Managing marketization through organizational network legitimacy in higher education : the case of private universities in Malaysia

This paper examines the marketisation of higher education in Malaysia from an organisational network legitimacy perspective. It shows that private universities that survive and prosper adopt network strategies that give them legitimacy in the eyes of stakeholders. Underpinning these strategies are a pragmatic mix of business relationships that reflects the interlining of activities and creative leveraging of resources heterogeneity between stakeholders in the networks. These institutions build, strengthen and reinvent their legitimacy on the principles of the previous networks and emerging networks amid the backdrop of ongoing structural reforms. In organisational legitimacy practices, this paper advocates the significance of creating a vibrant and adaptive mix of network legitimacy strategies to survive and prosper. Evidence of the achievement of organisational network legitimacy is based on the inductive interpretative analysis of these institutions over the past 40 years.