Universities have undergone significant changes in recent decades. Several studies have illustrated the impact of increasing globalization and the proliferation of neo-liberal ideologies, leading to a trend in which universities have become more market-oriented or corporatized, adopting managerial logics and practices (Wedlin, 2008; Kallio, Kallio & Blomberg 2020). There has been a surge in competition for students, professionals, research funding, and revenue (Balmer & Wang 2016; Björkman, Smale, & Kallio, 2022; Frandsen & Huzzard, 2022), leading to increasing university branding activities (e.g., Chapleo, 2011). One contentious issue facing higher education institutions (HEIs) is the perception of students as customers (Modell, 2005; Gebreiter & Hidayah, 2019). Consequently, universities are driven to adopt a customer-oriented approach, as students exhibit consumer-like behaviors, demanding greater “value” from their educational investment (Woodall, Hiller, & Resnick, 2014; Fandsen & Huzzard, 2021). While the degree of marketization varies internationally, the overarching emphasis is on demonstrating enhanced performance, efficiency, and competitiveness (Kallio et al., 2020). Concepts such as “excellence” and “value-for-money” have gained popularity, leading to the implementation of various strategies, including internal auditing, quality assurance, and quality work (Hauptman & Komotar, 2020; Lucander & Christersson, 2020).

In the current climate of escalating globalization and competition, universities are under heightened pressure to demonstrate excellence, differentiate themselves through brand building, and achieve high standing in international rankings and league tables (Chapleo, 2011; Hazelkorn, 2007; Alajoutsijärvi, Juusola & Siltaoja, 2015; 2022; Lozano, Bofarull, Waddock & Prat-i-Pubill, 2020; Brøgger, Degn & Smedegaard Bengtsen, 2023). Emphasizing effectiveness and excellence naturally leads to prioritizing quality (Paradeise & Thoenig, 2016). While these developments concern HEIs broadly, this study specifically focuses on business schools, which represent a distinctive category within HEIs. Business schools may operate as integral faculties within comprehensive universities or as standalone institutions. Regardless of structure, they share a strong imperative to perform competitively, build international brands, and acquire prestigious accreditations (Björkman et al., 2022). These characteristics make business schools particularly illustrative for examining how quality is constructed in marketized higher education.

The concept of quality is relative and subject to varying interpretations by different higher education stakeholders, each with their own set of priorities. Moreover, perspectives on quality can vary widely, depending on whom you consult. Therefore, we contend that quality is not an inherent or fixed characteristic but a socially constructed concept (Cidell & Alberts, 2006; Yogev, 2010). Building on the concept of social construction, Beckert and Musselin (2013) propose that although the quality of goods is often taken for granted, a more detailed examination shows that quality is the result of a highly intricate process. This process entails the collective efforts of producers, consumers, and market intermediaries involved in activities such as judgment, evaluation, categorization, and measurement (Beckert & Musselin, 2013; Yogev, 2010). Yogev (2010) refers to this process as the “construction of quality.” It is evident that the construction of quality is vital for the production of goods in general, but it holds particular significance in the realm of higher education, given the sector’s complexity and subtlety compared with manufacturing. In the unique context of higher education, the production and consumption of services, specifically teaching and learning, are inseparable. Education cannot be acquired merely through financial investment. Consequently, HEIs bear a greater obligation not only to equip students for life beyond their studies but also to generate funding (public or private) for their operations. This dual role amplifies the complexity of constructing quality within higher education. From the student’s perspective, when considering a higher education service provider, customers seek assurance that the services they receive will meet their needs, as education is a significant investment in personal or professional development (Sudhana et al., 2023).

The construction of quality is particularly critical for business schools that operate in international and mature markets characterized by high mobility in education and careers (Guillotin & Mangematin, 2018; Björkman et al., 2022). Given the intensifying competition for talent, including students, faculty, and collaborators, business schools must effectively signal their quality to prospective and current stakeholders (Björkman et al., 2022; Rhodes & Pullen, 2023; Frandsen & Huzzard, 2021). Just as deciding to study at or join the faculty of a particular business school represents a significant career move for individuals, establishing collaborations between organizations—whether among HEIs or between HEIs and external partners such as companies—is a substantial investment. Such partnerships require considerable time and human resources, and they may entail substantial financial investment. Given these costs, stakeholders naturally seek assurance of the HEIs’ quality, and in this, universities’ brands play an important role (e.g., Aula & Tienari, 2011).

