A Praxiography of the Transnationalization of the Stockholm School of Economics

Abstract

The internationalization of higher education is as old as the university itself. Recently, however, there has been a growing interest in transnational higher education, a specific form of internationalization which considers education as a product which can be packaged and sold abroad. The result of this interest is a large transnational higher education literature. This research critiques this transnational higher education literature, suggesting that it is plagued by a number of issues. It then aims to address these issues by developing a more essential and dynamic theoretical account of transnational higher education as a practice. The research explores the transnationalization of the Stockholm School of Economics, with an emphasis on its foreign branch campus in Riga, Latvia. It adopts the philosophy and methods of praxiology, and it follows the abductive logic of Grounded Theory. The research results include a modeling of the transnationalization of the Stockholm School of Economics as an activity system. This research contributes to the transnational higher education literature by adding to the discourse on the phenomenon of transnational higher education. The theoretical account of transnationalization which was developed furnishes an alternative perspective on transnational higher education. In combination with activity system analysis, it offers a novel approach to understanding transnational higher education as a practice. And it reveals the constitutive relationship between an institution and its transnationalization, thereby affording a richer understanding of the process by which an institution transnationalizes, and, in turn, of the process by which this transnationalization helps to re-shape the institution.