Contributions of Organizational Culture to University Internationalization

Abstract

Responding to an increasingly globalized world, universities are training students to function in a multicultural environment through internationalization. Institutional culture can influence policies and practices for internationalization. Research in internationalization indicate that majority of the studies on the contributions of organizational cultures to internationalization across universities focused on the perspectives of faculty and university senior level administrative personnel and neglected the views of students. This qualitative case study explored students’ understanding of how organizational culture contributes to promote internationalization using international events that occur at two U.S universities. Semi-structured interviews were used for data collection. Purposeful and snowball sampling were employed to select domestic and international undergraduate and graduate students for the study. Findings indicate that integration into university family, community relationship, buffering, communication, symbols, and shared values and beliefs cultures are critical to promote higher education internationalization.