Globalization routes: The pursuit of conformity and distinctiveness by top business schools in India

Abstract

In this article, we examine how leading business schools in India orient themselves locally and globally while pursuing conformity and distinctiveness. We expect that these dynamics are particularly complex in ‘emerging’ economies such as India where liberalization and subsequent economic resurgence have led to more intense global exposure for business schools. By exploring changes in the way these responses are applied over time, we identify four globalization routes in the field. Furthermore, we show that these routes make up two broad zones of global–local interaction. In one, we point to the ability of global practices to serve both global and local compulsions, leading to the diffusion of global norms and practices. In the other, we point to how inherent paradoxes lead to possibilities for moderate and radical global distinctiveness.

Keywords

Business schools globalization higher education India management education

Introduction

Globalization of business education is currently evident in the international mix of students and faculty in prominent schools in many parts of the world. It is also signified through the spread of a popular model of business education with roots in North America, considered appropriate for the world (Lamb and Currie, 2012; Lowrie and Willmott, 2009). However, the importance of local factors in directing its spread has also been suggested (Antunes and Thomas, 2007; Engwall, 2000, 2004; Vaara and Faÿ, 2012), drawing attention to the selective or partial adoption of elements (Kodeih and Greenwood, 2014; Mazza et al., 2005). In this article, we examine these dynamics in the rapidly evolving context of an ‘emerging’ economy—India. Although the transition from a comparatively inward-looking, protected economy to a more liberalized one has led to an expansion in the field of business education with global influences in curriculum, teaching methods, accreditations, and so on, top Indian business schools have a largely domestic student and faculty body leading to different dynamics of being global in this context. Furthermore, in recent years, ‘India-related’ ideas such as ‘bottom of the pyramid’ (Prahalad, 2002), ‘the India way’ (Cappelli et al., 2010), and ‘frugal innovation’ (Radjou et al., 2012) have become prominent. However, these have been advanced from the West reflecting both a different set of concerns and priorities in Indian business schools and the challenges of ‘peripheral’ countries (Kipping et al., 2008) in globalizing local ideas. In this context, we propose that global–local orientations of organizational actions can be understood more thoroughly by considering the dual imperative for organizations to conform to institutional practices (DiMaggio and Powell, 1983) and to be distinctive through the adoption of special practices (Navis and Glynn, 2011), often resulting in competing outcomes. Imitation may act as a double-edged sword (Ashforth and Gibbs, 1990) sometimes leading to decreased performance outcomes (Barreto and Baden-Fuller, 2006), while maintaining distinctiveness from peers in a market category succeeds only in ways that are meaningful to stakeholders (Navis and Glynn, 2010).

Yet, extant literature speaks little of how business schools specifically pursue conformity and distinctiveness considering forces at both the global and local levels. We argue, therefore, that explorations of business school globalization should go beyond examining the extent to which they comply or fail to comply with globally institutionalized norms to understanding their responses as choices between conformity and distinctiveness at both global and local spheres. Thus, we formulate the specific question addressed in this study as: How do business schools in India pursue conformity and distinctiveness as they respond to global and local compulsions?

The many shades of globalization

While cross-border movement of ideas, cultural artifacts, and people had been evident in much of human history (Holton, 2000), globalization in its present form is inextricably linked to contemporary economic organization stressing free markets, free trade, and reduced welfare role of the state, leading to both homogenization and resistance. Barber (1992) suggests that tendencies toward a homogeneous ‘McWorld’ are countered by a revival of local ideologies through war and conflict. Thus, the idea of ‘glocalization’ (Robertson, 1995, 2012), described as the ‘interpenetration of the global and the local, resulting in unique outcomes’ (Ritzer, 2003: 193), has emerged. This is exemplified in the global diffusion of policies and associated reconstruction through norm localization (Acharya, 2004) involving a two-way process through a feedback loop from the local situation resulting in changes to the global, contributing to its wider acceptability (Prantl and Nakano, 2011). However, the mutual influence of the global and the local happens in contexts of unbalanced power equations. Ritzer (2003) coined the term ‘grobalization’ to signify the imperialistic imposition of nations, corporations, and so on in various locales. He suggests that both glocalization and grobalization need to be understood by contrasting ‘nothing’ (centrally controlled social forms without distinctive content) with ‘something’ (locally controlled forms retaining indigenous content to a large extent). Management knowledge sans local context is ‘nothing’ and often incompletely passed on without local roots (Alcadipani and Rosa, 2011; Srinivas, 2008, 2012). Examples include the diffusion of ‘human relations’ ideology to Turkish academia (Usdiken, 2004), the imposition of a pro-managerialist US model in Israel (Frenkel, 2008a), the export of corporate social responsibility (CSR) knowledge to Australia (Wailes and Michelson, 2008), and the transfer of management knowledge to China, reflecting the preoccupations of policy planners in the United Kingdom (Kerr, 2008). In these contexts, questions concerning the interests of those who advocate the global diffusion of ideas and practices become important as these processes often lead to the domination of the West over the rest of the world (Frenkel and Shenhav, 2003) by reinforcing colonially ingrained perspectives (Kostera, 1995) and maintaining control by the center over peripheries (Frenkel, 2008b).

