolve’ the problem in traditional fashion, or will AMA leaders broaden the search to include members of the broader church of the academic community? One of the problems with marketing theory is that the academy of marketers tends to take a rather narrow view of what knowledge is, as if viewed with myopic eyes, in order to close down other perspectives. This narrow view of what knowledge is has dominated marketing theory for decades and is embedded in our institutions. Marketing our business schools and higher education in general is also locked in this narrow embrace. What is taught (curriculum) and how it is taught (pedagogy) is inextricably bound up with practice. Despite the marketing fixation with leadership and innovation, much marketing theory relies upon and sustains clichéd thinking. If theory is to underpin our thinking and connect with such topics as leadership in an innovative way, then the very basis of our theories needs revisiting. Otherwise, it is the same old, same-old scholastic chanting of the same old, same-old literature. Academics must go further and give fuller consideration to both the ontological (what is it that we know) and epistemological (how we know it) basis to our theories. Questioning received wisdom and established authorities goes to the heart of the scientific project but writing practice in our institutions and processes is largely untouched by such questioning. For example, when one of the Journal of Marketing for Higher Education (JMHE) editors put the question to the panel of editors at the AMA conference concerning whether they would consider not having access to the names and