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The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the evolution and current status of the European Quality Improvement System (EQUIS), the European Foundation for Management Development's (EFMD) accreditation for high‐quality international business schools. The paper aims to analyse and describe the value of EQUIS, as well as other international accreditations, to the world of higher education in business administration.

The paper presents the viewpoint of the EFMD's Director of Quality Services on the value of international accreditation.

The value added by accreditation systems stems from three main, and often inter‐related, areas – assessment of the quality of the school based on several criteria; enhanced brand recognition from being granted a distinctive accreditation label; and contributions to the actual improvement of the school.

International accreditation does add value to business schools in a variety of ways. It is also suggested that some of the value added is specific and unique to having international accreditation and is therefore unobtainable by any other means.

The paper highlights both the similarities and differences between international accreditations available for business schools. This should facilitate the assessment of the benefits and feasibility of international accreditation by decision‐makers at international business schools around the world.

The paper seeks to share a viewpoint on the benefits and value of AACSB International business accreditation and some perspectives on the evolution of business accreditation on a global basis.

This is a commentary/viewpoint paper.

AACSB accreditation is global brand delivering external validation of high‐quality business schools providing key stakeholders, students, faculty and employers, with a decision criterion for selecting institutions with which to be associated.

In an increasingly competitive, global market for leading business students and an ever‐increasing number of business programs that deliver management education, differentiation is critical. Earning AACSB International accreditation can provide an important external validation and statement that can be an important factor in identifying high‐quality business schools by prospective students, faculty, and employers.

This study revisits the discourse on the neoliberalization of business schools and explores how accreditation-linked institutional pressures catalyze cultural change that adversely impact academic labor and academic subjectivities in the Global South.

This study is based on in-depth semi-structured interviews with academics from elite business schools in India.

This study shows how academics encounter institutional pressures in Indian business schools. Three major themes emerged from the data: (1) the conception of the ideal academic that existed before accreditation, (2) how the conception of the ideal academic was fundamentally transformed during and after accreditation, and (3) the challenges academics experienced in achieving the performance targets introduced by accreditation-linked institutional pressures.

This study offers two contributions to the extant literature on business schools located in the Global South: (1) it illustrates how organizational changes within business schools in India are structured by accreditation-linked institutional pressures coming from the Global North, and (2) it adds to the growing body of work on neoliberal governmentality by highlighting the implications of accreditation-liked institutional pressures on academic subjectivities.

This study aims to reflect how German business schools respond to the diffusion of the triple accreditation: AACSB (Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business), EQUIS (European Quality Improvement System), and AMBA (Association of MBAs).

This study applies a multiple case study to conduct a qualitative analysis of perceived drivers, value and limitations of AACSB, EQUIS and AMBA accreditation in German business schools.

International accreditation is a seal of excellence for business schools to enhance international competitiveness and global networking, providing evidence of quality, performativity, transparency and accountability for stakeholders. International accreditation offers business schools international comparability and compatibility. International accreditation adds value and benefits to business schools. However, business schools may prioritize institutional strategies and resources to meet the requirements of international accreditations rather than a broader concept of good governance. Business schools should critically review their decisions on international accreditations in line with institutional strategic goals, mission, vision, core values and sustainable development.

This study only focuses on international accreditations of German business schools. Further studies may focus on comparisons of national and international accreditations, impacts of international accreditation and perceptions of international accreditation from policymakers, accreditation bodies, academics and students.

This study offers guidance for the strategic decision-making of business schools on international accreditations, valuable feedback to international accreditation agencies and a reference for quality assurance practitioners, policymakers and accreditation bodies.

This study discusses the social-cultural impacts of international accreditation and accreditation discrimination arising from the selectivity and the exclusivity of international accreditation. International accreditation may further enlarge their comparative advantages over non-accredited schools. International accreditation adds value and benefits to accredited business schools but puts non-accredited business schools in disadvantageous positions.

Business schools need to critically review their institutional strategies and decisions on international accreditation in line with institutional strategic goals, mission, vision, core values and sustainable development. The rational decision of business schools to adopt international accreditation should consider drivers, value, benefits, limitations, organizational effectiveness, transparency, social responsibility and accountability for all stakeholders. Business schools need to take effective strategies to ensure a higher quality of management education through high-quality teaching and good governance. When single accreditation is sufficient, promoting mutual recognition is advisable rather than the “beauty contests” of multiple accreditations at the national and international levels.

The purpose of this paper is to identify and model the key barriers to the issue of adoption and implementation of AACSB accreditation standards in business schools. Business school management can focus on removing the key barriers and implement accreditation standards and practices to improve the quality of programs offered by them.

The present study adopts the interpretive structural modeling (ISM) approach to develop a hierarchical-based model of the key barriers to implementation of Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) accreditation standards. It also depicts the mutual relationships among the key barriers.

The paper has identified the key barriers and presented an integrated model using ISM. Business schools need to pay maximum attention to diagnose and overcome these hindrances for effective implementation of AACSB accreditation standards.

The model is based on the experts’ opinions, which may be biased, influencing the final output of the structural model. The developed model is to help the business school management in understanding the significance of the barriers, to prioritize or eliminate the same for the implementation of accreditation standards.

The depiction of barriers in the form of an ISM-based model is a new effort in the area of business school accreditation. The results will be useful to understand the barriers and overcome these for successful implementation of AACSB accreditation standards in business schools.

Business schools turn to prestigious international accrediting bodies (AACSB, EQUIS and AMBA) in their quest for legitimacy, improved status and reputation. What pains and gains are involved when pursuing these credentials? What are the facilitative and friction forces, supporting or inhibiting development in the different levels of the organization? The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This qualitative single case study provides an extant literature review on business accreditations and their effect on business school development. Through examining the business school organization from four angles, “levels of change,” the accreditation process related events in a Nordic business school during 2009–2017 are analyzed.

