“Articulation around Firms Internationalization Approaches: the Case of Higher education Institutions”.

The transfer of the knowledge economy has become an imperative for international cultural, social and economic development. It was until the 1990s that scientific research began to raise the positive impacts of tertiary education on the socio-economic development of nations. In terms of productivity of human capital (Wolff and Gittleman, 1993), reduction of unemployment, development of entrepreneurship, good economic governance (Robert J Barro and Xavier Sala-i-Martin, 1995), promotion of research and development (World Bank, 2003), and increases in wages and total productivity (Schultz, 2004). The World Bank has published several reports on the positive externalities of higher education, particularly in developing countries (World Bank, 2008). Thus, the social responsibility of higher education institutions becomes engaged, and scientific cooperation develops more and more. Hence the importance of identifying the modes, strategies and success key factors of any internationalization process of higher education institutions. Through this communication, we will carry out an exploratory study, through the analysis of different approaches to the internationalization of firms, on the one hand, and the OECD study on the internationalization of higher education, on the other hand. Our goal in this paper is to propose a conceptual framing integrating different approaches to internationalization of firms, through the Knight model of internationalization 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 et Oviatt, 1994, 2000), and internationalization related to innovation (Bilkey et Tesar (1977), Cavusgil (1980), the phased approach (Coviello, McAuley, 1999), and on the co-operations dealt with in the framework of the network approach (Johanson et 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 internationalization leads us to analyze the very definition of the university provided as universal in nature, and strongly related to the concept of universality (Altbach, 1998). The internationalization 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 internationalization of higher education, which is the only reference in terms of quality and process of internationalization of higher education, since it provides strategic orientations, relevant to the particular case of the internationalization 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 internationalization strategies of hybrid higher education can be very effective for development universities internationally.