Value, What Value? University Business Model in Pursuit of Advanced Internationalization

Through business model theoretical lenses, we explore in this paper issues and challenges universities face in their pursuit of advanced internationalization entries into foreign markets. The context of this paper is defined by universities from developed countries entering developing or emerging countries via foreign direct investment entry modes, such as joint ventures, acquisitions, green field or brown field investments.

This is a theoretical paper. We draw on a number of sources of data to conceptualise issues and challenges universities face in their pursuit of advanced internationalization entries into foreign markets. First, we build on university autonomy, international business and business model theories to conceptualise the phenomenon of interest. Second, we analyse publicly available data, anecdotal evidence where the phenomenon we study is explicitly observable.

The above theoretical as well as empirical insights led us to conjecture that advanced internationalization of universities is unethical. We see our conjecture as a warning for those universities that wish to pursue advance internationalisation business model into developing countries. As current noise from the field suggests, neither our conjecture nor the above insights will however refrain universities from developed countries to continue ‘jumping and riding the bandwagon’ of advanced internationalization into the emerging, developing countries. In this case, our theoretical and empirical insights could offer number pointers to consider before deciding to pursue advanced internationalisation as well as to aid decision makers in designing a respective advanced internationalisation business model.