Decoupling Responsible Management Education

Organizational Institutionalism

Theoretical debates on decoupling emerged as part of the conceptual and empirical work being done on organizational institutionalism (Boxenbaum & Jonsson, 2008). The main thesis underlying institutional theory is that organizations are affected by the institutional context in which they operate. This context consists of “common understandings of what is appropriate and, fundamentally, meaningful behavior” (Zucker, 1987, p. 105) and defines what is considered as rational conduct. Institutionalized practices within this context reflect widely accepted behavior that is underpinned by certain normative and cognitive understandings. The resulting institutional pressures influence organizational practices, because organizations conform to this rationalized context to appear legitimate (Scott, 1995). Conformity to institutional pressures creates isomorphic behavior among organizations, that is, organizations become more alike because institutionalized practices are diffused throughout space and time. Institutional theorists suggest three mechanisms of isomorphic change (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983): (a) coercive isomorphism (practices are adopted to avoid sanctions), (b) mimetic isomorphism (practices are adopted to imitate successful peers), and (c) normative isomorphism (practices are adopted because it is the right thing to do).

Organizations whose behavior is guided by institutionalized practices can be thought of as belonging to a common organizational field. Scott (1995) defines such fields as “a community of organizations that partakes of a common meaning system and whose participants interact more frequently and fatefully with one another than with actors outside the field” (p. 56). This definition emphasizes the relational component of fields, that is, fields (and the institutional demands that are embedded in them) are created in and through the interactions of organizations that together form a recognized area of institutional life (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983). Hoffman (1999) emphasized that fields also act as platforms for discussions around a common theme and that “[…] the field should be thought of as the center of common channels of dialogue and discussion […] which bring together various field constituents with disparate purposes” (p. 352).

Following Hoffman’s (1999) understanding, responsible management education can be thought of as being part of the larger organizational field of management education. This field consists of a community of organizations, which, even though they may have different purposes, interact around a common theme. Relevant actors in this field include business schools, accreditation agencies, governmental regulators, student organizations (e.g., Net Impact), providers of rankings (e.g., The Financial Times), and professional networks (e.g., the GRLI). Although the network of relationships in this field structures the actions of schools, the field also contains a variety of competing and even contradictory institutional pressures. For instance, while rankings specify certain measures around which schools can be compared, responding to these measures can mean neglecting other demands put on business schools (Wedlin, 2007).

Decoupling: The Symbolic Adoption of Formal Structure

Conformity to institutional pressures can contradict the internal requirements of organizations. When this occurs, the conformity of organizations to institutional pressures may only be ceremonial, that is, they decouple the formal structures that are adopted to conform to institutional demands from their day-to-day activities (Meyer & Rowan, 1977). As organizations need to appear legitimate and rational (to gain social approval and secure their survival), they deploy such legitimating structures to meet institutional demands, but disconnect these structures from core practices (Oliver, 1991). In other words, the formal structure of organizations (e.g., official policies, programs, positions, and procedures) and the language (“talk”) that is used to describe these structures have a largely symbolic function.

MacLean and Behnam (2010) showed how an organization created positive legitimacy perceptions by symbolically adopting a compliance program. Westphal, Gulati, and Shortell (1997) discussed how organizations gained legitimacy from symbolically adopting total quality management, while Edelman, Petterson, Chambliss, and Erlanger (1991) demonstrated how an organization created visible symbols of compliance around institutional demands for affirmative action without changing its practices. Together, these studies give substance to Meyer and Rowan’s (1977) original proposition that external audiences are willing to grant legitimacy based on symbolic responses to institutional demands. Decoupling can help gain management support for decisions on reform because it acts as a mechanism that buffers internal routines that have developed over time against growing institutional pressures (Brunsson & Olsen, 1993). This enhances the flexibility of the organization while maintaining legitimacy with external constituents. We suggest that reforms promoted through responsible management education risk being affected by this kind of decoupling behavior.

Institutional Pressures for Responsible Management Education

Responsible management education as an emerging institutional context consists of various institutionalized practices (e.g., curriculum change and new pedagogies). These practices define what is commonly considered to reflect appropriate behavior. Schools cannot simply ignore the emergence of such demands, particularly if they want to be seen as legitimate actors. We apply the abovementioned distinction between coercive, mimetic, and normative mechanisms of isomorphic change (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983) to understand in what ways schools are increasingly exposed to institutional pressures.

