Edinburgh Napier University

  The purpose of this study is to investigate the motivations for international academic alliance development, the configuration of alliance networks and their sustained management in Business Schools within the European Higher Education Area (EHEA). A purposive sample of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) engaged with international alliance activities was selected from seven Business Schools within the target markets of France, Germany and Scotland. In order to investigate issues inherent within international alliance development this sample provided access to academic and administrative elites competent to discuss their alliance portfolios, from a strategic perspective, through semi-structured interview conducted in their home institutions. A key feature of the research was that, in the interest of minimising the potential for superficial or pre-conceived conclusions to be drawn, interviews with participants from two respondent institutions were positioned outside the researcher’s direct ‘preferred partner’ network.