Abstract
Drawing on neo-institutional theories, this study explores how universities engage in internationalization as organizational actors embedded in national and global contexts. Using a mixed-method approach and based on a sample of 500 universities across 89 countries, we analyse how a country’s global competitiveness and liberal tendencies shape the ways its universities organize structures and activities around internationalization, particularly amid today’s intensified global competition among countries and universities and the resurgence of illiberalism. Our quantitative analyses show that national competitiveness is positively associated with internationalization activities, whereas national liberalism is positively associated with internationalization structures. Additionally, our qualitative analyses reveal variations in how universities motivate and emphasize different aspects of internationalization across the continuum of national competitiveness and liberalism. Together, our findings extend neo-institutionalist research by highlighting distinct aspects of organizational actorhood and the heterogeneity demonstrated across contexts.
Keywords
Introduction
Universities in the twenty-first century are increasingly imagined as situated in not only national but also global fields of higher education (Marginson, 2006; Ramirez, 2020). They are interconnected through international organizations, university associations and quality agencies that emphasize international mobility, open borders and global contribution, while drawing upon global templates of excellence (Jungblut et al., 2023; Song, 2025). Within this context, universities are also increasingly regarded as a strategic driver of global competitiveness, i.e. the capacity of countries to enhance productivity, innovation and long-term prosperity in a global economy. This growing recognition, coupled with the liberal ethos of international cooperation and solidarity, has placed universities under substantial pressure to internationalize (Altbach & Knight, 2007; Zapp & Ramirez, 2019). Accordingly, internationalization has been increasingly framed by professional and academic literature as a necessary imperative for preparing graduates for a knowledge economy and global society (Knight, 2004).
Some have critiqued internationalization as marketizing higher education and perpetuating inequalities (Chu, 2021), with elite Western universities reaping disproportionate benefits as major destinations for fee-paying international students (Altbach & Knight, 2007). Nonetheless, internationalization has persisted as a key strategy for expanding the mission of universities beyond teaching and research toward socioeconomic development and global competition (Hudzik, 2011). The prevalence of international offices across universities worldwide (Lee & Ramirez, 2023) indeed reflects both heightened attention to higher education competitiveness and governmental efforts to foster ‘world-class’ universities (Cantwell & Taylor, 2013; Deem et al., 2008).
Previous studies highlight how rationales for internationalization diverge across context. For example, Cattaneo et al. (2016) find that ranked universities in Italy tend to internationalize to enhance reputation, while unranked institutions do so to establish local legitimacy. Chan and Dimmock (2008) find that a UK university frames internationalization around student recruitment and global positioning, while a Hong Kong university links it to cultivating students’ global perspective. Large-scale analyses further reveal that rationales vary significantly by universities’ organizational characteristics, such as research versus teaching orientation (Seeber et al., 2016). Extending to a global scope, Buckner (2019, 2022) demonstrates that both internal traits (e.g. ranking, research intensity, public/private sector) and external factors (e.g. geographic region and the country’s integration into the global knowledge economy) shape universities’ perceived benefits and importance of internationalization.
Despite these insights, a significant gap remains in our understanding of how national and global contexts shape the ways universities, as organizational actors, organize around internationalization, particularly from cross-national, comparative perspectives. This is an important gap to address because universities, like other organizations, are embedded in sociopolitical environments that convey different competitive and institutional pressures, which in turn influences their organizational response and actorhood (Marginson, 2006; Seeber et al., 2016). From this perspective, internationalization provides a useful case of how global models are translated into organizational practice in similar yet diverse ways, shaped by varying pressures and aspirations. Examining how universities enact their actorhood around these efforts underscores why organizing matters in higher education today in the face of current challenges.
To this end, we ask, how do country contexts influence the ways universities organize around internationalization, as reflected in the structures they establish and the activities they undertake? In answering this question, we consider today’s intensified global competition among universities (Deem et al., 2008) and the worldwide resurgence of illiberalism, including the revitalization of nationalism (Guillén, 2018; Mearsheimer, 2019), and examine how these dynamics enable or constrain universities’ organizational actorhood. More specifically, we posit that universities located in more competitive and liberal countries will enact more expansive structures and activities devoted to internationalization.
We focus on both structures (i.e. formal arrangements that give organizational presence) and activities (i.e. initiatives through which those commitments are implemented) because they are not only tangible expressions of actorhood but also sites where global institutional models are diffused, adapted or resisted (Meyer et al., 1997; Sahlin & Wedlin, 2008). Importantly, the two may not always align. Internationalization can be symbolic, signaling legitimacy, status or reputation without generating substantive change, and formal structures may be only loosely coupled with the activities they are intended to support (Boxenbaum & Jonsson, 2017; Hallet & Ventresca, 2006; Meyer & Rowan, 1977). Moreover, as actors responding to institutional pressures (Greenwood et al., 2011; Ingram & Clay, 2000), universities may interpret and enact internationalization differently, producing organizational heterogeneity, particularly in the activities they pursue. By examining structure and activities together but also separately, we allow for the possibility that they may be loosely coupled, thereby moving beyond studies that emphasize universities’ rationales for internationalization to investigate how they enact organizational actorhood in practice.
To examine these dynamics, we draw upon neo-institutional theories (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983; Meyer & Rowan, 1977) and empirically observe a novel sample of 500 universities across 89 countries. First, we quantitatively examine how national contexts influence the extent to which internationalization-related structures (e.g. an international office and a senior officer for internationalization) and activities (e.g. international student support, international programme, international cooperation) exist. We find that a country’s level of liberalism is a significant predictor for the expansiveness of organizational structure but not for internationalization activities. Additionally, a country’s global competitiveness is found to be related to the expansiveness of internationalization activities but not for organizational structure. Next, we qualitatively examine how universities discuss and present their internationalization efforts. We find that universities’ internationalization motivations and their focus areas in activities vary based on their country’s level of liberalism and competitiveness. While institutions in liberal and competitive countries emphasize global leadership and societal impact, those in less competitive but liberal contexts focus on student and faculty mobility, and universities in illiberal but competitive countries prioritize enhancing their global reputation. Meanwhile, institutions in illiberal and less competitive nations tend to have minimal internationalization efforts, often treating it as a necessary step for relevance.
Overall, our findings reveal not only the diffusion of global models (Meyer et al., 1997) but also the ways universities negotiate local constraints and contested priorities (Deem et al., 2007; Hüther & Krücken, 2018). They also show how universities adapt, resist or selectively translate external demands (Ramirez, 2010; Sahlin & Wedlin, 2008), thereby elucidating broader questions of legitimacy and institutional change in a globalized yet uneven higher education landscape (Marginson, 2006). Internationalization exemplifies this dynamic, showing how a global model is enacted differently across contexts, shaped by divergent pressures and aspirations. Examining how universities organize these efforts highlights why organizing matters in higher education today, especially amid intensified competition and the rise of illiberalism.
