Surveying the damage
by Kimberly D. Elsbach and Roderick M. KramerNo one can deny that the Business Week rankings have had major effects on U.S. business schools. Since they were first published in 1988, the biennial rankings have led to student outcry at schools that fall short of expectations. Rankings have captured the attention of deans who are asked to explain them and faculty who now find their teaching ratings included in them. Based on measures of student and recruiter satisfaction (rather than on traditional measures of reputation), they have been heralded as the savior of American management and cursed as the bane of scholarly work. No question about it -- the Business Week rankings matter.
But why? Why do faculty, students, and administrators care so much about the BW rankings? Why do some schools care more than others? And what are the effects of a school's reactions to the rankings?
Identity crisis
We pursued answers to these questions in a year-long investigation of eight "top twenty" U.S. business schools. We interviewed a small number of administrators, faculty, and MBA students (referred to collectively below as "members") from each of these schools to learn more about how the BW rankings had affected the schools, and how members had responded to the rankings. Our investigation produced three interesting findings:
1. The Business Week rankings induce an identity crisis for some schools. Due to its unique ranking criteria, the BW survey has allowed new schools to enter the ranks of the elite and has displaced schools that served as benchmarks for decades. If you're Indiana and thrust from No. 15 to No. 8 in the 1992 poll, you can count yourself in the same league with elites like Stanford (No. 7 in 1992) and compare yourself favorably with traditional first-stringers like Columbia (No. 9) or Carnegie Mellon (No. 17). In this way, the Business Week rankings are one of those rare events that define the identity of a school. And when the rankings don't fit with the school's preexisting identity, members may experience an institutional identity crisis.
2. Some schools avoid an identity crisis by framing the Business Week rankings as a nonthreatening event. As might be expected, those schools that performed well or better than expected had few negative things to say about the rankings. Surprisingly, however, members of some schools that did not perform well or up to expectations also did not experience identity dissonance. For example, respondents from a school that had remained at a low ranking after falling in rank two years earlier claimed that the rankings were "irrelevant" to their feelings about the school and noted that their exact ranking didn't matter "as long as we're still in the top twenty." Similarly, respondents from a school that performed below most members' expectations maintained: "The ranking didn't shake most people's confidence in themselves."
3. Schools used a variety of strategies to manage their identities following the Business Week rankings. The most common of these involved showing how the school was positively distinct from other business schools on dimensions other than those measured by the BW survey. Thus, without contradicting their performance on the customer satisfaction measures revealed by the rankings, business school members recategorized their schools using other positive dimensions that both accounted for their rank and affirmed their preexisting identity. For example, respondents from one lower-ranked institution categorized their school as a "high-value MBA program," claiming: "If you construct a value-added index ... [our school] comes in first." In the same vein, respondents from a school that fell in rank categorized their school as a "public institution" that was required to take on "more students than most top-rated private schools."
Damage control
Another common strategy was to show how the school was similar to other highly ranked schools on dimensions other than the customer satisfaction dimensions measured by the BW rankings. Thus, we found that business school members categorized their schools in the same league with higher-ranked schools on dimensions like student culture: "[Our school] has the same problem as Stanford -- 40 percent of our MBAs want to stay in California and work at nonÐFortune 500 companies." Or regional performance: "[Our school] wants to be like Michigan, a regional power that makes it to national recognition." In these cases, members affirmed their schools' identities as top-ranked institutions by using alternative dimensions to place them in the same categories as other highly ranked schools.
Finally, some business school members managed their organization's identity by claiming that the rankings revealed a temporary condition that has since been remedied. Thus, respondents from one school that fell in rank claimed, "The administration really paid attention [to the last ranking] and has been hustling ever since. We're going to do whatever it takes to satisfy the students.... Some of the things we've done are design a set of structures to change the teaching process, institute a policy that all teachers must meet a minimum standard, express a concern about teaching in the tenure and promotion process, and add more courses and requirements that meet student needs."
Similarly, respondents from another school that fell in rank noted, "The entire curriculum has been revised. Every course has been changed, and the structure of the core has changed. We also have a heavy investment in placement, advising, and career counseling. All of these changes are very student oriented." In these cases, members enhanced their schools' identities by categorizing them as newly "customer-oriented" institutions that should be ranked higher by BW the next time around.L
Roderick Kramer is associate professor of organizational behavior at the Business School. Kimberly Elsbach teaches at Emory University's school of business. They originally wrote this article for the MBA Newsletter (79 Verbena Ave., Floral Park, NY 11001).
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