Are accreditation signals being recognised? Business professionals’ awareness and views on accredited university business programs

In an increasingly global educational environment, business school accreditations are used by institutions as a signal of quality, credibility, and reliability. While academics’ perspectives on accreditation are well documented, the perspective of the external stakeholder group, ‘business professional’, is scarce. This research addresses this gap by empirically exploring business professionals’ perspectives regarding international and professional discipline-based accreditation of university business schools. A structured online survey attracted 110 valid responses from business professionals. A Bayesian Network (BN) model (implemented in Netica software) was developed for statistical analysis of the dataset, permitting the nuanced characterisation of complex interrelationships between the variables of interest. The findings indicate a low level of awareness of international accreditation among the survey participants. This questions the effectiveness of these accreditations as quality signals. Nevertheless, both international and professional accreditation were perceived as beneficial for employment and career prospects, and membership of professional bodies was seen as advantageous for networking and professional development. The practical implications suggest that information on accreditation, including quality indicators and benefits, could be more consistently and iteratively communicated to stakeholders. Furthermore, professional bodies and business schools could explore additional opportunities to enhance awareness about the value and career-related benefits of professional body memberships.