Our key contributions are threefold. First, our study presents an ambitious examination of internationalization efforts across 500 universities from around the world. This is an important empirical contribution, as existing literature on this topic has mostly focused on case studies of a few universities in specific countries or regions. Second, we investigate how a country’s global competitiveness and liberal tendencies shape universities’ internationalization efforts, particularly in today’s intensely competitive and increasingly illiberal global climate. By foregrounding these critical yet underexplored national-level factors, our study adds to the limited literature on the role of national contexts in shaping university internationalization (Buckner, 2019; Chan & Dimmock, 2008). Third, we operationalize different manifestations of organizational actorhood by separately examining organizational structures and activities, and highlight the potential heterogeneity in organizational responses to institutional environments (Greenwood et al., 2011). This approach contributes uniquely to existing neo-institutionalist research, which has tended to focus on a single dimension of actorhood and on isomorphic organizational change, including in universities (Furuta & Ramirez, 2019; Gavrila et al., 2025; Skinner, 2019).
Theoretical Motivations
In contrast to rational actor theories, which conceptualize the organization as a distinct unit, the neo-institutional perspective views organizations as actors embedded in a broader world and cultural environment (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983; Meyer & Rowan, 1977; Meyer et al., 1997; Pedersen & Dobbin, 2006). From this perspective, universities are influenced by not only global competitive dynamics but also transnational standards, whether they are those generated by epistemic communities, professional associations or international organizations (Ramirez, 2020; Song, 2025). Applying this view, scholars argue that universities, as organizational actors (Bromley & Meyer, 2017; Krücken & Meier, 2006; Ramirez, 2010), adopt internationalization not only for strategic reasons but also because it constitutes a particular global template of excellence that signals both legitimacy and distinction within the highly competitive global landscape of higher education (Buckner, 2022; Krücken et al., 2007).
In fact, the twenty-first-century global environment encourages universities to internationalize from many fronts. Propelled by world cultural norms that link scientific research to progress (Drori et al., 2003), the university’s role in knowledge creation has gained importance in the knowledge economy (Frank & Meyer, 2007). Accordingly, international research collaboration and preparing graduates for the global job market have become key tasks of universities. Furthermore, the proliferation of global university rankings, such as the Academic Ranking of World Universities or the Times Higher Education (THE) rankings, in addition to the ‘world-class university’ conferences, presupposes common global frames or templates of excellence for universities and countries to reference (Krücken et al., 2007; Pusser et al., 2012; Sauder & Espeland, 2009). In such a competitive environment, universities have to differentiate themselves to ‘stand out’, or at least to avoid a competitive disadvantage (Kraatz et al., 2010), by adopting certain organizational practices such as pursuing internationalization, as not doing so may have subsequent consequences for student and faculty recruitment and retention, funding, and so on.
Correspondingly, many countries have aligned their national higher education policies with building a knowledge economy and promoting university internationalization (Douglass et al., 2009; Li, 2016). National governments in Europe and Asia, for example, have enacted comprehensive structural higher education reforms and pushed for strong research orientations (Deem et al., 2008; Krücken, 2020), while some in emerging market economies have explicitly sought to develop world-class universities as part of their broader development agendas (Hazelkorn, 2015; Huang, 2015). Such efforts to increase global higher education competitiveness (Altbach & Salmi, 2011; Taylor, 2004), then, likely influence universities to respond to these national priorities and policies, becoming more aware of their global status and reputation and demonstrating a stronger commitment to the internationalization mission.
Understanding how universities respond to these global and national pressures requires unpacking enactment of their organizational actorhood, i.e. the capacity to articulate goals, design arrangements, and implement initiatives that convey intentionality, coherence and legitimacy to relevant audiences (Krücken & Meier, 2006; Meyer & Jepperson, 2000). For universities, this entails more than declaring a commitment to internationalization (Buckner, 2022). It involves building recognizable organizational forms and engaging in concrete actions that make this commitment operational.
Universities’ organizational actorhood around internationalization can manifest in at least two dimensions: formal structures that institutionalize the commitment and activities that enact it in practice. Structures are durable, formalized arrangements, such as dedicated departments, offices and senior administrative positions, that embed internationalization into the organizational framework, often aligning with globally circulating models or national policy templates. Activities are the substantive initiatives through which internationalization is realized in everyday practice, including student and faculty mobility programmes, international research partnerships and global curricula. While both dimensions can advance the internationalization mission, it is possible that they serve different purposes, as structures often function to signal commitment, secure legitimacy and coordinate resources, whereas activities translate those commitments into tangible outcomes and direct engagement. Institutional theory has long observed that these purposes may not always be pursued with equal vigour, as formal arrangements can be adopted without proportionate enactment in practice, or activities may emerge in the absence of robust formalization (Bromley & Powell, 2012; Meyer & Rowan, 1977).
Understandably, universities operate within diverse national contexts, and since not all countries are equally committed to developing competitive higher education systems, university organizational actorhood around internationalization may manifest in varying ways. It is likely that more globally competitive countries promote the internationalization of higher education more actively, not simply because they have the resources to invest in this mission or seek practical benefits such as attracting global talent, but also to maintain global legitimacy and, beyond that, enhance their international reputation and even exert global leadership (Buckner, 2022; Krücken et al., 2007). Of course, less competitive countries may pursue internationalization as well, whether it be for legitimacy, functional reasons or as necessary action to adhere to regulatory or accreditation standards (Enders, 2004). However, they may be less motivated to enhance their global reputation or assert leadership through internationalization when faced with more pressing issues in their higher education systems, such as limited funding, inadequate infrastructure, faculty shortages, and so on (Akar, 2010; Teferra & Altbach, 2004). Moreover, since internationalization brings not only opportunities but also potential challenges to the local education system (Jibeen & Khan, 2015), less competitive countries may be less enthusiastic about pursuing it to mitigate such risks.
Additionally, the tangibility of competitiveness would be an important factor. For example, universities who perceive that global competitiveness is tangible, either out of their own merit or because they are located in globally competitive countries, may engage in extensive internationalization structures and activities, allocating organizational resources to sustain and increase their global rankings, competitiveness and elite status in the global higher education landscape. Others, like the non-elite universities who may not necessarily perceive global competitiveness as tangible (Cattaneo et al., 2016), or universities situated in globally less-competitive countries may be less interested in pursuing an internationalization mission and instead focus on more tangible goals such as building local legitimacy. Thus, we hypothesize the following.
Hypothesis 1: Universities located in more globally competitive countries are likely to have more expansive structures and activities around internationalization.
