The commitment required of a university or business school to gain international accreditation is significant, both in dollar terms and staff time. This thesis seeks to explain the motivations for business schools to seek accreditation with three major accrediting bodies, AACSB International, EFMD and AMBA, using a multiple-case study methodology underpinned by the frameworks of institutional isomorphism, bandwagon pressures and information asymmetry. Interviews were carried out with 17 business school deans; five deans of accredited schools in Europe, five deans of accredited schools in the United States of America and seven business school deans in New Zealand. All the New Zealand schools were either accredited, formally in the process of seeking accreditation or about to enter the application stage. The results provide supporting evidence for the notion that business schools are seeking accreditation in order to achieve legitimacy benefits rather than performance benefits, and that intangible benefits are seen as having more importance than the costs involved with achieving accreditation. It was also found that where the focus is at an international level, accreditation is found to be underpinned by information asymmetries whereby schools are seeking to gain legitimacy by providing signals to the market regarding their quality. At a regional or national level information regarding quality is more well known and, instead, isomorphic and bandwagon pressures become evident as the pathway towards legitimacy. This study will be of value to business school deans in understanding the forces they are being subjected to when considering the value of seeking international accreditation. The results provide an understanding of why, in the absence of a formal business case, a school may consider such a move, or may have entered the process without the hard data that identifies the costs and estimates the benefits in a measurable way. In this regard it will also be of value to all staff of business schools, and of the wider organisation, to understand the phenomenon that is accreditation.

Magistro baigiamajame darbe išanalizuoti ligoninių tarptautiniai akreditavimo modeliai, jų tinkamumas Lietuvai. Iškeltos akreditavimo vykdymo ir valdymo problemos bei pateikti pasiūlymai, kaip šias problemas spręsti. Teorinėje dalyje teoriniu aspektu tiriamas akreditavimo reikalingumas, Lietuvos dabartinė situacija. Išanalizuoti tarptautiniai akreditavimo modeliai, jų privalumai ir trūkumai, įvertinti visų modelių principai, geriausiai derantys Lietuvos situacijai. Empiriniame tyrime nagrinėjamas gydytojų požiūris į Lietuvos akreditavimo sistemą. / Master's thesis analyzes the international hospital accreditation models and their suitability for Lithuania. Issues of implementation and management of accreditation are being put forward and addressed. In the theoretical part of a thesis a need of accreditation and a current situation in Lithuania is examined by highlighting its theoretical implications. Models of international accreditation, their principal advantages and limitations for application in Lithuania are set forth. Lithuania's doctors notions on accreditation are investigated in an empirical study.

