1852: Configurations of Institutional Pluralism: MBA Candidates’ Assessments of Business Schools’ Responses to Plural Institutional Expectations (11754)

How do prospective students assess MBA programs according to their conformity with plural institutional expectations? We address this question using a Fuzzy Set Qualitative Comparative Analysis of MBA candidates’ GMAT test submissions to MBA programs to develop a configurational approach to institutional pluralism. Our configurational approach advances our understanding of business schools and institutional pluralism in three ways: First, our concept of configurational relationality transcends the dominant dichotomy of logics being universally conflicting or compatible and reflects how their relationality depends on the configuration in which they coexist. Accordingly, in the business school field, there is plurality in pluralism. Second, our concept of pluralistic assessors challenges the prevailing notion that MBA candidates represent a single normative order. We show how MBA candidates holistically assess organizational responses to multiple norms, and demonstrate how conformity with additional institutional expectations may be detrimental: Sometimes, less is more. Third, the concept of comparative evaluation of conformity shows the different ways in which business schools can accomplish social approval. Rather than the predominant view of business schools having to follow one path to gain approval from stakeholders, this provides evidence of the multitude of ways in which business schools can combine conforming, and not conforming with plural institutional expectations. These contributions are significant as configurations of multiple expectations and their holistic evaluation by pluralist assessors are of growing empirical in the business school field and beyond, i.e., in the context of ESG or the “triple bottom line”.

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