How (Not) to Cope with a Deficit

(2 July 2025) Many attempts to restructure failing higher education institutions are ill-fated from the start. Many attempts to restructure failing higher education institutions fail to consider their unique organizational structure and address financial shortfalls with ineffective cost-cutting measures, which ultimately lead to the destruction of valuable assets. Together with Wolfram Berger, I am proposing an alternative viewpoint on how to make institutional turn-around and renewal a success. 

The article has been published in University World News and can be accessed here.

Assessing Internationalization

(28 September 2023) XOLAS has developed a quantitative assessment grid for business schools to evaluate, manage and track their internationalization. We presented the framework during a special session at this year's EAIE conference in Rotterdam, NL. Reach out to me if interested in learning more about the tool.

The conference session was titled "Living in Unprecedented Times: (Re)defining Internationalization Strategies to Meet Institutional Goals". My co-presenters were Jamie Snow, TUM School of Management, and Carolyn Magnani, HEC Lausanne.

Business School 5.0

(16 January 2023) Martin Meyer and I continue our journey of exploring how ecosystems in combination with neuroplasticity suggest a new approach how business schools are to be set up, led and managed, and organized. This new article has appeared in Global Focus - The EFMD Magazine in the issue 1/2023. You can access the full article here. Thanks so much to Matthew Wood, the editor, for all his support and encouragement. 

This article builds on earlier work by Martin and myself titled "The Continuously Rewired Business School" which has been published in AACSB Insights in June 2022 (see also reference below). You can access that article here.

Business schools need to transform themselves. They should adopt a more flexible, possibly a multi-modal business model; should become more agile, more interdisciplinary; better aligned with the principles of a liberal education; more technology-embracing; more conscious of their impact and so forth. All true, but too limiting to chart the trajectory ahead. In this article, we focus on two capabilities that in our view will have game-changing importance for the future of business schools, they need to engage in continuous rewiring and become more boundary-spanning. 

Accreditations & Rankings in 2030: Reducing Biases, Errors and Workload through Automated Data Processes

(12 October 2022) Together with H. van der Heijden and W. Mijnhardt, I take a closer look at how innovation in data management will impact the way accreditation and rankings will be administered in the future. We use 2030 as the reference year which coincides with the target year for achieving the UN SDGs. 

This article, published in MBA International Review (Nr. 81/2022), tries to envision an alternative reality of 2030 for accreditation and rankings where the emerging technological landscape realizes its full impact on the way reputation and quality is being appraised. We ask, can we move from accreditation as a periodic event to assessment as a more systematic and continuous process, using the power of technology? 

You can access the article here. Many thanks to Rolando Vargas Serrano, the editor, for his support and advice.

Changing Nature of Business School Accreditation

(August 2022) Very proud to see this joint publication with Koen Vandenbempt in print. It is a provocative piece that challenges conventional views on the role of business school accreditation. It has been published in M. R. Fellenz, S. Hoidn, M. Brady (editors): The Future of Management Education, Abingdon: Routledge, 2022.

We use the changing object of accreditation as a starting point of our analysis. Accreditation agencies delineate the “school” as the institutional object for quality assurance and assessment (either in its own right or as a quality assurance umbrella for degree and non-degree programs). We posit that the provision of management education is undergoing a process of de-institutionalization and will be- come predominantly network-based or possibly even ecosystem-based, modular, learner-centered and produced through “unbundled faculty systems” of different types of education professionals. As a consequence, accreditation needs to change as well - in terms of role, content and process. This chapter explains how to move forward.