Moreover, a nation’s sociopolitical environment may influence the ways that universities present and encourage particular internationalization activities or initiatives. Specifically, countries equipped with stronger liberal ideals, which tend to emphasize promoting peace and societal development through international exchange and cooperation, alongside other liberal values such as democracy, diversity and human rights, may more actively promote their internationalization efforts (Ikenberry, 2020). While the spirit of international exchange and cooperation has been the ethos of the post-World War II era, recent developments in global social movements and norms around global citizenship, sustainable development and social impact provide a renewed rationale for the internationalization of higher education (Ramaswamy et al., 2021; Song, 2025). Therefore, greater pressures to be socially relevant or fulfil a global mission may expand the scope of internationalization and lead to the establishment of formalized structures with dedicated resources, administrative staff or faculty concerned with improving and adjusting research directions and university curricula. Similarly, such pressure may prompt more active participation in a variety of internationalization activities, including supporting international students, implementing international exchange and global leadership programmes and forming networks with foreign institutions.
Simultaneously, universities located in countries with stronger illiberal tendencies may not engage in internationalization efforts as much as their more liberal counterparts. Scholars have found that the more a country is involved in illiberal international organizations, the lower its tertiary enrolment, government expenditure on higher education, and academic freedom (Lerch et al., 2024; Schofer et al., 2022). However, internationalization of higher education is also among the most vulnerable aspects that could be attacked under illiberal regimes (Altbach & de Wit, 2018; Song et al., 2024). This is because illiberalism, by definition, contradicts the liberal ideals of international cooperation and solidarity, often prioritizing national interests and regime stability over the global good (Guillén, 2018; Mearsheimer, 2019). It is possible that universities may leverage their international education and globally minded students and faculty to resist nationalist, illiberal movements. However, it is also possible that universities invest less effort and resources in internationalization or selectively focus on certain components of internationalization that they perceive as safe. For example, they may maintain an office dedicated to supporting international students or facilitating international faculty research collaborations due to necessity but may not appoint senior leadership to oversee and enhance internationalization efforts. These points lead to the following hypothesis.
Hypothesis 2: Universities located in more liberal societies are likely to have more expansive organizational structures and activities around internationalization.
In sum, we hypothesize that universities, embedded in a globally competitive environment and influenced by national priorities and sociopolitical contexts, enact organizational actorhood to varying degrees, as reflected by elaborated structures and activities. Although we do not hypothesize differently for structures and activities, we acknowledge that formal structures and actual practices can be loosely coupled or decoupled (Boxenbaum & Jonsson, 2017; Meyer & Rowan, 1977) and, therefore, may not necessarily operate through the same mechanisms.
Simultaneously, it is important to note how global models are often domesticated and localized to the language and needs of organizational actors within a specific context (Engwall, 2004; Sahlin & Wedlin, 2008). More precisely, it is likely that universities, as strategic actors responding to institutional pressures (Greenwood et al., 2011; Ingram & Clay, 2000), engage in selective local adaptations of the global notion of internationalization based on their national, institutional contexts, resulting in organizational heterogeneity. For example, contrary to universities located in more established higher education systems, those in less developed systems may choose to focus their limited resources on specific aspects of internationalization that they find most feasible and rewarding, rather than attempting to engage in a broad range of activities. On the other hand, universities in more liberal national contexts may choose to emphasize activities that promote more abstract, normative ideals such as global citizenship and sustainable development as a way to prepare their students for a globalized world and advance the global higher education ecosystem. Pursuing these broader goals may allow universities to differentiate themselves in an increasingly competitive global higher education market and attract more domestic and international students (Katsumoto et al., 2024; Soysal et al., 2024). Thus, we posit that there will be nuanced variations in the types of internationalization activities pursued or emphasized by universities based on their national contexts.
Data and Methods
Data
To identify a globally representative sample of universities, we conduct a country-stratified random sample from the population of universities that consistently participated in the THE World University Rankings from 2011 to 2020. All countries in the THE rankings are selected as strata, and universities within these countries are randomly drawn. The number of universities drawn is proportionate to each country’s overall contribution to the population of universities. If a country’s contribution equals 1, one university is drawn. Importantly, this sample of universities, each opting to partake in the THE rankings, can be considered globally oriented universities that view themselves as participating in a global arena. 1 Table 1 presents the distribution of universities in our sample across eight world regions.
Distribution of Universities in Sample.
We collected data about the organizational structures and activities of the universities directly from the universities’ websites, allowing for navigation to secondary or tertiary levels of the website hierarchy to obtain the necessary data. This suite of university organizational data was collected between 2021 and 2023, requiring concerted efforts. The authors and four research assistants, proficient in various languages, carefully read relevant pages for all 500 universities, which largely enabled access to data in the universities’ local languages. In cases where a proficient reader of the local language was unavailable, we relied on a combination of English websites and computerized translation services to code the data. While reviewing the website content, we first coded a set of binary variables to indicate whether certain organizational structures and activities were present at each university for quantitative analysis. Additionally, we gathered descriptions of these structures and activities, which were later utilized for qualitative analysis.
Websites of organizations are both a form of representation and a type of narrative. They entertain, persuade, express a point of view and provide a means to organize collective action and economic exchange (Powell et al., 2016). Though they may not perfectly reflect an organization’s realities, they represent what the organization pursues and does, offering opportunities to learn how it operates as an organization. The process of critically and systematically reviewing university websites to assess the presence or absence of specific features is a non-obtrusive data collection methodology commonly known in the literature as ‘web census’. This method has been employed successfully in other comparative higher education and organizational studies (e.g. Christensen & Gornitzka, 2017; Gavrila et al., 2025). While our data is cross-sectional and does not provide insight into changes over time – a limitation we acknowledge – it offers an important snapshot of the current landscape of internationalization in universities worldwide and how different institutions pursue this mission in similar or distinct ways.
Analytical strategy
We use a mixed-methods approach to provide a comprehensive understanding of universities’ internationalization efforts. Quantitatively, we investigate the sociocultural underpinnings of varying levels of universities’ internationalization-related structures and activities using multilevel ordered logistic regression analysis (Long, 1997). The ordered logistic regression model is employed because our dependent variables are ordinal in nature, consisting of scores with a finite range that reflect increasing levels of the phenomenon. Additionally, multilevel modelling allows us to account for the nested structure of the data, where universities are located in different countries. 2 Qualitatively, we conduct a close reading of relevant website content and draw themes and patterns that arise around the purposes, scope and focus of internationalization and analyse them to understand what they mean (Morgan, 1993; Schreier, 2012). In doing so, we pay particular attention to the variations that emerge among universities situated in different sociocultural contexts, e.g. varying levels of country competitiveness and liberalism, and link our qualitative findings to our quantitative analysis results to provide a more comprehensive perspective. Below, we list the variables used for the quantitative analysis and describe our approach to qualitative data analysis in more detail.