Specifically addressing these questions in business education, Fougere and Moulettes (2012) show how non-Western cultures are routinely underplayed or portrayed as the ‘other’ that need to be ‘explained.’ This critique points out that corresponding assumptions related to Western societies are often passed off as ‘natural’ or ‘technically superior’ and hence needing no further elaboration or explication in business education. This approach to local knowledge is exemplified in the type of research done in business schools in Asia (Meyer, 2006; White, 2002) and more particularly in India (Anshuman and Chandrashekar, 2004; Banerjee, 2014; Panda and Gupta, 2014). There are persistent observations that management research in India generally follows the research agenda of the West and that it offers little by way of concepts that apply to the Indian context (Khatri et al., 2012; Panda and Gupta, 2014; Srinivas, 2012). Furthermore, student subjectivities in Indian business schools are also products of colonial impact perpetuated through the instrumental role of English and shaped by institutionalized neoliberal influences accentuated through structural constraints such as educational loans (Varman et al., 2011). Thus, actions of business schools in a fast globalizing context such as India are likely to be determined not only by global flows of ideas and practices but also by the realities of local historicity that leads sometimes to facilitation and at other times to resistance.

The pursuit of conformity and distinctiveness

The organizational imperative for conformity due to various coercive, normative, and mimetic pressures is well-recognized (DiMaggio and Powell, 1983) and involves both socially approved objectives (contents) and the means (processes) through which these are achieved (Philippe and Durand, 2011). On one hand, drivers for conformity might come from symbolic and cognitive aspects such as the need for organizations to appear legitimate before relevant stakeholders involving alignment with common norms, values, and so on (Deephouse and Carter, 2005; Suchman, 1995). Such alignment increases the chances of organizational survival (Ruef and Scott, 1998) and enables organizations to secure talent, finances, technology, and government support (Zimmerman and Zeitz, 2002). On the other hand, conformity is also driven by material motivations such as the need to acquire resources from the environment (Pfeffer and Salancik, 2003) and to drive up performance through the adoption of global standards (Benner and Veloso, 2008; Corbett, 2006). Such conformity may exist over and above the technical aspects of their operations even when practices are misaligned with specific task requirements (D’Aunno et al., 1991), pointing to the importance of agency in shaping conformity behavior (Oliver, 1991).

In contrast to the pursuit of conformity, organizations often try to be distinctive from peers in a market category to maintain competitive advantage (Deephouse, 1999; Miller et al., 2013). Distinctiveness is especially important when innovations are competence-destroying (Lounsbury and Glynn, 2001) and when market mechanisms become important for organizational sustenance (Chaney and Marshall, 2013). In ‘emerging’ situations, organizations might experience a shift of focus from conformity to distinctiveness. For example, Navis and Glynn (2010) found that with greater acceptance of a market category by external audiences, organizations shifted the emphasis of their identity claims, linguistic framing of communications, and affiliation endorsements from highlighting the market category to their distinctiveness within the category. Distinctiveness is most often related to high reputational claims (Lange et al., 2011; Rindova et al., 2005). While legitimacy is closely related to conformity, reputation presents a more complex picture (Deephouse and Carter, 2005). In the context of globalization, distinctiveness becomes particularly relevant as organizations may highlight the uniqueness of local practices emphasizing rootedness in the locale (Voronov et al., 2013) for achieving comparative advantages.

