The Internationalisation of Higher Education Institutions: a Conceptual Framing Essay

From the ingrained literature review we conducted, we find three main approaches that describe the firms internationalisation processes. The first approach is economic, it analyzes the internationalisation of firms in general, the second is stepwise approach, wich is adapted to the context of internationalisation of SMEs in particular, and third and the most recent is network approach, it explains the internationalisation process of firms by their development through network. Although appearing successively, the three approaches do not replace, but approach the process of internationalisation from different angles of analysis (Gankema and al., 2000, Ruzzier and al., 2007). The importance of transfering the knowledge economy internationally and the positive externalities of higher education on the socio-economic development of nations reinforce the social responsibility of universities, on the one hand, and scientific cooperations on the other hand. Hence the importance of identifying the modes, strategies and success key factors of any internationalisation process of higher education institutions, particularly. Through this communication, we will carry out an exploratory study, through the analysis of different approaches to the internationalisation of firms, on the one hand, and the OECD study on the internationalisation of higher education, on the other hand. Our goal in this paper is to propose a conceptual framing integrating different approaches to internationalisation of firms, through the Knight model of internationalisation of higher education. Thus, our research scheme will be based on the synthetic model of the economic approach (Mucchielli, 1991), the model of early internationalisation (McDougall and Oviatt, 1994, 2000), and internationalisation related to innovation (Bilkey and Tesar, 1977; Cavusgil, 1980), the phased approach (Coviello and McAuley, 1999) and on the co-operations dealt with in the framework of the network approach (Johanson and Vahlne, 1990). We have mobilized the Mucchielli synthetic model, our begining points are the competitive advantages that university should have in order to, on the one hand, and in the other hand, the comparative advantages of target countries. The model of early internationalisation leads us to analyse the very definition of the university provided as universal in nature, and strongly related to the concept of universality (Altbach, 1998). The internationalisation model linked to innovation is particularly interesting in the context of our research, since technological and strategic intelligence competencies are key factors for international success. Finally, we used Knight's model on the internationalisation of higher education, which is the only reference in terms of quality and process of internationalisation of higher education, since it provides strategic orientations, relevant to the particular case of the internationalisation of higher education (Knight, 1999). The latter model can be fed by the network approach, which gives considerable importance to the intra and inter organizational relationships of firms, as the cooperation and internationalisation strategies of hybrid higher education can be very effective for development universities internationally.