The emphasis on quality within HEIs has been particularly prominent in the United States and other Anglo-Saxon countries for several decades, and it has spread to other nations as the global ranking of HEIs has gained significance (cf. Hazelkorn, 2007; Paradeise & Thoenig, 2013). It is also widely recognized that a degree from an elite institution, such as the Ivy League in the United States or the Oxbridge League in the United Kingdom, tends to open doors to more prestigious career opportunities than degrees from “average” HEIs (Pásztor, 2015; Rhodes & Pullen, 2023). While this hierarchical differentiation of HEIs has been the norm for years in some countries and cultural domains, it represents a relatively new phenomenon in others. This latter observation applies to the Nordic countries, where the concept of distinguishing HEIs based on quality, particularly the notion of “high” and “low” quality, is a comparatively recent development. In this study, we delve into the reasons for this in greater detail, as we aim to explore and analyze the elements that constitute the construction of quality within Nordic business schools.

Our focus is on the high-quality manifestos displayed on the websites of the business schools, which aim to reassure both external and internal stakeholders of the schools’ commitment to excellence. These manifestos can be considered part of university brand communication (see Chapleo, Durán & Díaz, 2011). In the context of business schools, we interpret high-quality manifestos as written communications strategically crafted to affirm the high caliber of their operations to stakeholders.

The Nordic countries, which comprise Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Norway, and Iceland, exhibit a multitude of similarities, ranging from demographic profiles and shared historical events to highly comparable societal structures, cultural values, and environmental characteristics. This makes the Nordic business schools an intriguing case. The Nordic countries share similar societal frameworks, sometimes referred to as “the Nordic way” (see, e.g., Marjanen, Strang & Hilson 2021).

This concept, along with terms such as ’Nordic exceptionalism’ (Greve et al. 2020), ’the Third Way’ (Giddens 1998), and the ’Social Democratic Regime’ (Esping-Andersen 1990), encapsulates the unique values and approaches to organizing life in the Nordic region. It summarizes the core values and approaches to organizing life in the region, characterized by a striving toward harmonious work–life balance, extensive social policies, low corruption levels, trust in and high quality of institutions, and a commitment to values such as democracy, equality, environmental sustainability, and human rights (Elgström and Delputte 2016; Greve et al. 2020; Leitner and Wroblewski 2006).

One of the cornerstones of Nordic countries’ success is their provision of high-quality, tuition-free education from primary school to the doctoral level. In Finland, Sweden, and Denmark, public HEIs offer free education to students from the European Union (EU), the European Economic Area (EEA), and Switzerland, as well as to those recognized under EU law as equivalent to domestic citizens. Norway goes further by offering free education to all students, regardless of nationality. In addition, Nordic countries provide financial support, including grants and low- or zero-interest loans. For instance, in Finland, students over 18 who live independently can receive monthly financial aid. While primarily intended for Finnish citizens, similar support is available to students from the EU/EEA, Switzerland, and those with equivalent rights under EU law. Comparable support systems exist across the Nordic region.

In the Nordic region, the quality of HEIs is monitored by government agencies. For example, in Sweden, the Swedish Higher Education Authority (UKÄ) evaluates the quality of higher education and research, ensures that HEIs adhere to laws and regulations, and assesses the legitimacy of degree-awarding powers. If the quality of a specific bachelor’s or master’s program falls short, the institution risks losing its degree-awarding privileges. Consequently, due to this state-regulated quality assurance, HEIs have traditionally not required high-quality manifestos; the ability to grant degrees has inherently signified state-approved quality. Nonetheless, with the intensification of marketization and competition, the pressure for HEIs to distinguish themselves and demonstrate quality has significantly increased (Juusola et al. 2015).

From an external perspective, the countries are often viewed as a single system due to their shared traditions of centralized higher education. However, in recent decades, the global economy has significantly influenced higher education in these countries, shifting its social function from welfare state social engineering to globalized market features (Fägerlind and Strömqvist 2004). This has resulted in an intensification of marketization and competition, and the pressure for HEIs to distinguish themselves and demonstrate quality has increased significantly (Juusola, Kettunen and Alajoutsijärvi 2015). Despite commonalities, each country has taken unique steps in response to these changes.

All Nordic countries have enhanced institutional autonomy in higher education by introducing performance-based funding and evaluation systems. Managerial governance has largely replaced the collegial system. This is especially evident in Denmark, where corporatelike governance has been mandatory since 2003, and in Finland, where the 2010 Government Act changed universities’ legal status to independent entities (Ahola et al. 2014). These radical reforms in Denmark and Finland have led to managerialism and leaderism, trends also seen in Norway and Sweden, though to a lesser extent (Geschwind et al. 2019).