Imperatives for conformity and distinctiveness are evident in the field of higher education as well. There is a general preference for conformity concerning key issues such as conditions of faculty employment (Park et al., 2011) and performance measures (Dey et al., 1997). In contrast, distinctiveness is pursued through media rankings with significant impact on future peer assessments and the ability to attract students independent of changes in organizational quality, performance, or prior peer assessments (Bastedo and Bowman, 2010; Bowman and Bastedo, 2009). Rankings, faculty publications, and faculty doctoral affiliations are associated with higher reputation, resulting in higher premiums paid by recruiters for graduates (Boyd et al., 2010; Rindova et al., 2005). However, distinctiveness needs to be pursued in a manner that is understood and accepted by key stakeholders (Navis and Glynn, 2010). When a university is perceived as ‘too strange,’ it can lose legitimacy leading to failure (Czarniawska and Wolff, 1998). Moreover, even when endowed with a mission of distinctiveness, it might gradually adjust to demands for conformity in governance, management, or disciplinary systems (Stensaker and Norgärd, 2001). Thus, there is a need for organizations to resolve the ‘dilemma of sameness and difference’ (Navis and Glynn, 2010: 441) and maintain a strategic balance (Deephouse, 1999). An examination of how business schools pursue conformity and distinctiveness in a dynamic field can be a useful way of understanding this dilemma better.

An analytic framework for business school responses

The two preceding sections illustrated two dimensions along which responses of business schools to globalization can be explored. The first dimension captures global and local orientations, while the second dimension focuses on conformity or distinctiveness. Combining these two dimensions, we approach the field aiming to understand their interactions in the micro-processes of globalization in a nuanced manner. First, it is evident from the above that globalization forces can trigger conformity in both symbolic and material ways. In the case of business schools, globalization leads to conformity on several aspects of research, pedagogy, and administration (Thune and Welle-Strand, 2005; Wilson and McKiernan, 2011) often driven by demands of global accreditations (Currie and Knights, 2003). Resultantly, core aspects of the global business education template are retained even in its diffusion across borders as exemplified in the Chinese context (Lamb and Currie, 2012). Similarly, Mazza et al. (2005) observed uniformity in aspects such as admission procedures and external communication of business schools in Europe. Notably, conformity is pursued through accreditations even when it may act as an impediment to appropriate adaption to meet environmental complexity and turbulence in a particular locale (Julian and Ofori-Dankwa, 2006).

In contrast to the imperatives for conformity inherent in the process of globalization, studies also suggest that business schools pursue distinctiveness in many ways. In reviewing the evolution of management schools in Scandinavian countries, Engwall (2000) noted evidence of role models drawn initially from Germany, and more recently from the United States, but countered by a simultaneous stress on unique local features in curricula that reflected national institutional characteristics. Kumar and Usunier’s (2001) study of the French Grande Ecoles indicated a strong preference to internationalize within a national framework, by hiring foreign faculty and foreign language teaching, rather than changing content or pedagogy. Comparing MBA programs and business schools in the United States and Europe, Antunes and Thomas (2007) noted attempts at distinctiveness by European business schools such as adopting different pedagogic models, forging closer linkages with corporations, emphasizing public sector management, and developing innovative capabilities. Wedlin (2011) traced the efforts of European business schools to be distinct from their American counterparts by promoting the European accreditation program (EFMD Quality Improvement System (EQUIS)) and to modify the criteria of the Financial Times rankings to better reflect their strengths. Kodeih and Greenwood’s (2014) study in France indicated that two of the elite schools tended to adhere more closely with the French Grande Ecole system, translating global demands and crafting internationalization strategies in ways unique to the context.

In summary, we note that to understand the responses of business schools to globalization, it is useful to go beyond the framing of the issue simply as the selective adoption of certain aspects of a common global model to achieve conformity. We note that organizations with a global orientation may not only pursue conformity but also seek distinctiveness by the promise of special, unique experiences (Ritzer, 2003). On the other hand, local orientation does not necessarily have to be associated with distinctiveness, as governments and communities influence organizations through regulation and socio-normative processes, seeking local conformity to organizational practices (Marquis and Battilana, 2009). Therefore, in a globalized environment, the question of conformity and distinctiveness become complex as organizations need to justify their actions in line with global as well as local expectations. We thus approach global and local orientations recognizing that they can be associated with both conformity and distinctiveness. Our framework responds to the need to examine the interaction of the global and the local through the agency of organizations strategically crafting responses to pursue conformity or distinctiveness, aimed at securing a variety of advantages ranging from status, reputation, legitimacy, critical resources, and competitive advantage. This framework provides us with an expectation of four categories of organizational responses: local conformity, local distinctiveness, global conformity, and global distinctiveness.