Dependent variables
We observe two dependent variables for quantitative analysis. The structure of internationalization is an ordinal variable indicating the extent of internationalization-related structures within a given university. It ranges from 0 to 2, where 2 means a university has both an international office and a senior internationalization officer; 1 means a university has either one or the other; and 0 means the absence of such structures. We identified international offices as those engaged in a broad array of activities such as internationalization, international collaboration, international student support and oversight of global programmes for students and faculty (Lee & Ramirez, 2023). The most common names for these offices were simply international office or international relations/affairs office, although other variations exist, including global engagement/promotion/collaboration office and international strategy office. A senior internationalization officer is an executive-level position responsible for overseeing and coordinating the university’s internationalization efforts. In our collected data, this role had various titles, including senior international officer, deputy vice chancellor for international strategy, vice-provost for global engagement, vice-rector for international affairs and vice president for internationalization.
The activities of internationalization is also an ordinal variable indicating the extent to which a university engages in internationalization activities. We coded for three different types of internationalization activities based on previous literature (Buckner & Stein, 2020; de Wit & Altbach, 2021): international student support (e.g. orientation programmes, immigration assistance), international programmes (e.g. student exchange, study abroad) and international cooperation (e.g. research partnerships and collaborations, agreements between universities). The variable ranges from 0 to 3, where 3 means a university engages in all three types of activities; 2 means two activities; 1 means one activity; and 0 means no engagement in any of the three categories.
Independent variables and controls
We use two independent variables corresponding to the two hypotheses. To examine the influence of national competitiveness, we rely on the World Economic Forum’s 2019 Global Competitiveness Index, which assigns each country a global competitiveness score (Schwab, 2019). This score assesses long-term national competitiveness by considering macroeconomic stability, innovation capability, institutions, infrastructure and other productivity-related factors. Ranging from 0 to 100, a higher score means higher competitiveness.
To observe the effects of national liberalism, we create a national liberalism index by combining two measures: liberal democracy, which captures the extent to which a country exhibits liberal democratic characteristics domesticly (Coppedge et al., 2023), and global illiberal ties, measured as the number of memberships a country holds in the seven illiberal intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) (Lerch et al., 2024). 3 To generate this combined continuous variable, we reverse-coded the global illiberal ties to match the direction toward liberalism, standardized both measures and applied principal components analysis, which yielded a single dominant component that we retained as the index (Cronbach’s alpha: 0.83). 4
Additionally, we control for several university- and national-level factors. At the university level, we control for university rankings (whether a university ranks within the top 500 in the 2020 THE global university rankings), the percentage of international students out of the total student population, size (total enrolment of students in logged form), age (the number of years since the founding year in logged form) and type (private versus public institution). We control for these variables because a university’s functional need for internationalization (e.g. supporting international students and scholars or running various international programmes) may be greater if it is highly ranked globally, has a larger body of international students or is simply larger in size. Additionally, younger universities established in a more globalized era, public universities under national pressure to internationalize or private universities with greater flexibility to shape their structures and activities may pursue internationalization more actively. We drew on the 2020 THE data for rankings, percentage of international students and size, and the publicly available World Higher Education Database for the founding years of the universities and their types. At the national level, we include whether a country has a ministry of higher education (Furuta et al., 2024; Lerch et al., 2024) and the number of universities relative to its population (Coppedge et al., 2023). These controls account for the level of centralization in a country’s higher education system and the general prevalence of universities within that country. 5
Qualitative data analysis
After conducting a set of quantitative analyses, we perform qualitative content analysis of university websites relevant to internationalization. The aim of the qualitative analysis is to go beyond the findings from the quantitative analysis, which focuses on the extent to which universities have internationalization-related structures or activities, and provide more nuanced insights into why universities engage in internationalization efforts to varying degrees and possibly with different emphases and directions. In this sense, the qualitative analysis partly serves as a post-hoc explanation for our quantitative findings regarding the extent to which universities conduct internationalization, but it also aims to reveal the qualitative differences universities exhibit when they fall at different points along the continuum of competitiveness and liberalism, the two key concepts in our quantitative analysis. In other words, we seek to answer how universities in different contexts approach internationalization differently, in addition to how much they engage in such practices – a focus of quantitative analysis.
To this end, we conducted qualitative content analysis of university websites, i.e. the ‘about us’ and other relevant descriptive information provided in web pages of internationalization offices. Following Elo and Kyngäs (2008), we first observed and identified broad trends, patterns and themes that arose from the descriptions of international offices and their programmes for all universities coded as having an international office and/or international activities. Two main themes emerged from the data: (1) motivation for and purpose of internationalization, and (2) focus and emphasis of internationalization. Then, we deductively observed the similarities and differences across these themes in a manner that is consistent with our quantitative analysis. That is, we examined patterns within these themes in relation to country characteristics such as the level of liberalism and competitiveness, the main independent variables in the quantitative analysis. As a result, we present the key characteristics of internationalization efforts in countries with different levels of liberalism and competitiveness. For the sake of analysis, we categorize countries into four groups and present the results accordingly: liberal and competitive, liberal and less competitive, less liberal and competitive, and less liberal and less competitive. In addition, we identified one intriguing phenomenon during our qualitative data collection and analysis: active collaboration and exchange among countries with similar backgrounds and interests, including partnerships between illiberal countries. We also present this finding to add further nuance to our analysis.
Findings
Descriptive and quantitative findings
We begin by descriptively showing the extent to which internationalization-related structures and activities are being conducted at our 500 sample universities. Table 2 presents the percentages of universities that have international offices and a senior internationalization officer, as well as the three types of activities (i.e. international student support, international programme and international cooperation) undertaken by universities. The vast majority (94.2%) of universities in our sample have an office dedicated to internationalization, while nearly half (48.8%) have a senior officer for internationalization. While all three types of activities have a participation rate exceeding 90%, international cooperation is the most common (94.2%), followed by international programmes (93.8%) and international student support (90.6%).
Percentage of Universities Engaging in Different Types of Internationalization Structures and Activities (n = 500).
Figure 1 illustrates the overall distribution of universities across different levels of internationalization structure and activity. While most universities have one or two internationalization structures and engage in two or three types of internationalization activities, some exhibit extensive activities without a formalized structure, while others have established structures but engage in only a limited range of activities. This suggests that structure and activities do not always go hand in hand.
Distribution of universities across different levels of internationalization structure and activity.
We now turn to our regression analysis results. Table 3 presents the results from the multilevel ordered logistic regression models predicting the presence of internationalization structures and activities. Note that the table displays odds ratios; a rate of 1 indicates no association with the outcome variable, while values above 1 indicate a positive association and values below 1 a negative association. Some observations are dropped due to missing values on the independent variables.
Multilevel Ordered Logistic Regression Models Predicting the Presence of Internationalization Structures and Activities (Coefficients Reported as Odds Ratios).
Note. Multicollinearity was not a concern; variance inflation factors for all predictors were < 2.
p < 0.05, **p < 0.01.
Models 1 through 3 show how national competitiveness and national liberalism relate to the presence of internationalization structures, while models 4 through 6 show how they relate to the presence of internationalization activities. Models 1, 2, 4 and 5 include one independent variable – either national competitiveness or national liberalism – whereas models 3 and 6 are the full models including both variables.