Nordic universities have also transformed into more strategic actors, driven by the need for legitimacy among taxpayers and external stakeholders (Geschwind et al. 2019). This shift is evident in the formulation of different strategies and in the pursuit of international accreditations such as EQUIS and AACSB.

While variations across the Nordic countries highlight the distinct approaches each has taken within a shared framework of higher education reform, the reforms themselves share similar aims and rationales. These similarities present an opportunity to discuss the Nordic countries as an intriguing case, exemplifying the Nordic way.

The concept of a business school is broad, with meanings that vary across different countries and academic cultures (Juusola et al., 2015; Lozano et al., 2020). In this study, we have established four criteria that an HEI must satisfy to be considered a Nordic business school. First, it must provide a comprehensive range of educational programs in business and economics. Second, the institution must engage in active research. Third, it must be officially recognized by the governmental authority overseeing higher education in the particular Nordic country. Finally, the HEI must have the authority to award doctoral degrees. These criteria exclude polytechnics and institutions that offer only executive education.

HEIs meeting these standards fulfill the three core missions expected of a university-level organization in the Nordic countries: education, research, and societal engagement (often referred to as the "third mission") (Bentley and Kyvik 2012; Compagnucci and Spigarelli 2020). We identified 41 business schools in the Nordic countries, and they are all included in our study. These HEIs, along with some of their most prominent quality attributes, are detailed in Appendix 1. The data collection for this study was conducted in January–February 2022, during which we visited and gathered data from the English-language websites of the 41 targeted Nordic business schools. We primarily examined the homepages of the business schools, specifically the quality-related elements mentioned on the front page or within one or two clicks from it. We centered on these front pages because the elements and narratives highlighted at this initial level presumably signify what the business schools deem most important. As the first point of contact for many users, the front page plays a key role in shaping initial impressions and communicating institutional identity. In doing so, we follow existing literature on website branding, such as Drori, Delmestri and Oberg (2017), who conducted a content analysis of the visual selfpresentations of universities worldwide on their Internet front pages (see also Delmestri, Oberg and Drori (2013; 2015), and Sataøen (2021), who examined Nordic branding).

Our empirical analysis of the homepage content was conducted in four phases. First, we explored which quality-related elements were deemed crucial by the business schools to the extent that they were given prominence on their homepages. We used content analysis (Graneheim & Lundman, 2004), with the analysis grounded in the factual examination (Krippendorff, 2018) of the factors displayed on the homepages and their link to quality. Second, we identified 12 items for further analysis. These items were selected based on their prominence, recurrence, and rhetorical intensity across the data. Specifically, they represented distinct and strategically emphasized expressions of quality, which appeared central to how the schools articulated their excellence in the manifestos. Their selection was guided by the principles of qualitative content analysis, whereby meaning-bearing units are identified inductively through iterative readings and interpretive judgment (Graneheim and Lundman 2004).

Third, these 12 items were scrutinized in greater detail, and five primary categories, which we call “quality narratives, ” were further developed. In the second and third phases of our analysis, we continued to adhere to an inductive reasoning approach typical of data-driven research (Krippendorff, 2018). Nonetheless, we shifted the focus from the factual perspective applied in the first phase to the application of a more interpretive approach (Graneheim & Lundman, 2004). In the fourth phase of the analysis, we adopted a narrative analysis approach (see, e.g., Boje, 2001) to better understand and depict how the various narrative elements of quality presentation of the five main categories.

Although homepages are primarily aimed at external stakeholders, they also hold significant value for internal stakeholders and can be leveraged for both external and internal branding purposes (Chapleo et al. 2011; Hytti et al. 2015). While the growing body of literature underscores the importance of internal branding in HEIs (e.g., Clark, Chapleo and Suomi 2020), we recognize that public homepages predominantly function as a facade for external stakeholders. While studies have shown that corporate websites are important sources of information for job seekers when deciding whether to apply to a potential employer (Dalvi 2021), it is important to consider the critique that such branding efforts may sometimes lack authenticity and fail to resonate with the actual experiences of employees and other internal stakeholders. For instance, studies have shown that social media platforms and employee reviews play a crucial role in shaping the perceptions of potential employers (Thao et al. 2024; Kissel and Buttgen 2015). This highlights the importance of authentic employee experiences in employer branding.