Methodology

Research context

Although business education in some form had existed in India from the pre-independence period (before 1947), the establishment of Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) by the government of India is considered a major turning point. With financial assistance from the Ford Foundation, the first IIMs were set up during the early 1960s at Kolkata (formerly Calcutta) in collaboration with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and at Ahmedabad in collaboration with Harvard Business School (Srinivas, 2008), and as of February 2016, there were 19 public schools (IIMs) (Government of India, 2016). There has also been a phenomenal increase in the number of private and university-affiliated business schools in the last two decades, and in early 2016, the number was 3817 as per the regulator—All India Council of Technical Education (AICTE, 2016). However, grave concerns have been raised about the quality standards of vast majority of them (Banerjee, 2014). Despite this, highly ranked schools (both public and private) are known for their quality and are popular with the recruiters. The average salary figures feature predominantly in the national press, enhancing the reputation of top schools and further increasing their desirability for potential students. Admission processes of top schools are highly selective. A Common Admission Test (CAT) is the primary entry barrier for the IIMs and many other schools. The intense competition for admission to top schools is illustrated by the fact that 218,664 candidates registered for CAT in 2015 (Nanda, 2015).

Data collection

We approached the field first by selecting 10 schools that had high reputation as expressed consistently through national rankings and general recognition by the public (Table 1). As top schools, we expected them to be strongly influenced by global dynamics.

Table 1.

Indian business schools examined in this study.

Business school	Year of establishment	Private/public	International accreditations (as of June 2016)
XLRI Xavier School of Management Jamshedpur	1949	Private	AMBA
Indian Institute of Management Calcutta	1961	Public	AACSB, EQUIS AMBA
Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad	1961	Public	EQUIS
Indian Institute of Management Bangalore	1973	Public	EQUIS
Management Development Institute Gurgaon	1973	Private	AMBA
SP Jain Institute of Management and Research Mumbai	1981	Private	AMBA
Indian Institute of Management Lucknow	1984	Public	AMBA
Indian School of Business, Hyderabad/Mohali	1996	Private	AACSB
Indian Institute of Management Kozhikode	1996	Public	AMBA
Indian Institute of Management Indore	1996	Public

EQUIS: EFMD Quality Improvement System; AMBA: Association of MBAs; AACSB: Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business.

We proceeded in three phases. First, we examined websites of the above schools as the starting point of data collection as they provide information on both existing realities and ‘aspirational discourses and images’ (Elliott and Robinson, 2011: 159) and make successful results such as accreditations visible, signifying the general directions in which the efforts and results are coalescing. In the second phase, we tried to gain deeper understanding of the key issues through interviews with faculty members from the selected schools. We approached potential participants through personal contacts and sought their participation. We extended participation beyond personal networks by approaching participants directly during a prominent national conference. In this stage, we managed to obtain the participation of 18 people who had held various types of administrative responsibilities. In the third phase, we selected three leading institutes for closer examination. One of these was an older public school and the second was a comparatively younger one established after 1990. Finally, we selected a reputed private business school particularly exposed to global factors as judged from the interviews during the first stage. We visited these schools and interviewed five members of the faculty each, taking care to include those with significant administrative responsibilities. All 33 interviews lasted between 45 and 90 minutes.

Data analysis

Initially, we compared the information available on the websites of schools to identify visible responses aimed at conformity and distinctiveness. We noted these efforts (such as accreditation) and classified them as broadly aimed at one or the other. With this background information, we approached the interview data and matched interviewees with the information collected from their websites and read them together to get a sense of the organizations’ responses in a comprehensive way leading to the eventual identification of first-order themes from the data. We then reflected individually on how these themes could be aggregated and shared our ideas to consolidate them and arrive at the second-order themes. Once these were finalized, we took up each second-order theme and compared it with our analytical framework to see how each of them related to the four categories (local conformity, local distinctiveness, global conformity, and global distinctiveness). We found that many of the second-order themes were not fixed on one of these exclusively and moved between categories in interesting ways. Through further reflection and discussion, we captured the direction of these movements to arrive at the ‘globalization routes’ explained in the findings. Further details regarding data collection and analysis are available on request.