How Does Decoupling Manifest Itself?

Many schools have responded to these pressures by redesigning elements of their formal structure. Examples of such structural elements include, but are not limited to, policies that frame a school’s commitment and engagement, formalized programs (e.g., for curriculum change or faculty training), and new governance structures (e.g., faculty committees). A recent survey by ABIS and EFMD (2013) revealed that the majority of schools address responsible management education in their governance bodies (e.g., the academic board) and that a variety of schools claim to consider criteria related to responsible management education within their human resources policies (e.g., during performance evaluations). These structural elements are often reflected in the talk that schools produce around responsible management education (e.g., on their websites and in public reports; see Godemann, Herzig, Moon, and Powell, 2011).

We argue that there is a risk that under certain conditions schools may decouple these structural effects from their organizational practices. Such decoupling can manifest itself in a variety of ways. First, schools can decouple by not redesigning their curriculum substantially. While responsible management education aims at integration across the whole curriculum, schools that decouple favor an uneven distribution of relevant content across disciplines. A recent survey by ABIS and EFMD (2013) found that disciplines like leadership and strategy accommodate most responsible management content, while integration in more technical disciplines such as accounting, finance, and economics remains low. Such uneven distribution sends hidden signals to students, faculty, and administrators about the importance of relevant discussions in selected disciplines. This uneven distribution, however, is also not especially surprising. Disciplines such as finance and accounting work with a different set of assumptions (e.g., profit maximization and opportunistic behavior; J. M. Evans, Trevino, & Weaver, 2006) and hence lack the conceptual resources to justify sub-optimal investments, which in some cases are necessary to create responsible conduct (Crane, Palazzo, Spence, & Matten, 2014). Also, education in finance and accounting is often of a vocational nature, preparing students for specific corporate jobs with a pre-defined profile, while management education aims at developing a broader set of skills and capabilities.

Schools may also try to put relevant topics primarily into electives, thereby avoiding integration into the core curriculum. Rasche et al. (2013) found that even though the overall number of courses with responsible management content has been increasing in recent years, the vast majority of these courses are electives. Creating electives is likely to face less resistance by faculty, as the established curriculum of a program remains unchanged. Electives are also cheaper to run, as fewer students participate in them (e.g., lowering assessment costs). But electives may not help much in the attempt to integrate relevant content into the curriculum, as they suffer from a self-selection bias (i.e., they are chosen by students who already have a high interest) and hence remain limited in terms of their reach (Bell, Connerley, & Cocchiara, 2009).

Second, schools can also decouple by tolerating that planned changes to the curriculum are not embedded into actual classroom practices. Even if schools manage to modify their official curriculum (e.g., by revamping courses), these changes are mostly manifested in course syllabi. Not everything written in a syllabus, however, necessarily impacts educational practices in the classroom, as instructors may decouple parts of the syllabus from actual teaching practice. Although such behavior has not yet been studied in business schools, researchers have observed it in other educational contexts (Meyer & Rowan, 1983; Rowan & Miskel, 1999). Relevant studies show that the autonomy of instructors and their resistance against planned organizational changes are the main drivers of such decoupling behavior. As business school faculty have high degrees of autonomy (Gross-Schaefer, 2010) and resistance against responsible management education is well-documented (Beggs & Dean, 2007), it is not unlikely that some faculty may decide to decouple their classroom practices from officially approved curriculum changes.

Finally, schools can also decouple by avoiding the integration of responsible management education into their organizational culture. What is implicitly included in educational experiences may carry messages that are inconsistent with what is formally taught about responsible management. Blasco (2012) calls this implicit dimension the “hidden curriculum” as it covers practices that send tacit messages to students about what counts as responsible conduct. Schools often send such messages by collaborating with certain firms or endorsers, by “living” responsibility through their own practices (e.g., offering Fairtrade products) and by asking students during course evaluations to reflect on whether a course has discussed responsibility issues. Schools that decouple responsible management education will neglect the role of the hidden curriculum, thus ignoring what kinds of signals about appropriate conduct are sent to students in more subtle ways.

