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The purpose of this paper is to explore how AACSB might better position itself through brand management.

The paper attempts to offer suggestions on a different branding strategy for AACSB

The paper suggests that AACSB establishes different levels of accreditation, each having different standards and each having a different level of prestige. This repositioning of the AACSB brand would make the accreditation standards flexible, depending on the resources a school wanted to devote to business education, and the prestige that the school wished to achieve with accreditation.

The paper contributes to the literature by proposing a solution that will enhance the value of AACSB accreditation to schools of different resource endowments.

This study examines the impact of the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) accreditation on education quality. We discern the prospective influences of AACSB, focusing on shifts in teaching methods and content and assessment procedures.

Using a case study approach, in-depth interviews are conducted with a Japanese-accredited business school’s faculty members to understand their perceptions of the school’s education-quality issues. The data were thematically analyzed.

Respondents acknowledged that AACSB accreditation has positively influenced teaching, encouraging active learning and the case method. However, they also indicated that accreditation had a restrictive effect on assessment activities, pushing toward compliance rather than genuine learning evaluation. This dichotomy suggests a need for balancing standard adherence with the flexibility to maintain educational depth and assessment integrity.

Convenience sampling may introduce self-selection bias. Furthermore, the qualitative case study approach does not allow for statistical generalization. However, when combined with existing literature, the findings can be analytically generalized and transferred to other contexts.

We provide insights regarding AACSB accreditation’s impact on business education, encompassing shifts in teaching methods and content and faculty perceptions of assessment. This study enhances the scholarly understanding of business school accreditation and offers guidance to accredited or accreditation-seeking academic institutions.

This paper explores who among the AACSB categorization of academics conducts the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) research within business schools and how AACSB-accredited business schools capture SoTL research as part of their portfolio of intellectual contributions.

This study adopts a qualitative-method research design by collecting primary data through surveys, semi-structured interviews and secondary data in policy documents focused on AACSB-accredited business schools in Canada and the United States.

The findings establish that scholarly and practice academics who possess rigorously acquired research skills due to their terminal degrees are most likely to conduct SoTL research. The results also reveal an even split among respondents regarding whether their AACSB-accredited business school captures SoTL with their journal ranking frameworks.

Based on the findings, two recommendations are offered to foster more SoTL research at AACSB-accredited schools. First, higher education leaders (e.g. business school deans) can further inculcate a culture of SoTL research at the department and institutional levels by creating communities of practice (CoPs). Second, AACSB-accredited business schools could adopt more inclusive journal ranking frameworks to capture better and incentivize SoTL research.

This is the first known study to explore how AACSB Standards 3 and 8 are implemented and operationalized regarding SoTL research. Understanding how these standards are adopted and implemented could help institutional leaders, standard setters and administrators better facilitate SoTL research.

The current article aims to answer the following research questions: (1) What types of business schools should pursue the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB)? and (2) What types of strategic leadership would be necessary for that?

A case study approach with archival research and interviews is employed.

The findings suggest that regional, teaching-oriented business schools at the graduate level with dominance-transformative leaders should consider acquiring AACSB accreditation due to its potential benefits, the most pronounced being an increase in the number of graduate students. Other advantages include improvements in the quality of schools' strategic planning, faculty qualifications, intellectual research contributions and assurance of learning, as well as branding.

Given its qualitative nature as a single case study with a small sample size, the findings may not be statistically generalizable. Future research could employ multiple case studies to examine several accredited schools, utilizing larger sample sizes to obtain more detailed results about the AACSB acquisition process, as well as the potential benefits and costs of AACSB.

Few studies have examined the processes and impacts of acquiring AACSB accreditation, or the associated barriers in the context of an individual, international accreditation-seeking business school, in particular those that are small and regional. Likewise, few studies have addressed management leadership issues in acquiring AACSB accreditation. Our research addressed these research gaps by describing the processes, impacts and issues associated with acquiring AACSB from the perspective of a regional, teaching-oriented institute. Further, the study helped identify kinds of leadership appropriate for the acquisition of AACSB.

