Abstract:
The internationalization of higher education has been a growing phenomenon for the
last few decades. There are various ways in which higher educational institutes can
internationalize ranges from supplying education across borders, to students moving
across borders, to faculty moving across borders to commercial presence across borders.
Despite the growth there have being very few studies exploring the phenomena. Therefore
this paper tries to expand the knowledge in entry mode selection by developing propositions
which can be empirically tested by future studies. There are at least four main motives for
higher educational institutes to move abroad, that is economic, academic, political and
socio/cultural. The study only looked at the first two motives as they are more prominent.
Entry modes in a broader basis can be categorized into two areas, full control entry
modes which refers to sole ownership and shared control modes which refers to some
form of collaborative modes of operation. Organizational resources can be of significant
importance in explaining and predicting the entry mode choice of a firm. The resourcebased
theory assumes the sole ownership to be the best entry mode available for a firm.
Having review the literature study develops following propositions. The study proposes
that, 1. the preference for higher control entry modes in a tacit knowledge environment is
negatively influenced by academic motives and positively influenced by economic motives,
2. the preference for higher control entry modes by experienced firms will be positively
influenced by the economic motives and will be negatively influenced by the academic
motives, 3. the preference for higher control by larger firms is positively influenced by the
economic motives and negatively influenced by academic motives, and 4. the preference
for higher control modes by more reputed firms will be positively influenced by the
economic motives and negatively influenced by academic motives.