In this section, we use direct quotations from our dataset to reinforce and illustrate our analysis, as these quotations vividly convey how Nordic business schools deploy various quality narratives to construct an image of high quality. The following sub-sections are constructed based on the five quality narratives, which are illustrated in Figure 1, along with the 12 items.

Based on the analyses in the previous section, we identify 12 items applied in the quality narratives of Nordic business schools. Although there are some interrelatedness and overlapping among these categories, five quality discourses with distinct logics are obtained. The quality discourses and their logics and special characteristics are summarized in Table 1.

The five quality discourses are not mutually exclusive, and Nordic business schools use them in tandem. Our analysis shows that rankings and international accreditations are the most salient elements in the quality presentation for the business schools that have achieved accreditations and/or high rankings. This is understandable, considering that accreditations and rankings are determined by external intermediaries rather than by the universities themselves, lending external validation to claims of high quality. Therefore, in terms of accreditations and high rankings, the high quality ascertained by an external party becomes an unquestionable “hard fact.”

Despite the significant influence that rankings and accreditations currently have on the business school sector (Hazelkorn, 2007; Paradeise & Thoenig, 2013; Alajoutsijärvi et al., 2015; Lozano et al., 2020), some scholars have argued that lower-ranking business schools should not feel compelled to confine themselves to rankings (Lozano et al., 2020). This is because rankings tend to be stable over time, and business schools that are already highly ranked possess considerable advantages. Therefore, there is considerable scope for business schools to distinguish themselves beyond the confines of rankings and accreditations should they opt to do so (Paradeise & Thoenig, 2013; Guillotin, 2018; Lozano et al., 2020). From this perspective, the homogeneity of the quality narratives applied by the Nordic business schools and the values and focus areas presented on their websites is quite striking. Internationalization, sustainability, innovation, and future orientation appear to be on the agenda of nearly all the business schools we studied. From a quality construction standpoint, this raises three intriguing points.

First, in terms of branding, Nordic business schools do little to differentiate themselves from each other. Second, as themes of internationalization, sustainability, innovation, and future orientation are common to many business schools in Europe, North America, and other developed regions, Nordic business schools scarcely set themselves apart on the global stage. Third, it is surprising how little, if all, the Nordic business schools have chosen to apply their identity as carriers of Nordic values (“the Nordic Way”) (cf. Marjanen et al., 2021; Greve et al., 2020) in their construction of quality narratives, even though this is precisely what will enable them to stand out from the global mass of business schools (cf. Rhodes & Pullen, 2023).

To summarize, the homepages of the studied business schools reveal a surprising scarcity of explicit references to Nordic culture and values, even though they do contain numerous implicit references to these. Nonetheless, discerning these subtleties requires in-depth knowledge of both the business school sector and Nordic values and culture, making it a task that lies beyond the expertise of a casual homepage visitor.

In terms of the latent content, themes such as societal engagement and contribution to a sustainable future—concepts deeply rooted in Nordic values—are often incorporated into the quality narratives of the business schools studied. This is logical, considering that, in the Nordic context, universities traditionally played a significant role in preserving and co-creating the societies (Välimaa, 2012; Kallio et al., 2020). The studied business schools following this tenet actually embody the ideal of “the good business school” in the same way Rhodes and Bullen (2023, 1274) define it: “The good business school, as we conceive of it, is one that is both public and democratic in its purpose, and that serves society by educating citizens and creating knowledge that leads to shared prosperity, social equality and human flourishing.” Nevertheless, from the perspective of visitors, especially those from outside the Nordic countries, rather than employing cryptic expressions such as “creating values for a sustainable future” (NHH Norwegian School of Economics), it would likely be more effective to clearly define what this phrase actually means.

Finally, the analysis of the latent content helps to understand what the quality manifestos do not contain. Although one of the identified five quality discourses includes highly competent faculty, and many of the studied homepages state that their respective schools have such faculty, in their quality narratives, the business schools seem to rely quite little on this element, especially when compared to many of their international counterparts. This is consistent with the fact that the culture of the Nordic countries favors equality and a low power distance (Hofstede, 2011). Therefore, promoting individual scholars as “stars” (Björkman et al., 2022) and listing their names on public homepages for the purpose of constructing quality seem to be undesirable approaches for most Nordic business schools.

The authors wish to thank Veronika Vakulenko, Richard Gyrd-Jones and Susanne Durst for country-specific information used when deciding which business schools to include in the study. This work was supported by Jan Wallanders och Tom Hedelius stiftelse samt Tore Browalds stiftelse [grant number P18-0143].