Performance or Legitimacy? An Exploratory Study into the Adoption of AACSB in South Korea

This paper uses performance theory and institutional theory to examine the adoption of The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) accreditation in South Korea (Korea). Using self-completion questionnaire data from the deans of 24 Korean business schools, the study examines both performance and isomorphic drivers as motivating factors of adoption. While exploratory, the study found that the stage of accreditation adoption is positively associated with the performance driver of resource dependency, as well the institutional drivers of mimetic and normative isomorphism. This is one of the few papers that examine performance and institutional drivers together; and to the best of the authors’ knowledge, the only one to investigate AACSB accreditation in Korea