Attitudes of deans of American Assembly of Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) accredited schools/colleges of business were surveyed regarding nine areas central to the practice of collegiate level business education. These deans were then classified into three categories in a manner consistent with the new AACSB standards for accreditation. Finally, a one‐way ANOVA indicated the degree to which the attitudes of these groups of deans differed across items on the original instrument. The study suggests implications for the revised accreditation process of the AACSB.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a complementary analysis of finance journals that are often being overlooked in prior studies. Specifically, the authors examine the Australian Business Dean Council’s (ABDC’s) C-ranked journals in terms of their authors’ affiliations with US colleges, US colleges with Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) accreditations, and US colleges with AACSB doctoral program accreditations.

A list of C-ranked journals is downloaded from the ABDC’s website. Full-text articles of these journals are downloaded from library databases for the five-year period of 2009-2013. Author affiliations are collected from the corresponding articles. Journal histories, journal editor locations, Cabell’s journal rankings, and acceptance rates are collected from the ABDC’s database, Cabell’s Directory, journal websites, and library databases. The final sample consists of 28 finance journals.

The authors find that these journals have a substantial number and percentage of authors from US colleges. Among the US authors, about 92 percent of them are from AACSB accredited schools and most of them are from AACSB accredited schools with doctoral programs. The findings support the notion that these journals are important publication outlets for US researchers. The authors also find that journals with longer histories and US-based editors have a higher percentage of US authors. In addition, journals with better Cabell’s journal rankings and higher rejection rates have higher percentage of US authors from AACSB accredited schools with doctoral programs.

C-ranked journals are often neglected in prior studies on journal characteristics because they are less well-known and less likely to be cited. However, these journals constitute as many as half of all finance journals in the ABDC database and can be important publication outlets for finance researchers. This study contributes to the literature by examining the author characteristics of these journals, namely, the proportions of authors who come from US colleges and authors who come from AACSB accredited US programs. Such an analysis will provide valuable insight into the value of these journals.

The purpose of this paper is to conduct a systematic review of the research on the quality and value of AACSB International accreditation.

Data were abstracted from published journal articles between 2003 and 2017 in which the words “AACSB” and “quality” or “value” (or both quality and value) were used in the title or the article text.

In total, 91 studies were identified that have been published on the value and/or quality of AACSB accreditation. These studies focused primarily on students and faculty and were conducted using survey research methods. Results indicate that accreditation does have some effects on stakeholder value and quality.

While there is evidence to support the importance of accreditation to enhance the quality and value of business schools, additional research is needed to empirically support the quality and value propositions.

In order to effectively communicate to stakeholders how AACSB accreditation enhances the business school, the current study’s findings indicate that identification of indicators and factors that affect quality and value would be productive.

This study contributes insight on what is currently known about the quality and value of AACSB accreditation to both internal and external stakeholders from research conducted over an extended period of time.

The main contribution of the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) appears to be the credibility they add to a school that has achieved accreditation and the branding they provide to an accredited school that helps the market differentiate between high quality programs and those that have not achieved that status. The authors ask a simple question in this paper – if the AACSB were a business school, would it receive accreditation?

The paper tests the assumptions by examining all accredited US programs to determine whether the quality of the schools accredited prior to the change to the mission-driven approach was equal to the quality of the schools accredited after the change.

The paper empirically demonstrate that since the move to a mission-driven focus in the early 1990s, the AACSB has not achieved its own mission and may have damaged its credibility in the process.

This failure raises the question of whether the organization actually provides the necessary information for third parties to differentiate between high quality business programs and those that do not meet the same standards. This puts into question the value of the AACSB brand.

The AACSB has the ability and responsibility to do better in its role as the main accreditation body for business schools.

It is the hope that the insight provided in this paper will initiate a serious discussion about the role of the AACSB in the determination of quality in business schools and how this role can be enhanced.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on the question of how well business school accreditation bodies manage their own brands. It does so by extending research on business school branding by Pitt et al. (2006) to explore how well business school accreditation organizations such as AACSB International – The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB), the Association of MBAs, and the European Foundation for Management Development Quality Improvement System manage their brands.

An on-line survey of business school deans was conducted during October and November of 2013. SurveyMonkey was used to administer the survey to 1,131 valid e-mail addresses found for the deans of member schools.

Business school deans face complex decisions in terms of marketing. The selection of which accreditation “co-brand” to seek is both strategically relevant to the market position of the business school and has numerous financial and often career implications. The findings in this research suggest that AACSB is perceived by a broad global sample of business school deans to be generally the strongest brand, and therefore likely the best choice if a school is seeking only one accreditation.

This study contributes to the understanding of business school marketing, strategic planning, and branding in a highly competitive global market.