Date of Award
5-2026
Culminating Project Type
Dissertation
Styleguide
apa
Degree Name
Higher Education Administration: Ed.D.
Department
Educational Administration and Higher Education
College
School of Education
First Advisor
Rachel Friedensen
Second Advisor
Chukwuemeka Ikegwuonu
Third Advisor
Ning Hou
Fourth Advisor
William Schulze
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Keywords and Subject Headings
Foreign-born faculty; institutional isomorphism; academic leadership; discrimination; deans; department chairs
Abstract
Academic research indicates that foreign-born faculty face discrimination in the U.S. higher education institutions when seeking promotion to academic leadership positions, while practitioners note increasing cooption of foreign-born scholars into academic leadership ranks. Using a representative sample of 877 accredited Colleges of Business, this dissertation addresses this contradiction by developing a conceptual framework rooted in institutional isomorphism and investigating the effects of coercive, normative, and mimetic isomorphism on the promotion of foreign-born faculty to academic leadership positions including department chairs and deans. As Colleges of Business strive to pursue research, coercive, normative, and mimetic isomorphic pressures facilitate the appointment of foreign-born faculty generally known to have higher research productivity than U.S.-born faculty to positions of academic leadership. Coercive pressure (AACSB accreditation) has the strongest impact on the promotion of foreign-born faculty to leadership positions, followed by mimetic pressure (espoused emphasis on research), followed by normative pressure (having an R1 institutional status). By trying to homogenize around research, Colleges of Business simultaneously become more heterogeneous in terms of national origin of their academic leaders.
Recommended Citation
Anokhin, Irina, "Academic Leadership of Foreign-Born Faculty in the United States: The Paradox of Institutional Isomorphism" (2026). Culminating Projects in Higher Education Administration. 112.
https://repository.stcloudstate.edu/hied_etds/112
