An Organizational Performance Study Of AACSB International Member Business Schools

Abstract

Organizations are thought to adopt or evolve to an organizational strategy that will improve organizational effectiveness. Familiar strategies in the business world include a production strategy, low cost strategy, and market orientation strategy. In the world of higher education however organizational strategies may take a different form such as a research strategy, student centered strategy, or a national/international focus. This manuscript reports the results of a national survey examining the levels of reported customer and market orientation toward students and explores their impact on organizational performance. The organizations researched are AACSB-International member business schools. The respondents to the survey are academic vice-presidents of colleges and universities holding membership in AACSB, the premier business school accreditation organization. The academic vice-presidents were chosen as they are thought to hold the management position that can primarily affect the organizational strategy of the academic organizations under their purview. This includes, but is not limited to AACSB member business schools. We use a reworded Narver and Slater (1990) “market orientation” scale and the Jaworski and Kohli’s (1993) “overall performance” scale for use in the current research. 116 vice-presidents whose schools are members of AACSB responded to the survey. The manuscript details the data collection and analysis processes, the statistical findings, along with implications and a call for additional subject matter research.