How do schools - highly-ranked business schools, say - establish their legitimacy? This super-interesting study (19 page PDF) looks at the language they use to establish that legitimacy. It finds that it is very future-focused, describing in glowing terms a "positive future-picture with positive agency frames is not surprising in itself, however, as a strategic choice not only invokes positive emotions in the reader but also provide an action set (shape, prepare, explore, responsibility etc.), which indicate active and responsible behaviour from the business schools." Of course, as the paper notes, this future-focus follows from "the general decline of trust in their competency regarding useful knowledge transfer." It also notes that these schools have no data about such future states, so their legitimacy is based on hypothesis only. It also acts as a way of responding to social pressure, for example, adding 'responsibility' to the language after criticism for their role in the 2008 economic crisis.
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