Model 1 shows that national competitiveness is not necessarily associated with expansive internationalization structures. By contrast, model 2 indicates that national liberalism does predict expansive structures; universities located in more liberal societies tend to have more developed organizational structures around internationalization. Model 3, the full model, yields results consistent with models 1 and 2. Additionally, model 4 demonstrates that national competitiveness is positively associated with internationalization activities; universities located in countries with higher global competitiveness scores engage in a broader range of internationalization activities. Model 5 indicates that national liberalism is not a significant predictor of internationalization activities. Model 6, the full model, also conveys consistent results.
In sum, national competitiveness is positively associated with internationalization activities but not necessarily with structures, providing only partial support for hypothesis 1. National liberalism, in turn, is positively associated with internationalization structures but not necessarily with activities, also yielding only partial support for hypothesis 2. Interestingly, national competitiveness and national liberalism predict different dimensions of university organizational actorhood around internationalization.
These findings raise important questions about how universities in different national contexts motivate and pursue their internationalization efforts. Beyond the differences in organizational actorhood expressed through formalized structures and activities, do variations exist in how universities in different contexts motivate and frame their internationalization efforts? For example, how do universities in the most liberal and competitive country contexts differ from those in the least liberal and competitive ones or from those in similarly competitive but less liberal contexts? Is it only the extent of internationalization they pursue, or does the content of their internationalization efforts also vary? To address these questions, we examine descriptions of internationalization structures and activities from universities that fall into four categories: liberal and competitive, liberal and less competitive, less liberal and competitive, and less liberal and less competitive. We acknowledge that these categorizations are somewhat arbitrary, as both liberalism and competitiveness exist on a continuum. However, this operationalization allows us to capture nuanced variations in how universities frame internationalization, taking a step beyond our quantitative analysis, which focuses on the extent of internationalization efforts.
Qualitative findings
Although the vast majority of universities included in our sample have internationalization-related structures and engage in various internationalization activities, our qualitative analysis revealed that the way they frame their internationalization efforts and the specifics of their activities varies across a country’s level of liberalism and competitiveness. These factors are often linked to regional differences, as many countries in North America, Western Europe and East Asia are both liberal and competitive, while many in Eastern Europe, South Asia and Africa are less liberal and less competitive. Meanwhile, Middle Eastern countries present interesting cases, as they tend to be less liberal yet relatively competitive. In contrast, some countries in Latin America and Southern Europe are considered relatively liberal but less competitive. In what follows, we delineate these variations in terms of the motivation for internationalization, as well as the focus and emphasis of internationalization. We then present an interesting finding regarding the ‘birds of a feather flock together’ phenomenon observed in the international networks and associations that universities engage in.
Universities in liberal and competitive countries
Many countries in North America, Western Europe and East Asia fall into the liberal and competitive category. Universities in these regions tend to have expansive internationalization structures and engage in a variety of internationalization activities. That is, they often have both an internationalization office and a senior officer for internationalization. They receive a considerable number of international students on their campuses, send their students to many parts of the world and conduct numerous international cooperation programmes, often with a strong emphasis on research. Interestingly, the way they frame their internationalization efforts differs significantly from universities in less liberal and less competitive country contexts. Most notably, they tend to position themselves as established global institutions, a status that is almost taken for granted. They seek to contribute meaningfully to global society, serving as responsible leaders in the field. As such, their internationalization efforts are often driven by a vision of ‘global engagement’ as a ‘global institution’. For example, Stanford University in the US emphasizes its goal of setting an example as a globally contributing university: Fueled by optimism, ingenuity and a collaborative spirit, Stanford University welcomes the international community on campus and beyond. Stanford seeks to model how a global research university can collaborate with its neighbors in the region, nation, and world to accelerate solutions and amplify impact on issues crucial to our collective future.
Similarly, the University of Toronto in Canada pursues global engagement based on respect and reciprocity: We are committed to global engagement which facilitates and strengthens collaborations between people at U of T and partners across the world. We recognize that when engaging globally we need to deepen our understanding of cultures and geographies and approach each partnership with respect and a commitment to reciprocity.
Across the Pacific, a Japanese university aims to promote human welfare and planetary health beyond national boundaries: OUGEO [Okayama University Office of Global Engagement] will push forward with its global engagement strategy, which applies and expands the resources of the university’s education and research as well as those of the local community to global-scale issues in order to mutually collaborate with various stakeholders, including international organizations, for the realization of human welfare and planetary health.
The University of Cambridge in the UK even features an interactive ‘impact map’ webpage that allows users to explore ‘how research carried out by Cambridge and its partners is having a positive impact around the world. . .from the Arctic to Zambia.’ 6
In summary, universities in the most liberal and competitive countries conduct internationalization because they are already global institutions. Internationalization is part of this taken-for-granted identity. Their emphasis is largely on contributing to global society and making positive impacts that extend beyond national boundaries. In this way, they reinforce and consolidate their global leadership and influence.
Universities in liberal and less competitive countries
Some countries, often including those in Latin America and Southern Europe, are considered relatively liberal but not as competitive as those discussed above. From the quantitative analysis, we gain insight that universities in these country contexts may have sufficient internationalization structures but engage in fewer activities. When examining their internationalization efforts, we note that they are largely focused on student and faculty mobility rather than research collaborations. Compared to their more competitive (and liberal) counterparts, who almost take student exchange and study abroad programmes for granted, these universities appear more excited and conscious about the exchange of personnel across borders. Additionally, they rarely position themselves as established global leader institutions nor seek to demonstrate their global impact. While they do care about global peace and solidarity, their participation in internationalization processes appears to be primarily driven by a desire to improve education and enhance their institutional competitiveness. For example, National University of Cuyo in Argentina describes how its relationships with institutions abroad enhance its education and research: The National University of Cuyo keeps formal relations with more than 200 institutions globally. These relations allow us to guarantee the mobility of our professors and students under different diagrams of cooperation, through diverse international collaborative projects, always looking forward to improving the quality of our programs and academic, research and extension projects.
The University of La Frontera in Chile also acknowledges that the expansion of its international ties is intended to benefit the institution: We are responsible for promoting, strengthening and expanding the international ties of the University of La Frontera, for the benefit of its management and the development of its strategic programs. We establish relationships with academics and scientists from institutions of excellence. [. . .] In addition, this University promotes the international mobility of its undergraduate and graduate students and academics, as well as joint research on topics of global relevance and the participation of visiting professors.There is also an increasing number of foreign students who every year choose our institution to study and experience student life abroad.
Democritus University of Thrace in Greece, which defines itself as a ‘an extrovert institution with a strategic priority of Internationalization,’ also highlights the university’s active participation in the European Erasmus mobility programme: As of 1996, D.U.Th. actively participates in Erasmus mobility program acting both as the originator and as the host institution for thousands of outgoing and incoming students and hundreds of instructors from D.U.Th. as well as from other foreign institutions that participate in the Program. The University has started participating in the program of International Mobility (ICM) since 2015 involving collaborations with institutions in countries outside the EU.
