Integrating to one program for re-accreditation

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to delineate lessons for business schools seeking re-accreditation and that face previous peer-review improvement expectations, strategic and operational imperatives similar to those faced at College of Business Administration (CBA) in University of the State Capital, all pseudonyms to mask their true identity. Design/methodology/approach - Based on qualitative case study method, CBA’s Assessment Director, Gabriel Mouton, again a pseudonym, serves as the central protagonist whose interactive dialogical and technology-enabled change processes provide instructive practical lessons around the management of assurance of learning (AoL) for re-accreditation. Findings - This paper offers a tripartite change focus in AoL for re-accreditation: balancing program goal integration with discipline differentiation, adopting an interactive dialogical shared governance process over a top-down or bottom-up process and technology-enabled straddling program depth and breadth. Research limitations/implications - This paper is unique to CBA’s path-historical institutional change experiences in the USA with rich-shared faculty governance that may need to be first developed before emulation in institutions where such a tradition is absent. Practical implications - The experiences narrated in this paper offer universal lessons for business schools aspiring to continuously improve their AoL and, in the process, uphold program meaning and quality standards for stakeholder relevance and re-accreditation. Social implications - The experiences narrated in this paper offers lessons for tying program quality to external stakeholders’ expectations in the community, including for international business schools. Originality/value - This paper advances an original tripartite change focus specifically relevant for business schools seeking re-accreditation and that are concurrently grappling with multiple strategic and operational imperatives.