Researchers’ impact

We have taught in a few of the prominent schools in our list and have been involved in various administrative efforts that were relevant for the topic of this study such as program coordination, curriculum review, and international partnerships. This familiarity with the field has positively affected this work in a number of ways. This has ensured that we had adequate knowledge about the current state of the field including the key players and thus could decide what was relevant for this study in terms of the inevitable choices that need to be made in data collection and analysis. Moreover, experience of these dynamics unfolding in their own respective schools was helpful to understand the undercurrents and hidden issues that may not have been easily noticed. Finally, it enabled us to enhance the authenticity of responses during the interviews as most participants treated us as insiders and were quite candid in sharing their observations. However, we also acknowledge that this familiarity and our own professional experience of the field might have influenced our analysis in certain undesirable ways.

Multiplicity of responses

Our findings indicated multiple responses oriented to the four categories identified by the framework, that is, local conformity, global conformity, local distinctiveness, and global distinctiveness. We also found that a single school could simultaneously pursue multiple directions in terms of both global–local orientations and conformity–distinctiveness strategies. For example, a school might attempt to enhance its local conformity and global conformity simultaneously. We provide illustrative examples for these below.

First, local conformity was illustrated by efforts at regulatory compliance. For the public schools, this amounted to complying with the restrictions imposed by the Ministry of Human Resource Development, such as faculty salaries or regulatory quotas in student intake as part of the national affirmative action policies. For private schools, regulatory provisions were focused on preventing undesirable practices as pointed out by one of the participants. ‘The focus of (the regulator) is on fraud. They just make it difficult for an honest institution to function well.’ However, it was also possible to ‘opt out’ of the direct control of the local regulator in some way by highlighting a strong global orientation as illustrated by Indian School of Business (ISB) declaring the following on their website:

The ISB neither offers a diploma nor a degree. It is a certificate programme for students with experience. Therefore, we have not sought recognition for our Post Graduate Programme in Management from either the AICTE or the UGC. However, ISB’s PGP is accredited by the AACSB (Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business). (ISB, 2016)

Second, global conformity was exemplified by increased recruitment of faculty who are trained through doctoral programs in the West and who bring with them Western practices associated with teaching and research. However, such practices were also resented. ‘Our students want people who know the field, not merely someone who comes back with a foreign stamp of quality.’ These differences were also evident in the third category of local distinctiveness which was attempted through responses including the idea of ‘nation-building.’ These included efforts focusing on public administration, developmental studies, locally relevant innovations, rural management, agricultural development, infrastructure development, and so on, described by comments such as ‘we are Indian Institutes of Management not Indian institutes of Business’ or ‘we are like a doughnut; our center is hollow.’ Finally, the picture was rather ambiguous with regard to clearly focused responses specifically directed to serve the purpose of global distinctiveness. While there was agreement that global distinctiveness is worthy of pursuit, its exact nature seemed unclear. While we could not identify efforts that could be categorized as focusing purely on this, many responses were approaching this area, and we elaborate this in later sections. At this stage, it is important to note that the multiplicity of responses and associated differences point to internal contestations as reflected in the following pair of quotes from a single school concerning accreditation efforts:

The accreditation effort was good to some degree. It was essentially an OD (Organization Development) intervention. It helped us to record things that we already did and to be more systematic. (A)

I don’t like this thing of asking them to tell us if we are good enough. It is lack of confidence in who we are and what we do. (B)

Since most of the participants in this study were decision makers characterized by high levels of current or recent administrative responsibilities, we suggest that these responses of approval and disapproval indicate the inherent differences that lead to the existence of the multiple efforts pursued to serve seemingly incompatible objectives. As a result, responses indicated above are not implemented in a straightforward manner driven by total consensus but involve considerable internal contestations and negotiations.

Four routes to globalization

Apart from the differences and contestations indicated above, we also found that a single response might simultaneously serve multiple purposes transforming their scope over time. In our analysis, these changes revealed four predominant routes of global–local interaction. We describe the identified routes below and present them in Figure 1 at the end of this section.

Figure 1.

Responses of business schools indicating globalization routes.