Regardless of the typical path-dependency of academic organizations, an accreditation process significantly affects the business school development in all four levels of the organization – dominant logic, culture, structures and systems – through changing the everyday activities. Individual actors become more aware of the underlying values, beliefs and assumptions behind their own behavior as well as that of the overall organization. Deeply rooted understanding of “academic freedom” is challenged. New relationships and working culture are created across sub-units and individuals. Introducing faculty qualifications criteria may lead to department mergers. Accreditation data systems bring transparency into academic work, increasing the consciousness and result orientation among individuals.

This study contributes to the limited theoretical understanding of the development a professional organization through accreditation, adds to the understanding of practical consequences on the level of an individual organization, as well as offers managerial suggestions for business school leaders.

This paper aims to examine current trends in business accreditation by describing and comparing the major international business accreditation agencies (Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business, European Quality Improvement System, Association of MBAs, Association of Collegiate Business Schools and Programs and International Assembly for Collegiate Business Education), and analyze their recent market expansion strategies (development and penetration using Ansoff model) as they compete for the schools seeking initial or continuing accreditation.

This is a comparative study of the business accreditation agencies and their competitive strategies, using publically available data such as lists of accredited schools published by the agencies as main data collection method.

Business accreditation agencies have utilized the market penetration and market development strategies to expand their market share in recent years. The key growth areas are international schools, regional teaching-oriented institutions, two-year institutions and for-profit institutions.

This study is based on publically available data published by accreditation agencies. More in-depth analysis with survey method could be utilized in future study to identify more specific strategies and their impact on business schools seeking accreditation.

Accreditation is no longer a luxury but a requirement for business schools, but they have to make an informed decision on which agency to pursue to assure an appropriate fit.

The public needs to understand the value and the requirements of accreditation. Multiple agencies provide different options to fit the missions of the different types of schools.

This study is valuable to business school stakeholders for understanding accreditation, the need for accreditation and the options they have available.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the influence of the accreditation path toward legitimacy in business schools from an isomorphic and a social responsibility perspective.

A qualitative method is used to analyze the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) accreditation process in three Lebanese business schools aiming at revealing a new role of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in this process.

Accreditation in business schools is a “temporary isomorphic legitimacy tool” enhanced by CSR in a continuum that may lead to sustain legitimacy in higher education once accreditation is attained.

This research has its limitations around the external validity of the qualitative methods. In fact, the authors’ results depend on the context of the three studied business schools, and the generalization of the results was never the authors’ primary objective. Further research must be done to build and elaborate on the authors’ findings, either within the authors’ sample or within other business schools in Lebanon.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) can play a major role in guaranteeing and sustaining legitimacy in the phase after accreditation. May be this was the philosophy behind the proposition of the AACSB of the new standard regarding CSR in 2013 highlighting the importance of ethics, CSR, and sustainability education in business schools.

Accreditation in business schools is a “temporary isomorphic legitimacy tool” enhanced by CSR in a continuum that may lead to sustain legitimacy in higher education once accreditation is attained.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the contextual and linguistic challenges that French business schools face when preparing for international accreditation and to shed light on the different ways in which experts facilitate these accreditation processes, particularly with respect to how they capitalize on their contextual and linguistic boundary-spanning competences.

The authors interviewed 12 key players at four business schools in France engaged in international accreditations and in three specific categories: senior management, tenured faculty and administrative staff. The interview-based case study design used semi-structured questions and an insider researcher approach to study an underexplored sector of analysis.

The findings suggest that French business schools have been particularly impacted by the colonizing effects of English as the mandatory language of the international accreditation bodies espousing a basically Anglophone higher education philosophy. Consequently, schools engage external experts for their contextual and linguistic boundary-spanning expertise to facilitate accreditation processes.

The authors contribute to language-sensitive research through a critical perspective on marginalization within French business schools due to the use of English as the mandatory lingua franca of international accreditation processes and due to the underlying higher-education philosophy from the Anglophone academic sphere within these processes. As a result, French business schools resort to external experts to mediate their knowledge and competency gaps.

Accreditation as a mean to improve the position of the university has become one of the major illustration of non-price competition. Three major accreditation bodies, known as the “big three”, dominate the market of business schools’ accreditation in the world, namely, AACSB, EQUIS and AMBA. This paper aims to explore the current of accreditation of business schools in Lebanon, and to test for the difference of tuition fees between accredited institutions by any of the “big three” and other business schools.

Using a desktop research approach, the paper provides the list of the accredited business schools from the “big three” in the Arab region and Lebanon and compiles data about the number of business schools in Lebanon since 1960, their tuition fees, and their accreditation status. Using a parametric and nonparametric procedure, the paper compares the tuition mean difference between accredited and non-accredited business schools.

The paper reveals an alarming slow progress in the Arab world when it comes to accreditation. In Lebanon, the paper finds that only seven out of 37 business schools are accredited and only three hold an accreditation from the “big three”. The two samples t-test and the Mann–Whitney U-test show that accredited schools charge tuition fees that are three times the average of other schools.

This paper can be improved by using a larger sample and investigate the effect of accreditation on tuition fees.

The results highlight the existence of a gap when it comes to accreditation in the Arab region and the importance of policy-making in promoting accreditation. Moreover, business schools in Lebanon should be aware that accreditation with the “big three” could be associated with substantial increase in tuition fees.

This paper is the first to investigate the state of accreditation of business schools in Lebanon and its association with tuition fees.