Doctoral Dissertation: Processes of Legitimation: The University of Phoenix and Its Institutional Environments

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In the past quarter-century the University of Phoenix has become the leading for-profit provider of higher education. It has achieved legitimacy despite appearing and behaving differently from other leading higher education organizations, and without conforming to many of the rules, values, and ideas of how a legitimate higher education organization should look and act. The proposed dissertation research seeks to answer four questions about the origins and development of the University of Phoenix. Each question is a case study in organizational legitimacy and focuses on specific processes of legitimation: (1) the process of accreditation by the North Central Association; (2) the process of obtaining a license in four US states; (3) the process of being certified for an initial public stock offering; and (4) the process of two audit investigations by the US Department of Education. Because the research questions are "how" and "why" questions, the method employed will be a multiple embedded case study, using historical and documentary evidence supplemented by interview data. A proposed stage-process model of organizational legitimation will be applied to each case, as well as to the history of the organization as a whole. The primary objectives of the proposed dissertation project are to investigate (a) the interplay of regulatory, moral-normative, and cultural-cognitive organizational legitimacies; (b) the dynamics of organizational conformity and nonconformity to prescribed institutional models; (c) the contours of multiple institutional logics in the organizational field of higher education; and (d) the historical and contextual nature of legitimation processes. More broadly, the proposed research will make important contributions to the sociological understanding of higher education organizations, with a particular emphasis on those that are organized for-profit. A better understanding of for-profit higher education organizations will inform debates and decisions in educational administration, and policy set at the national, state, and local levels.