Search results

As a field of research and practice, comparative and international education addresses many of the same issues, ideas, problems, and policies repeatedly in research articles, policies and policy briefs, and in the implementation of intra- and international projects and programs. But, in order to develop as a field, diversification of these issues, ideas, problems, and policies to address new or different priorities and contexts occurs as well. In comparative and international education, diversification since 2013 has been largely static. This brief chapter suggests that dynamic diversification is needed as well if scholarship in the field is to continue to mature and implementation or practice in the field is to further professionalize.

The linkage between diversification and performance has puzzled scholars for decades. A vast amount of empirical studies, together with the help of meta-analyses condensing diverse results, established a widely shared understanding that related diversification leads to superior firm performance. The main rationale for this finding is that relatedness within a company’s portfolio of businesses allows the company to achieve synergies by sharing or transferring resources. Although the predominant importance of related diversification seems generally accepted, scholars raise severe concerns about our ability to precisely define and measure relatedness. In most studies, traditional measures of diversification such as the Berry index are used, which assess relatedness from a product/market perspective. However, these measures face strong criticisms for their low degree of content validity. So if we doubt our understanding of relatedness, how can we agree on the performance effect of related diversification? To reassure our understanding of the diversification-performance linkage, this study critically reflects upon the underlying phenomenon of relatedness. By compiling and evaluating the different perspectives of relatedness with their heterogeneous conceptualizations and measures, this study supports the view that the multi-facetted nature of relatedness can only be captured inadequately so far. Moreover, most prior work mainly focuses on synergy potential rather than on the realization of synergies, thereby neglecting a mechanism that may have an important bearing on the performance effects of diversification.

Similar to community colleges in the United States, the Israeli tertiary system includes two-year technological colleges, which provide students with a labor-market relevant qualification. Nonetheless, unlike the community colleges, the technological colleges are not considered to be part of the higher education system and their transfer function is irregular and confined. In order to understand these differences, the chapter has two complementary objectives: (a) to describe the emergence and development of technological colleges and (b) to evaluate the implications for social inequality in access to higher education in Israel. We use a mixed-methods research design, including analyzing primary and secondary sources describing the official policy and public discourse around these colleges (qualitative/historical research) and comparing students attending academic institutions to students attending technological colleges and students across different fields of study offered by these colleges (quantitative research). Drawing on Phillip's (2004) model for policy attraction in education, we find that technological colleges in Israel were based on the Dutch HTS model, while the founding of these colleges was initiated by local impulse. The implementation of the technological colleges in the Israeli context was shaped by a cultural logic for higher education that emphasizes research and knowledge production, creating a binary tertiary system. Drawing on sociological literature on diversification and stratification in tertiary education, we find that technological colleges attract more students from disadvantaged groups and more students with relatively low academic ability than academic institutions. In addition, within technological colleges, students from advantaged background and higher academic ability are more likely to study in more prestigious fields of study. These findings suggest that if policy makers in Israel aspire to increase access to higher education, they should rethink policy instruments and cultivate the transfer function of technological colleges. This is among the first studies to examine technological colleges in Israel and we conclude with different directions for further research.

The field of strategic management has advanced substantially in both theory and empirical research over the last 25 years. However, there are “cracks” beginning to occur in the methodology “dam.” To grow as a discipline, strategic management research must meet and deal effectively with methodological challenges in several areas. We address these challenges in each of the following areas: research questions, data collection, construct measurement, analysis of endogenous relationships, and applications. We present a concise view of the future suggesting ways in which these challenges can be overcome and explain the benefits to the field.

The chapter discusses Comparative and International Education (CIE) in Germany and reviews some recent developments that are seen to impact the field in important ways. The current state of CIE in Germany is characterized by three major developments. First, there are visible signs of intensified interest in comparative knowledge – both from policy and academic circles – as illustrated by external indicators such as publications, activities in academic-professional societies, etc. Second, there is an increasing diversification of CIE, with intercultural, international and development education attracting much attention. Finally, since the early 2000s, there has been growing significance and reception of large-scale international comparative assessment studies. The essay discusses these current developments in turn and poses questions as to their relevance and potential impact for CIE in Germany.

Alan Rugman was one of the first to examine in a systematic way the connection between the internationalization of the firm and the diversification of assets within the multinational enterprises (MNE). He has since moved on to deal with many other issues surrounding the MNE, but his major contribution to the subject of international diversification (Rugman, 1979) was for many years essential reading for anyone with serious pretensions to be or to become an international business scholar. Rugman (2005) himself sees the key idea in his early book as being an appreciation of the role of risk in foreign direct investment (FDI). MNEs in the place of individual investors, diversified their portfolio of assets, and thereby served as a vehicle for risk reduction. This argument can be applied especially before 1970, before advances in financial markets and international asset instruments enabled individual investors (or funds acting on their behalf) to directly conduct for themselves such strategies of international diversification to reduce risk.

Growth in female tertiary enrollment has been accompanied by persistent gender differentiation within systems of higher education worldwide. We identify three dimensions of female “status” in higher education – overall female enrollments, sex segregation across tertiary levels, and sex segregation across fields of study – and we offer a conceptual framework for understanding cross-national similarity and variability on these dimensions. Commonalities across countries reflect the interaction of global pressures for expansion and democratization of education with persistent cultural representations of “gender difference.” Variability can be attributed, in part, to the different ways in which global cultural and structural pressures have been manifested within particular socio-historical settings.

In recent years, the academic profession has received increased interest as an object of study. Higher education systems all over the world have submitted to deep and structural changes with implications for this professional group. Two relevant international projects have been developed to analyze changes in the academic profession in a comparative way: “The Changing Academic Profession” (CAP) and “Academic Profession in Europe: Responses to Societal Challenges” (EUROAC). The aim of this chapter is to analyze the major results of these projects, reflecting on the way they have incorporated theories in the field of sociology of professions, and, simultaneously, to reflect on the contributions the empirical results of these studies have brought to the theoretical framework in this specific field of study. Data analysis reveals that, even if academics do not engage in an in-depth discussion about academics as a professional group, it is possible to classify them as the ‘producers of producers’, or as a meta-profession. Simultaneously, analysis of current changes in the academic profession demonstrates the existence of an increasing internal diversification and fragmentation (based on such dimensions as changes in academics’ roles, employment and working conditions, internationalization processes, autonomy, gender, and age). These results suggest the need to include professional internal diversity in the current debates on changes in professions in contemporaneous societies.