Managing Institutional Complexity: International Schooling in China's National Context

• In Event: Organizational Theory: Emergent Research

Abstract

This paper applies the institutional logics perspective (ILP) to analyzing the localizing process of international schools in China and how international school leaders navigate the country’s complex policy and social environment in school operations. Based on interviews with 24 international school leaders, the paper reveals patterns of interaction between international schools and the institutional orders of the Chinese state, the market, and the professional community of international education, which constituted the formation of international schools’ locally specific characteristics. Based on further analysis of the organizational attributes of Chinese international schools, the paper discusses issues of commercialization and social (in)justice of international schooling and offers a reconsideration of Bunnell et al.’s (2016, 2017) proposition on international schools’ ‘institutional primary task’.

Author

• Wenxi Wu, The Chinese University of Hong Kong