ABSTRACT

The last two decades have witnessed an explosion in the growth and sophistication of post-secondary education (PSE) marketing. Education scholars have taken notice, both decrying such developments and studying its emerging characteristics. However, to date, empirical studies of PSE marketing have focused on mainstream secular organizations. Few researchers have sought to examine how Christian colleges and universities (CCUs) present themselves via promotional materials. This limits our understandings of how PSE marketing has evolved in different segments of the field. Through this study, we conduct an exploratory thematic analysis of the home web pages of 93 Canadian CCUs. We find that, depending on their field positioning, this organizational population varies in the extent to which it leverages religiosity to construct and communicate their identities. We make sense of these dynamics through the ‘nested fields’ perspective within organization studies.

摘要

在过去的二十年中，专上教育（PSE）营销的增长和复杂性得到了爆发。教育学者注意到了这种发展并研究了其新兴特征。然而，迄今为止，PSE营销的实证研究都集中在主流世俗组织上。很少有研究人员试图研究基督教高等学校（CCU）如何通过宣传材料来展示自己。这限制了我们对PSE营销在该领域不同领域如何发展的理解。通过这项研究，我们对93个加拿大CCU的主页进行了探索性主题分析。我们发现，取决于他们的现场定位，该组织人群在利用宗教信仰来构造和传达其身份的程度上有所不同。我们通过组织研究中的“嵌套领域”视角来理解这些动态。