Business schools' higher education discourses: Empirical results and methodological lessons

A School of Education research seminar hosted by the Centre for International Education Research

Professor Király and Dr Géring from the Future of Higher Education Research Centre at the Budapest Business School will discuss the main results of a five-year research project that mapped how, and what, highly ranked business schools communicate about their role in society. In so doing, they focus on topics such as future and agency, sustainability, as well as the depiction of (ideal) students. They also reflect on the advantages of textual analysis using an international online corpus, as well as the potential pitfalls and difficulties.

The discussion will draw, amongst others, on the following two papers:

• Géring Z. – Tamássy R. – Király G. – Rakovics M. (2022) The portrayal of the future as legitimacy construction. Discursive strategies in highly ranked business schools’ external communication. Higher Education.
• Király, G. – Géring, Zs. – Tamássy, R. (2023) Future and agency frames: how business schools construct the term future and what they claim to do about it? Journal of Futures Studies. Forthcoming

Biography of speakers

Gábor KIRÁLY is a professor at Budapest Business School (BBS). He is currently the dean of BBS Faculty of Finance and Accountancy and the scientific director of the Future of Higher Education Research Centre. He is a member of the Sociological Scientific Committee of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Internationally, he worked as an external expert for the European Commission's research unit (JRC), he is currently an honorary associate professor at the University of Nottingham's Institute of Education, and an external assessor for the Irish Research Commission. His research areas include the future of higher education and the application of participatory processes (currently mainly action learning) in educational contexts.

Zsuzsanna GÉRING is a senior research fellow and the director of Future of Higher Education Research Centre (FHERC) at Budapest Business School, University of Applied Sciences. Her main research relates to corporate social responsibility, organizational communication, the future of business higher education and responsibilities of higher education institutions. She is an expert in mixed methodological research designs with a special interest in textual analysis and futures research. She and FHERC are members of the ‘European Universities – Critical Futures’ project (funded by The Independent Research Fund Denmark) which connected researchers from 18 European research institutions.