Global by drift

This involves a movement from local distinctiveness to global conformity and is illustrated by the pursuit of global accreditations. For example, local distinctiveness was achieved in a short time by ISB which was the first in India to obtain AACSB accreditation and be featured in the Financial Times rankings. However, as accreditations spread widely, schools realize that the objective of local distinctiveness is served only in a limited way. The effort then drifts toward global conformity, and justifications are made along these lines:

Participant:

Our aim was to show that we have global standards.

Researcher:

Show whom? The Indian market or the global bodies?

Participant:

To both. Initially it was somehow to show that we are special in India. But we found accreditations were useful in broader ways. It is a sign that we are there. Also, more visibility … for partnerships for example.

Global by infiltration

Here, the global infiltrates the local and changes laws, conventions, and norms as efforts that were initially oriented to the global moves to become the local norm. It becomes mandatory to meet global standards to obtain local legitimacy as local norms increasingly reflect global practices. A prominent example relates to program standardization ensured by uniform student body and course content. Quest for such uniformity was initially driven by imperatives of global conformity through the active involvement of American business schools in the establishment of pioneer institutions. However, the model has become the local standard, and this has resulted in a largely homogeneous student body with the predominance of engineers with quantitative skills. Standardized program design in flagship full-time programs usually consists of core courses in the first year, electives in the second year, and a 2-month internship in between. The more recent 1-year programs were also started in alignment with 1-year MBA programs in the West. The Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT) used for this is accepted even by public schools, partly sabotaging their own CAT. Although there were significant legitimacy issues within the Indian university system with post-graduate programs of 1-year duration, these are currently accepted locally as legitimate alternatives to the 2-year programs.

Global by replication

This route shows how global concepts, systems, and structures are replicated at the local level initially serving global conformity but are later used to pursue distinctiveness in an incremental way within an overall global framework. One example involves how efforts at global partnerships are moving in the direction of exclusivity. Initially started as indiscriminate efforts aimed at student exchange (seeking conformity), top institutes now seek more exclusive partnerships with broader scope including the delivery of joint programs or research alliances (seeking distinctiveness at the global level). The response of research alignment is also a case in point. Traditionally, in Indian business schools, acceptable research was defined in a rather broad way. One participant observed that ‘A lot of our research has been driven by requests that have come from the government … That kind of research unfortunately will not get published in AMJ … But it is very relevant research.’ However, this is changing as top institutions are narrowing the scope of what they define as acceptable research focusing mainly on publications in specific international journals and thus aiming for global conformity:

I can clearly see that it [focus on publication output in highly rated global journals] is having an impact on the culture of the institute … It’s a complete paradigm shift at this point of time and we will have to wait and see what happens … This publication focus is definitely going to change the questions that we will ask.

With a decline in the prestige attached to writing in the press or local academic or practitioner journals, schools seek some degree of distinctiveness as highly ranked journals are increasingly being targeted, aiming at global reputation in a more exclusive way than mere conformity. This direction is also exemplified by support for mirror structures such as ‘The Indian Academy of Management’ (INDAM). Modeled after the well-known American entity, its founding was led mostly by academics of Indian origin in Western schools at the side-lines of Academy of Management meetings in the United States (INDAM, 2016). Although deeply rooted in global structures, it helps make the local more visible at the global level by leveraging structures that enable global ties and creating opportunities for incremental approach to global distinctiveness. These efforts represent the pursuit of the project of global distinctiveness in a partial and limited way, and we label this vision as ‘moderate global distinctiveness.’

Global by expansion

Here, some elements of local distinctiveness progressively become salient at the global level. Global orientation is achieved by invoking the possibility of the local influencing the global, changing it in certain ways. This was illustrated by efforts we label as ‘leveraging Indianness.’ This was driven by the thesis that business education as it exists currently is alien to India and that local distinctiveness can be achieved by making it more ‘Indian’ in various ways. First, this was achieved through the use of ideas from Indian philosophy in research and course content. For example, IIM Calcutta has a well-known center focused on the application of Indian thought in business and management. Second, current Indian realities such as poverty, rural backwardness, and agrarian ethos are incorporated into student experiences through rural exposure for a largely urban middle-class student body. Alongside, topics such as ‘rural marketing’ are advanced in faculty research with an aim to achieve distinctiveness globally. ‘Real globalization is two-way. … When I am global I could also take what is special about my context out into the world for what it is.’ Reflecting this changed ambition from local to global distinctiveness, the prominent national conference in 2014 where we conducted many of our interviews was themed ‘Globalizing Indian Thought.’

