The neoliberalization of Indian business schools: how accreditation-linked institutional pressures shape academic subjectivities

• Date: 12 July 2023
• Pages: 889-902
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/EDI-01-2023-0016
• Published date: 12 July 2023
• Author: Ritesh Kumar,Ajnesh Prasad

The neoliberalization of Indian

business schools:

how accreditation-linked

institutional pressures shape

academic subjectivities

Ritesh Kumar

Fr. C. Rodrigues Institute of Management Studies, Mumbai, India, and

Ajnesh Prasad

Tecnologico de Monterrey, Monterrey, Mexico and

Royal Roads University, Victoria, Canada

Abstract

Purpose –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.

Design/methodology/approach –This study is based on in-depth semi-structured interviews with

academics from elite business schools in India.

Findings –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.

Originality/value –This study offers twocontributions 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.

Keywords Academia, Accreditation, Institutional pressures, Global South, Neoliberalization

Paper type Research paper

Introduction

In this article, we examine some of the organizational changes induced by accreditation-

linked institutional pressures on elite Indian business schools and account for their impact on

academics working within them. While institutional pressures on business schools have

previously been studied in terms of normative processes related to international certifications

(Alajoutsijarvi et al., 2018;Romero, 2008), business school rankings (Trank and Rynes, 2003),

and publication output quality (Mingers and Willmott, 2013), much of this work has focused

on geographical contexts of the Global North. Given the specificities of the institutional

dynamics of business schools in the Global North, as compared to ‘other’geographical

contexts, many of these findings from these studies offer little explanatory power to make

sense of the conditions of business schools in the Global South (Prasad et al., 2019)[1].

Neoliberalism

and Indian

business

schools

889

The authors thank the participants who shared their stories during the data collection stage. They are

also grateful to Helena Liu, Mustafa Ozturk, and two anonymous reviewers for offering constructive

comments that strengthened this article.

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:

https://www.emerald.com/insight/2040-7149.htm

Received 16 January 2023

Revised 6 June 2023

Accepted 15 June 2023

Equality, Diversity and Inclusion:

An International Journal

Vol. 42 No. 7, 2023

pp. 889-902

© Emerald Publishing Limited

2040-7149

DOI 10.1108/EDI-01-2023-0016