The study was designed to investigate the relationship between the perceptions of public elementary school principals concerning the procedures for the voluntary accreditation of elementary schools by regional accrediting associations and how acceptable the idea of voluntary accreditation was to the same principals. Section I of the survey instrument developed for the study, "Survey of Perceptions about Voluntary Elementary School Accreditation," was a request for demographic information about the respondents. Section II was designed to assess the amount of congruence between the perceptions of the principals concerning North Central Association requirements for elementary school accreditation and the actual requirements as set forth in "Policies and. Standards for the Approval of Elementary Schools." In Section III, the respondents indicated where they would place themselves on a five-point scale in regard to each of ten statements expressing positive attitudes toward the voluntary accreditation of elementary schools. The first and last statements in Section III expressed a positive attitude toward involvement in the accreditation process. The other eight of the ten statements identified benefits which might be derived from accreditation. The five-point scale ranged from "strongly disagree" at one end of the scale to "strongly agree" at the other. It was postulated that there would be a strong positive correlation between perceptions of accreditation that were congruent with the North Central Association Policies and Standards and positive attitudes toward accreditation.Other related questions were also investigated. Is the relationship between principals' perceptions of North Central Association Policies and Standards and their acceptance of voluntary accreditation related to such other factors as geographical location, school size by enrollment, age, level of teaching experience, years of experience as elementary principals, years of experience in their present assignments, educational level attained, experience in number of school corporations, or previous experience with the North Central Association?The population for the study was the 1,345 public elementary school principals in Indiana. From the population, a random sample of 273 subjects, stratified by eight geographical districts and five categories of school size, was drawn. Usable returns were received from 14.8 of the 273 subjects, 54-.2 percent of the sample.Relationships between the main variables of the study, congruency of principals' perceptions of accreditation with actual North Central Association requirements and acceptability of the concept to the subjects, were tested statistically with Pearson product moment coefficients of correlation. The relationships between the main variables and each level of the potentially monitoring variables noted above were also tested with Pearson correlation coefficients.The main hypothesis of the study, stated in null form to facilitate testing, was rejected at the .01 level of statistical significance (r = +.391 and +.380). A positive relationship not due to chance appeared to exist between the extent to which the principals' perceptions of accreditation procedures were congruent with the actual procedures defined by the North Central Association and the acceptability of voluntary accreditation to the principals. None of the other eighteen hypotheses, which were concerned with relationships between each of the main variables of congruency and acceptability with each of nine potentially monitoring variables, were rejected. A few statistically significant relationships were discovered between some levels of the variables which were investigated for monitorial relationships and the congruency and acceptability measures; but, since statistical significance did not occur consistently among the various levels of each of the potentially monitorial relationships, the null hypotheses relating to these relationships were not rejected.

Thesis (Ed.D.)--Murdoch University, 2007. / Thesis submitted to the Division of Arts. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 290-318).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Texas Christian University, 2009. / Title from dissertation title page (viewed June 2, 2009). Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (D. Min.)--Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.S.)--Medical University of Ohio, 2005. / "In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Biomedical Sciences." Major advisor: Michael J. Dennis. Includes abstract. Document formatted into pages: iii, 82 p. Title from title page of PDF document. Title at ETD Web site: A positron emission tomography (PET) system comparison utilizing the American College of Radiology accreditation phantom. Bibliography: pages 43-44.

Thesis (Ed. D.)--West Virginia University, 2005. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains viii, 658 p. : ill. (some col.). Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 270-275).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Ohio University, June, 2001. / Title from PDF t.p.

abstract: Composition historians have increasingly recognized that local histories help test long-held theories about the development of composition in higher education. As Gretchen Flesher Moon argues, local histories complicate our notions of students, teachers, institutions, and influences and add depth and nuance to the dominant narrative of composition history. Following the call for local histories in rhetoric and composition, this study is a local history of composition at Arizona State University (ASU) from 1885-1985. This study focuses on the institutional influences that shaped writing instruction as the school changed from a normal school to teachers` college, state college, and research university during its first century in existence. Building from archival research and oral histories, this dissertation argues that four national movements in higher education--the normal school movement, the standardization and accreditation movement, the "university-status movement," and the research and tenure movement--played a formative role in the development of writing instruction at Arizona State University. This dissertation, therefore, examines the effects of these movements as they filtered into the writing curriculum at ASU. I argue that faculty and administrators` responses to these movements directly influenced the place of writing instruction in the curriculum, which consequently shaped who took writing courses and who taught them, as well as how, what, and when writing was taught. This dissertation further argues that considering ASU`s history in relation to the movements noted above has implications for composition historians attempting to understand broader developments in composition history during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Notwithstanding ASU`s unique circumstances, these movements had profound effects at institutions across the country, shaping missions, student populations, and institutional expectations. Although ASU`s local history is filled with idiosyncrasies and peculiarities that highlight the school`s distinctiveness, ASU is representative of hundreds of institutions across the country that were influenced by national education movements which are often invisible in the dominant narrative of composition history. As such, this history upholds the goal of local histories by complicating our notions of students, teachers, institutions, and influences and adding depth and nuance to our understanding of how composition developed in institutions of American higher education. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. English 2011