Combined, universities in mostly liberal yet less competitive contexts, while enthusiastic about the internationalization mission, seem to allocate their limited resources to specific aspects of internationalization, often focusing on individual exchange programmes. They strive to connect with the broader world, but they do not aspire to the position of a global leader or key influencer.
Universities in less liberal and competitive countries
Universities located in less liberal yet highly competitive country contexts, such as wealthy Middle Eastern countries and rapidly developing China, exhibit unique patterns. Notably, they show a strong interest in enhancing their reputation in the global higher education field, a goal that is often promoted by the state as well. They often emphasize their connections with leading institutions abroad, positioning these relationships as a way to elevate their own status in global academia. At a surface level, their language describing internationalization does not differ significantly from that of universities in more liberal societies, frequently using terms like cooperation and partnership. However, they place significantly less attention on global challenges such as human rights or climate change. Instead, they appear highly eager to showcase and promote the variety of international activities they engage in and the expansiveness of their global networks. For example, the Office of International Affairs (IAO) at Qatar University explicitly acknowledges that its internationalization efforts align with the State of Qatar’s role and that it aspires to enhance the university’s reputation: Qatar University’s strategy of international engagement is aligned on the State of Qatar leading role in international mediation and conflict resolution as well as support for education worldwide. In that perspective, it recognizes that our global reach enhances the success of this effort. [. . .] To further Qatar University’s international goals and to advance the university’s reputation worldwide, the Office of International Affairs supports academic programs and international research collaboration by coordinating international partnerships. The IAO assists in the international mobility of professors and researchers, guides students from abroad who wish to participate in an exchange program at QU, promotes the internationalization of teaching, strengthens collaborations with foreign institutions, and engages in international cooperation.
Chinese universities, perhaps aligning with the government’s strong interest in developing world-class institutions, strive to enhance their international reputation and influence through various activities, including establishing relationships with leading universities abroad. Take, for example, the following cases from Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech) and Tsinghua University in China: In order to serve the university’s internationalization strategy and layout, it [the Department of International Cooperation] actively establishes strategic partnerships with first-class universities abroad to continuously enhance the international reputation and international influence of SUSTech.
Through joint training, student exchange, opening lecture halls of overseas famous teachers and hosting international conferences, we [Tsinghua University] cultivate top-notch innovative talents with a global vision and able to adapt to international competition; Through planning and promoting major international cultural and academic exchange activities, the school enhances its international reputation and academic influence.
In sum, universities in these less liberal yet highly competitive country contexts tend to align their internationalization efforts with state-driven goals, aiming to secure a leading position in the global higher education field. They emphasize the variety of their activities and relationships with other top institutions worldwide and leverage internationalization as a strategy to elevate both their institution and their country’s global standing.
Universities in less liberal and less competitive countries
Universities located in less liberal and less competitive countries tend to have the least developed structures and activities related to internationalization. These include universities from Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, India and others primarily located in Southwest Asia or less developed parts of the Middle East. We could not find enough qualitative information on these universities because they are less engaged in internationalization efforts and do not provide related information online. Considering that our sample universities are already among the more globally oriented institutions, we can speculate that universities in predominantly illiberal and less competitive countries are likely to be even less engaged in internationalization trends.
However, we were able to identify some cases where universities from these regions still participate in some level of internationalization. These cases demonstrate that universities in this category tend to focus narrowly on the process of internationalization itself. Specifically, they view internationalization as a necessary mission to fulfil in order to survive and remain relevant in the global higher education landscape, rather than a means to address global challenges (as their liberal counterparts do) or attain world-class university status (as their illiberal yet more competitive counterparts aim to do). Overall, they are less ambitious yet strive to establish a certain level of internationalization, which is seen as an essential component of a reputable university in today’s world. Perhaps because these universities are usually not well known internationally, their internationalization-related websites often highlight their strengths and achievements. For example, Zagazig University in Egypt states: Zagazig University is considered one of the highest-ranked scientific and training institutions in Egypt. [. . .] Updated teaching and training methodologies, based on the latest technology, are implemented by professional professors and skilled trainers. Furthermore, the university maintains strong relationships with leading training centers specializing in developmental strategies. Thus, the Zagazig University International Relations Center (ZUIRC) aims to expand these relationships and strengthen scientific cooperation with foreign universities across various scientific and cultural fields. Additionally, it seeks to enhance the university’s global presence by effectively promoting its educational and training programs, as well as its long-term ambitions within Arabic, African, and international communities.
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The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Indore describes in detail how it strives to internationalize itself. While its achievements to date are somewhat limited compared to universities in more liberal and competitive countries, it proudly highlights how their efforts have paid off: IIT Indore is rapidly expanding globally with an aim to internationalize its teaching and research portfolio. Currently, we are collaborating intensely with counties across North America, Europe, Asia, and Oceania. In continuation to the previous year, this year we had notable progress on three fronts. First, we were successful in recruiting and hosting many international students in our degree programs (from ASEAN and SAARC regions). Second, we secured multiple grants from our Ministry of Education, which is feeding well into our internationalization endeavors. Third, we expanded our footprint further in Europe. [. . .] Continuing the upward trajectory in enrolling foreign students in our degree programs, since 2019, we have hosted 04 international students who were from Bangladesh, Nepal and Nigeria and joined us through the Study in India (SII) program. Currently we have 05 MTech students and 02 PhD research scholars at our campus native from Nepal, Nigeria, Ethiopia and Bangladesh.
In fact, IIT Indore lists the names and countries of origin of all its international students – something that would not be feasible for universities that receive hundreds of international students each year.
Combined, universities in less liberal and less competitive country contexts tend to be less engaged in internationalization efforts, and even when they do participate, their engagement often remains at a rudimentary level.
Birds of a feather flock together
While exploring qualitative data, we observe that universities often denote their participation in various networks and associations on their websites, where these often occur within the same region or with those sharing similar ideologies, interests or historical legacies. Perhaps the most famous example of this kind is the ERASMUS+ programme in Europe. Although it is not strictly organized by geographic region, it is facilitated through the European Union and thus has a predominantly European focus. Less well-known, numerous other regional networks are also featured under the internationalization pages of university websites. To name a few, there is the Association of Pacific Rim Universities, which serves universities from the Americas, Asia and Australia; the BRICS+ Universities Association, an alliance of higher education institutions from Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, and universities from countries joining the BRICS+ group such as Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates; CEEPUS (Central European Exchange Programme for University Studies), from Central and Eastern European countries; and ESCALA (Escuela de Negocios para la Conservación y Advance de Latino América), from Latin America. Descriptions of these regional networks and the universities’ participation in them on university websites suggest that universities participate in such networks to strengthen regional cooperation and to enhance education and research opportunities for students and faculty.