From paradox to radical distinctiveness

Our results showed that the efforts of global by replication and global by expansion were most often characterized by the vision of ‘moderate distinctiveness.’ Moreover, these efforts involved the experience of paradox. Adopting a global orientation involved conformity and alignment with global institutions and systems, while the pursuit of distinctiveness demanded non-conformity. Illustrating this, a participant stated, ‘I see a big problem here. People say, let us be special, but special like them. But hey, if you are like them, you are not special.’ Thus, the project of ‘playing their game’ was viewed as self-defeating, without leading to true distinctiveness, and participants resisted the mindless adoption of global systems and practices, indicating the necessity for reflective academic practice. ‘The issue is, which master are we serving and why? I don’t think people are willing to sit back and answer that question honestly.’ When pointed to the need for global visibility, one participant gave the following example illustrating an alternative approach to local relevance:

Prof … from early 1990s … has been searching, studying sustainable technology, rural innovation, grassroots inventions … Gandhian innovation, whatever you want to call it. But … ‘jugaad’ (frugal innovation) has now become the next fad from the West … It was never our priority to publish it ‘up there’ (emphasis). I don’t think we need to do it now. We can do very good work in other ways.

The possibility of a more radical approach involving efforts toward the establishment of distinct systems and practices targeting a different global audience was visualized. According to this perspective, global distinctiveness could only be achieved by challenging existing legitimation systems and creating others that are more relevant for non-Western settings characterized by a different set of problems such as poverty, corruption, and multinational exploitation:

If you go to these international conferences, everybody is talking about ‘their’ problems—withdrawal of the state, recession. Here we have different problems … Some of us do study them. Sadly, even when we speak about our problems, it has to be in their language and using their vocabulary.

Pointing to a vision which was more equitable and multipolar, a participant revealed preference for attending academic conferences in South America or other parts of Asia rather than well-known conferences in the United States or Europe. These aspirational efforts pursue a direction we label as ‘radical global distinctiveness,’ holding the promise of a more unbiased and authentic engagement with global systems that could facilitate multipolar interconnectedness rather than one-way flows from the central West to others at the periphery.

Two zones of global–local interactions

Based on the above findings and the dynamics of globalization presented earlier, it is possible to identify two distinct zones where the four routes to globalization operate. The first zone is represented by the two routes: global by drift and global by infiltration. The dynamics of this zone mirrors the proposition of grobalization (Ritzer, 2003), where global forces are able to impose themselves on the local driven by growth imperatives. In our case, the local players were often aware of these external drivers and described the Indian business school sector as an attractive market for global accreditation bodies. However, schools were driven by imperatives for distinctiveness and conformity, facilitating the infiltration of global norms at the local level. Thus, in this first zone, our results illustrate how the spread of the global is facilitated by the receptivity of the local. The second zone reveals forces in the opposite direction illustrating the potential of the local to establish itself in the global sphere and consists of two routes: global by expansion and global by replication. Local knowledge and approaches are expanded in scope to be visible at the global level. At the same time, support structures are established initially through a process of replication, mirroring global structures and practices. These serve to enhance the visibility of the local at the global level, albeit through the lenses adopted from the global. However, in these situations, only a limited degree of distinctiveness is achieved within the constraints of a broad global framework that is formulated and managed from elsewhere. Thus, efforts in this zone do not go beyond the symbolic value of acknowledging the aspirations of the local through the project of ‘moderate global distinctiveness.’ This could be related to what Ritzer (2003) calls the ‘glocalization of nothing.’ It involves taking local entities out their context, standardizing them, re-producing them, and then recirculating them bereft of the local richness. While this ensures attention from a global audience, the watered-down version of the local is then accepted as authentic.