Framing decoupling as an either/or decision may be misleading, as the avoidance of institutional pressures is just one possible response strategy (Oliver, 1991). There clearly is a spectrum within the tendency to decouple. Some schools may decide to completely decouple responsible management education (e.g., those delisted from PRME; PRME, 2014b), while others may decide to balance different institutional pressures by partially responding to all of them. Practically speaking, it is likely that schools decouple selected parts of their commitment, focusing on those aspects where changes to organizational practices can be achieved without much difficulty. When discussing the decoupled nature of responsible management education, we refer to those schools that (a) completely disregard substantive implementation or (b) look for quick wins (e.g., establishing electives) without truly integrating responsible management education into the organization.

What Conditions Decoupling of Responsible Management Education?

We propose that decoupling is likely to occur when (a) schools only have limited resources available, (b) there is resistance by powerful organizational actors, (c) schools face competing non-aligned institutional pressures, and when (d) organizational actors perceive ambiguous institutional demands. Two of these conditions (i.e., resource stringency and resistance) are internally focused and relate to features that characterize at least some business schools, while the other two conditions (i.e., competing and ambiguous institutional demands) are externally oriented and relate to the characteristics of the organizational field in which schools are embedded. Each of the four conditions frames a specific context in which decoupling is more likely to be found. This is not to say that business schools will always decouple under these conditions; much depends on how an organization frames responsible management education in its own context. The four conditions were extracted by contrasting the literature that discusses predictors for decoupling in general (e.g., Boxenbaum & Jonsson, 2008; Ruef & Scott, 1998; Westphal & Zajac, 1998, 2001) with existing empirical studies on how business schools approach responsible management education (e.g., Beggs & Dean, 2007; J. M. Evans et al., 2006; Perry & Win, 2013; Young & Nagpal, 2013).

The Dangers of Decoupling: Discordant Perceptions of Legitimacy

When business schools decouple responsible management education for longer periods of time, they are likely to create a situation in which organizational members stop taking relevant claims particularly seriously. This gives rise to discordant perceptions of legitimacy, that is, a mismatch between the legitimacy perceptions held by external audiences and those held by organizational insiders (MacLean & Behnam, 2010). While decoupling allows schools to project an image that is acceptable to external audiences (e.g., accreditation agencies), the legitimacy perceptions of organizational insiders are likely to differ. Insiders have access to more detailed information about whether and how responsible management education affects organizational practices, and hence they are better able to judge whether formal structures serve a ceremonial function or not. If responsible management education is decoupled, insiders will perceive it as an activity that lacks impact and, based on this, develop negative legitimacy perceptions of a school’s commitment to responsible management education.

The existence of such discordant perceptions can lead to a rather cynical treatment of responsible management education. Cynicism can be expressed in different ways, for instance, by secretly voicing statements of disbelief or by being suspicious toward the acts of management (Fleming & Spicer, 2003). Organizational members can experience cynicism as a challenge, especially if they hold strong personal values related to responsible management education. Prior research has shown that a sustained deep sense of cynicism can lead to a loss of occupational identity, because organizational roles are harder to enact (Corley & Gioia, 2004; MacLean & Behnam, 2010). As responsible management education is often promoted through “internal champions” (Solitander et al., 2012) who lead implementation efforts, the existence of discordant perceptions of legitimacy and the resulting cynicism can threaten the occupational identity of these individuals. Cording, Harrison, Hoskisson, and Jonsen (2014) even showed that a lack of organizational authenticity (i.e., a lack of consistency between espoused values and realized practices) can lower productivity as it undercuts an organization’s trustworthiness.

The Possibility of Recoupling: Responsible Management Education as Aspirational Talk

While decoupling can be perceived as dysfunctional, it is also possible to argue that the expression of high ambitions for responsible management education can stimulate organizational change and, in the long run, lead to improvements, even when such ambitions are not yet fully reflected in organizational practices. L. T. Christensen et al. (2013), who have outlined this argument with regard to firms’ corporate social responsibility (CSR) policies, suggested that the CSR communication of firms is often aspirational (i.e., not a perfect reflection of what they actually do). While this can lead to decoupling, it is also possible that the talk about such aspirations helps to articulate values, beliefs, identities, and frameworks for decision making that then become embedded in the organization. This is not to say that firms (or business schools) emerge as responsible actors simply by articulating their aspirations. But the expression of high ambitions can help to explore what kind of organization they want to become, inspiring people to enact relevant change processes. Talk about an organization’s commitments can have consequences for how the organization understands itself and its environment and may, under certain conditions (see below), lead to substantive changes to organizational practices. Such a perspective assumes that communication is action (i.e., language has performative effects and can, to a certain degree, shape reality; see Weick, 1979).