Additionally, we observe that universities denote how they are members of other networks or programmes with others that share similar ideologies or cultural themes. For example, a number of universities in the Global North, especially those in Scandinavia, affiliate themselves with the University of the Arctic, a network of universities, colleges, research institutions and other organizations established through the Arctic Council with the purpose of upholding principles of sustainable development. Considering the liberal characteristics of this particular association, it is unsurprising to find most universities in this network are located in liberal, Western states and are universities that have broader goals to contribute to global development and progress (multiple universities in our sample are included in this association, including the University of Helsinki in Finland, the Norwegian University of Life Sciences and Lund University in Sweden). A few Russian universities in our sample also belonged to this network, as they meet the definition of the Arctic region. However, their membership has been recently paused following the association board’s condemnation of the Russian war in Ukraine. This situation highlights the tension between liberal and illiberal forces in the wider world, which shapes international networking and cooperation among universities.
We also find that universities located in ‘illiberal’ states indicate that they belong to networks and associations that share similar ideological and cultural norms. The most prominent is the League of Universities of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, to which many universities in China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan belong (in our sample, Tsinghua University in China, Siberian Federal University in Russia, and many others belong to this league). Other similar networks to which universities in our sample belong include the Association of Sino-Russian Technical Universities, which facilitates talent exchanges and scientific/technological cooperation between Chinese and Russian universities, and the China-Central and Eastern European Countries (CEECs) Design Innovation Alliance, led by Shanghai Jiao Tong University, with five founding member institutions from Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia and Croatia.
Connecting with universities in the same region may be perceived as more straightforward not only due to geographical proximity but also because of a shared identity or sociocultural environment. While some regional groupings, such as those facilitated by the European Union, may be viewed more as an imposed policy directive, many other such regional groups appear to be more voluntary and based on mutual understanding and support. By situating themselves in these regional groups, universities express their unique regional identities within a larger context of globalization. The extent to which universities display and even highlight the regional networks and associations they belong to as part of internationalization efforts suggests that the internationalization process is not always value-neutral. In fact, the ways in which universities opt to join networks and associations of universities located in countries that share similar sociopolitical norms or historical alliances suggest that internationalization efforts may be ways for universities (and their respective countries) to promote certain cultural values and ideals. Given that the majority of universities in our sample are public institutions, these findings around regionalization of internationalization activities suggest that universities are not just nation-building projects for countries (Marginson, 2006; Pusser et al., 2012) but also may promote broader regional cooperation and development.
In sum, our findings suggest that countries in different cultural contexts may approach their internationalization processes in unique ways. Although the language used to describe their internationalization efforts is generally similar (e.g. exchange, cooperation), whom they choose to connect with and the purposes for these exchanges might differ depending on the cultural contexts in which these universities are embedded.
Discussion and Conclusion
Drawing on novel cross-national data from 500 universities across 89 countries, we examine how universities become organized around internationalization, distinguishing between formal structures and implemented activities as two dimensions of organizational actorhood. While most universities in our sample pursue internationalization, our findings illuminate that the expansiveness of internationalization structures and activities are differently influenced by the national institutional contexts. Specifically, we find that universities in more liberal national contexts tend to have a more expansive organizational structure for internationalization, whereas universities in more globally competitive countries are likely to engage in more expansive internationalization activities.
Although we acknowledged the possibility that organizational actorhood across these dimensions of structure and activities could operate separately, we did not fully anticipate these results from the outset. These findings suggest that internationalization structures may carry a more symbolic aspect of university organizational actorhood, signalling commitment and legitimacy within supportive sociopolitical climates, whereas activities reflect a more practical and operational dimension of actorhood, dependent on sufficient resources and strong motivations to maintain or enhance global status. This distinction advances neo-institutional accounts of organizational actorhood by showing that the enactment of widely diffused global models like internationalization can follow divergent organizational pathways depending on national-level sociopolitical and economic conditions. That is, structures and activities are not simply more or less developed versions of the same underlying phenomenon; they are distinct expressions of actorhood, where which of these aspects becomes more pronounced is contingent on enabling or constraining national and organizational contexts.
Through our qualitative analysis, we also demonstrate how universities in different sociopolitical contexts pursue internationalization with varying motivations and emphases. This expands common portrayals in neo-institutional studies that take a more simplistic view of how context influences organizations in adopting widely diffused notions such as internationalization, by highlighting the nuanced ways in which national-level liberalism and competitiveness differently shape the form, purposes and emphases of enacted organizational actorhood.
Thus, a key contribution of our study is that we elucidate how organizational actorhood of universities, as reflected in organizational structures and activities, becomes manifested differently as universities respond to their institutional environments and adapt global models for their local contexts. More precisely, we contribute to the literature that emphasizes global similarities and local variations (Baker & LeTendre, 2005; Frank & Meyer, 2020) by showing that where a country falls along the spectrum of liberalism–illiberalism and global competitiveness matters for how universities navigate and enact their organizational actorhood around internationalization.
As summarized in Figure 2, we find that universities in more liberal and more competitive societies not only have elaborated structures and activities but also view internationalization as a part of their taken-for-granted identity as global institutions. These societies, predominantly located in the Global North, are more attuned to world cultural norms and values that emphasize the promotion of peace, progress and development. Thus, their universities’ elaborated organizing around internationalization is reflective of these world cultural norms, demonstrating a commitment to internationalization and related liberal ideals such as global engagement and global citizenship, at least symbolically or ceremonially (Ikenberry, 2020; Lee, 2020). Findings suggest that universities in the most liberal and competitive countries, which are likely to be better resourced and already equipped with expansive organizational structures, engage in more expanded technical structures and forms of internationalization that much more explicitly embrace liberal values. In addition to providing a menu of opportunities for students and faculty to engage in international exchange and enrich intercultural understanding, these universities articulate desires to foster global leaders and promote global sustainable development. In fact, they appear to view themselves as playing a leadership role in the global higher education arena, being models of excellence for others. Such cultural beliefs that favour an activist and optimistic worldview in search of progress and greater social responsibility likely influence universities to organize and reorganize their internationalization structures and activities in the direction of greater elaboration to support the ever-increasing purposes and missions of universities.
Varying organizational actorhood of universities around internationalization.
Universities in more liberal but less competitive societies also have elaborated structures around internationalization, being attuned to global models of excellence and world cultural norms of peace and development. However, their activities are relatively limited, with emphasis on international exchange and mobility programmes. This is likely because these universities – and their national authorities, often situated in emerging economies of the Global South – have limited resources to invest in internationalization, and because their national contexts may not necessarily prioritize global leadership or high reputation. Understandably, their countries may have many other pressing educational issues to address, and attaining leading global status in the higher education system might seem an unrealistic or distant goal. These universities’ focus on activities around international exchange is framed as a way to broaden international connections and improve education quality through global exposure and collaboration.
