Analysing the introduction of international rankings in the field of management education, this article aims to understand how and why rankings have proliferated and institutionalized and with what effects. Building on institutional theory, I propose that rankings function as rhetorical devices to construct legitimacy within the field, which actors use to attempt to shape and reform the field as it develops. Rhetorical devices shape meaning, as they are used to justify practices and procedures and shape the means of comparison and assessment. The rankings are used by European business schools to attempt to alter perceptions of the field and their own positions within it. The result of these processes is also, however, a preservation of status and the principles whereby status is formed in the field, primarily through the work of habitus. I discuss the implications of these findings for understanding rankings and for institutional theories of fields.
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