The optimal global integration – local responsiveness tradeoff for an international branch campus

The growth in the number of international branch campuses (IBCs) has been one of the most striking developments in the internationalization of higher education in recent years. IBCs are overwhelmingly branches of universities in the developed ‘West’. The United States, the United Kingdom and Australia dominate provision. In contrast, IBCs are concentrated in the Middle-East and Asia. The cultural distance between the home and host countries of many IBCs is considerable. This distance poses a major challenge for the successful management of an IBC. Should it localize its curriculum and pedagogy to better meet the learning styles and educational needs of its students or should it provide an educational experience that is comparable to that enjoyed by students on the home campus? This paper takes as its theoretical framework the global integration–local responsiveness (I–R) paradigm. Using an exploratory research design, it finds that the I–R paradigm can be operationalized for IBCs, to predict how faculty, the curriculum and research are likely to be localized in response to pressure from an IBC’s main internal and external stakeholders.