This contrasts with how universities located in less liberal and more globally competitive societies often focus on international cooperation activities and view such activities as a vehicle to raise status and reputation in the global higher education landscape. Many countries in these less liberal yet globally competitive societies, including robust economies of the Global South such as China and Qatar, have articulated national policies to raise global university rankings (Altbach & Salmi, 2011; Krücken, 2020), and their universities’ organizational actorhood around internationalization is shaped by economic and policy rationales closely tied to global competitiveness.
At the other end of the spectrum, universities in less liberal and less competitive countries tend to frame internationalization narrowly, treating it as a basic requirement for survival and legitimacy rather than as a pathway to leadership or prestige. Their efforts are more modest, centring on establishing a minimum level of international engagement as a marker of institutional credibility.
Taken together, these patterns suggest that the forms and emphases of internationalization activities vary not only along Global North–Global South lines but also within the Global South, depending on national competitiveness and sociopolitical ideologies. To this end, we expand previous studies that highlight the impact of regional contexts on motivations for internationalization (Buckner, 2019; Jones & de Wit, 2012) and demonstrate that universities enact their organizational actorhood around internationalization as a strategic vehicle to further their goals of global legitimacy, recognition, status and competitiveness, though with differing emphases shaped by local conditions. This variation highlights how global models are enacted in divergent ways, pointing to the organizational consequences of broader societal transformations to higher education.
In fact, we find that universities do not simply pursue regional affiliations and networks to foster international exchange and cooperation; they also create or opt in to affinity groups and networks aligned with the values and norms they uphold. This suggests that internationalization may be a way for universities and their respective countries to promote certain cultural values and ideas. To this end, our findings contribute to emerging scholarship that shows how proponents of illiberal norms increasingly organize in ways similar to those used by supporters of liberalism to promote liberal values (Bromley et al., 2020; Velasco, 2023) by demonstrating that universities are not exceptions to this trend.
Reactions against higher education and the decline in the legitimated authority of liberal world society have increasingly become built and institutionalized around statist or nationalist models, religious identities and sociopolitical and historical alliances (Schofer et al., 2022). Simultaneously new trendsetters such as China have taken a more central role in this recent trend towards illiberalism (Lim & Ikenberry, 2023). Though to be observed, our findings are significant in that they provide support for the argument that the rising backlash against higher education as being beholders and carriers of the liberal international order (Börzel & Zürn, 2021; Mearsheimer, 2019) may transform or even curtail internationalization structures and activities worldwide. Findings also suggest that a new centre, or at least a new fountain for subsequent diffusion, may be emerging, perhaps supplementing or replacing the former centres of the liberal Global North.
To conclude, the evolving geography of higher education actorhood is not simply a matter of North–South divergence but a reconfiguration of influence, with new actors and coalitions positioned to shape the next wave of global higher education norms. Our findings suggest that the organizational actorhood of universities, shaped by the influence of global norms and national-level contingencies, reflects the broader contestation of higher education’s purposes and orientations in a shifting world order. In liberal contexts, internationalization is often embedded in both symbolic commitments and expansive engagements. In illiberal yet competitive contexts it can serve as a targeted vehicle for global status, and in less competitive contexts it may be pursued primarily for legitimacy or capacity building. These divergent pathways underscore that the global diffusion of internationalization is not a uniform process but one embedded in, and shaped by, the evolving geopolitics of higher education.
Limitations and future research directions
Our study makes important contributions to the literature by illuminating the nuanced ways in which broader institutional and national cultural contexts influence how universities enact their actorhood around internationalization. However, it is also limited in that we do not consider national education policies, such as tuition fees, that may influence universities’ engagement with internationalization from a functional perspective. Whether university organizational behaviours are direct responses to government mandates or their own actions and choices in enacting their organizational actorhood, especially for public institutions in autocratic states, is beyond the scope of this paper and is to be explored. For example, universities in the UK have differential tuition pricing, where ‘home fees’ differ from international fees (Tannock, 2013); likewise, language affects university fee structures in Quebec, Canada. Future research that observes the influence of such national higher education policies on university actorhood around internationalization, alongside macro institutional factors examined in this study, would further expand our understanding of the extent to which policy and broader institutional environments influence universities.
Another limitation is that our analysis is constrained by our cross-sectional data. Our study sheds light on the relationship between national contexts and universities’ enacted actorhood. However, the cross-sectional nature of our data limits us in that we are unable to observe what processes these universities undertake in enacting organizational structures and activities and ascertain when and how the organizational features of internationalization diffuse. One way to address this limitation is to identify the founding dates of internationalization structures and activities and employ event history models to identify which variables influence the adoption rates of various organizational dimensions of internationalization. Such analyses would further inform whether the different manifestations of organizational actorhood observed in our analysis increase or decrease in the longer run.
Using longitudinal data would also enable us to address important theoretical questions, such as the impact of recent sociocultural changes witnessed worldwide. For example, it would allow us to examine the implications of the global rise of illiberalism (Guillén, 2018; Mearsheimer, 2019) on internationalization by tracking how shifts in global and national sociopolitical climates shape universities’ organizational actorhood, administration and strategies. Regression analyses examining both between-country and within-country variations would be useful in this case. Furthermore, by conducting a network analysis of university international cooperation efforts and partnerships formed over time, along with an analysis of changes in the curricular content of international education and mobility programmes, one can illuminate the extent to which networks among universities from illiberal polities have emerged and identify the values and ideologies being promoted and transmitted through such groupings.
What does the future of higher education hold, and what does this mean for the organization of universities? The organizational actorhood of universities has moved toward isomorphism, at least at a superficial level, as indicated by the high prevalence of internationalization-related structures and activities we reported. However, a deeper examination reveals important local variations, which are likely to continue and may even be accelerated by the rise of illiberalism that challenges and weakens the world liberal order of which the global higher education regime is a part. This is evidenced by the growing influence of (illiberal) China and Russia in the formation of networks and strategic partnerships of universities based on region, sociopolitical and cultural ideologies and historical legacies. Whether the fragility of and changes in the world liberal order will curtail internationalization or transform structures, forms, functions and activities of internationalization is yet to be observed. The key point is that the world polity and the ideologies and values to which countries subscribe influence the organizational actorhood of universities, particularly as they relate to internationalization.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the guest editors of the special issue, the three anonymous reviewers, members of the Stanford Comparative Sociology Workshop, Stanford Higher Education Workshop, and the participants of the International Conference on Multiple Competition in Higher Education for their helpful comments and feedback. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 40th European Group of Organization Studies colloquium. The authors would also like to thank Irene Lin, Rachel Salia, Gabriela Ferreira Reitz and Jaeyeop Na for their contributions as research assistants and Daniel Scott Smith for his contributions to the sampling strategy.
Funding
The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: We express our gratitude for the funding from the Stanford King Center on Global Development.
Declaration of conflicting interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Data availability statement
Data is available upon request.