Viewing the commitment of schools to responsible management education as aspirational talk puts a different perspective on decoupling. A mismatch between formal structures and organizational practices may only reflect a temporary state of affairs (see also Hallett, 2010). As schools talk about these structures (e.g., their policies and change initiatives) and thereby express their ambitions, they articulate a desired future for the organization. Such articulations can initiate incremental change processes, slowly altering behavioral expectations and the school’s identity. These effects, in turn, can lead to modifications in some of the underlying conditions of decoupling, for instance, the importance ascribed to competing institutional demands may change. Of course, it would be naive to assume that such effects will automatically occur once a school starts talking about its ambitions. When a school engages in aspirational talk to deliberately mislead its stakeholders (e.g., if it lies about its true intentions), it is unlikely that the communication of aspirations initiates social change. In such cases, people are more likely to react with cynicism and negative legitimacy perceptions (see above).

Whether the aspirational talk of schools can unfold recoupling effects depends to some degree on the context in which aspirations are expressed (see also L. T. Christensen et al., 2013; Taylor & Cooren, 1997). For instance, aspirations stated during a public speech by the dean are more likely to create performative effects, as the public nature of such expressions and the social status of a dean create expectations by different stakeholder groups (e.g., students, alumni, faculty). Research shows that such public expressions of ambitions at least have the potential to initiate change processes, as (a) stakeholders are more likely to hold organizations accountable for their promises and (b) organizational members start to rethink their role in the organization and their underlying values and beliefs (Fiss & Zajac, 2006; Haack, Schoeneborn, & Wickert, 2012). Of course, it is difficult to predict specific outcomes and there certainly is no guarantee that publicly expressed aspirations about responsible management education become embedded in organizational practices. However, as some business schools’ talk on responsible management is public (e.g., expressed in publicly available PRME reports or also on their websites), a continuous mismatch between talk and practice may be hard to sustain in the long run. In the end, the existence of recoupling effects will depend on the strategic choices that actors in business schools are ready to make.

Decoupling and Recoupling: The Role of Strategic Choice

The existence of sustained decoupling (paired with discordant perceptions of legitimacy) and the possibility of recoupling (through aspirational talk) are mutually exclusive. As actors within business schools have a degree of strategic choice when charting the future of the organization (Wilson & McKiernan, 2011), the existence of decoupling/recoupling will depend, to a degree, on the choices they make (e.g., regarding new core courses and available financial and non-financial resources). Whether or not such choices are made depends on organizational characteristics as well as the characteristics of relevant actors. For instance, schools that have a large number of faculty who are critical in their ranks are more likely to resist decoupling and also may be quick to hold senior management accountable to extensive public commitments. We can also expect that schools with a strong religious affiliation will pay more attention to responsible management than other schools. Such schools are likely to frame institutional demands as being connected to a self-conscious tradition of theological reflection (J. M. Evans et al., 2006).

Also, the relative size of single departments within a business school can influence decisions. Larger departments typically provide necessary resources to the entire organization as well as other subunits and hence possess more power (Pfeffer & Salancik, 1978). But actors from different departments are likely to differ in their views on the importance of responsible management education, mostly because fields vary in their theoretical assumptions (J. M. Evans et al., 2006). Faculty in departments where rational and self-interested behavior forms the theoretical basis of scholarship (e.g., economics and finance) are less likely to view responsible management as an important part of a school’s educational framework. Thus, schools whose economics and finance departments are particularly powerful may be prepared to tolerate sustained decoupling behavior. By contrast, schools whose management and marketing departments are relatively large will be more inclined to favor responsible management education and thus push the organization toward recoupling. The bottom line of these considerations is that decoupling and recoupling are influenced by the strategic choices of organizational actors and that these choices depend, to a degree, on the characteristics and related agency of relevant actors.