Indian business schools have often been urged to advance by imitating the best schools in the West (Anshuman and Chandrashekar, 2004), utilizing what Wilk (1995) labels as ‘structures of common difference,’ signifying similar underlying structures leading to diversity in a similar way. However, the alternate possibility of radical global distinctiveness is in line with Ritzer’s (2003) conceptualization of ‘grobalization of something’ where local ideas achieve global currency with its richness. This goes beyond a focus on attaining competitive advantage by ‘outlocalizing’ global organizations (Ger, 1999) and is an attempt that seeks to address the lack of plurality represented by hegemonic global systems. This is inherently challenging because of the complexity of elements, some of which might appeal to certain groups while being contrary to the sensibilities of others. However, it is not certain how local alternatives might emerge out of developing nations to influence the global field and this, as one of our reviewers pointed out, is a subject of detailed investigation in itself. In particular, the role of power in the diffusion of management ideas (Frenkel, 2008a; Frenkel and Shenhav, 2003) needs to be understood better in the context of business schools to enable voices from the periphery to be heard (Kipping et al., 2008) overcoming epistemological hegemonies in existing knowledge systems (Alcadipani and Rosa, 2011; Ibarra-Colado, 2006). This is also in alignment with the idea of ‘globalization from below’ (Kellner, 2002: 302) which has the potential for a more balanced diffusion of knowledge in contrast to wide absorption of Western business knowledge and associated values (Neal and Finlay, 2008). We admit that concrete alternatives in this area are not yet visible in terms of clearly targeted responses by business schools. However, we report the possibility of a nascent stage of radical distinctiveness in line with calls for advancing prescient scholarship that engages in ‘projective futurism’ (Corley and Gioia, 2011: 25) which could influence directions in which future discussions are articulated. We align with calls in Management Learning for disruptive work to change institutionalized hegemony of certain models of business education (Toubiana, 2012). However, ‘bringing about fundamental change in the global institution of management education is very difficult and usually only happens during special times of crisis’ (Vaara and Faÿ, 2012: 1043). Our contention is that we are already experiencing such a crisis signified by economic turmoil, corporate scandals, and adverse impacts of business activities in many parts of globe, the causes of which have been attributed to institutional failures at multiple levels including current practices and priorities of business schools (Adler, 2002; Currie et al., 2010; Lancione and Clegg, 2015; Podolny, 2009). As business schools in India respond in ways that are indicated above, their own constructions of what it means to be global affect their practices. Rather than being diverse in a similar way (Wilk, 1995), the potential vision of knowledge structures as a network of loosely connected elements that recognize local rootedness and global openness encourages a more authentic interaction of the global and the local.

Conclusion

This article contributes to the literature on how business schools outside US and Europe respond to globalization. The contours of globalization routes signified by responses to specific pressures are likely to become more complex in contexts such as India. This complexity is likely to be of great interest to researchers keen on understanding global–local dynamics in this area in a more nuanced manner. We have also demonstrated the value in examining conformity and distinctiveness at both global and local levels to understand the phenomenon of business school globalization. As organizations exhibit considerable variation in their responses in this sphere, a single focus (often on global conformity) is not sufficient for studying this. Here, our approach combining both conformity and distinctiveness has the potential to yield deeper insights. Moreover, as several emerging economies rise to global prominence, flows of ideas and practices are likely to take multiple directions. Drawing from other sectors, it is possible to imagine that local artifacts and ideas from across the world can attain global currency. Examples in the Indian context include accounts of globalization of Indian cinema (O’Neill, 2013), global recognition for modern Indian art (Khaire and Wadhwani, 2010), or construction of the idea of worth to gain wider comprehension and acceptance in the Indian high-end fashion industry (Khaire, 2014). Our study points to similar possibilities in the sector of business education in India.

In conclusion, we point to further directions for future research that derive directly from the limitations of our study. First, the study was limited to 10 top business schools in India. The quality of business schools falls dramatically beyond the top tier schools in the country, and we assumed that top business schools were more likely to be proactive in their responses. However, as pointed out by one of our reviewers, they may also be ‘punching above their weight in terms of global partners,’ leading to pressures for global conformity. We are likely to observe qualitatively different nature of global influences in lower tier business schools, and we see interesting possibilities of further research involving them. Second, we did not examine in detail, the internal conditions within schools that might be linked to the responses. We did observe, however, that some decisions were contested, and it would be interesting to further investigate the internal dynamics of business schools more thoroughly. Third, we acknowledge that other explanations might exist for the nature of responses. For example, Kodeih and Greenwood (2014) indicated that the identity of the school might have a role to play in this regard, and this would be another important angle to probe further. Finally, there are limitations associated specifically with the methodology and data sources. For example, we focused only on faculty and did not interview other stakeholders. It would be interesting to probe how students, alumni, or recruiters might influence these responses.

Footnotes

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

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