Navigating different stakeholder challenges to legitimacy in business schools: Implications from a systematic literature review

Abstract

Business schools play a critical role in developing managerial competence. Yet, despite their widespread success, business schools remain under constant scrutiny, primarily revolving around three dimensions. Personal legitimacy concerns teaching and business schools’ ability to deliver to individual students what they need. Academic legitimacy focuses on research and whether business schools strike the right balance between rigor and relevance. Societal legitimacy examines the role and impact of business schools on the society at large as well as the principles they embody. This paper uses the Antecedents, Decisions, Outcomes (ADO) framework to systematically review some 50 years of academic literature on the debate regarding business school legitimacy. Our analysis of 104 papers highlights recurring themes such as relevance, value-for-money, and technological change. We suggest that business schools must address inherent tensions in pursuing legitimacy objectives, often requiring them to prioritize one of the three dimensions while ensuring credibility in the other two.

Taken together, our findings highlight the need for business schools to address tensions arising from the diverse demands of stakeholders and point to opportunities to refine their strategic positioning, thereby enhancing competitive advantage.