Resumen

URREGO-CEDILLO, Fanny Lucía. Organizational change in private universities within Mexico’s accreditation context. Sinéctica [online]. 2025, n.65, e1725.  Epub 06-Oct-2025. ISSN 2007-7033.  https://doi.org/10.31391/fpst9107.

Institutional and program accreditation has become a mechanism of self-regulation in Mexican higher education, operating within a market-driven logic. Consolidated private universities engage continuously in accreditation processes, strengthening their legitimacy and prestige, while those still striving for such recognition adopt a striving behavior to gain competitive advantages. Given ongoing debates about whether accreditation genuinely drives organizational transformation, this study asks: How does change occur in Mexican university organizations with different levels of institutional consolidation in the context of accreditation? A comparative case study was conducted involving Universidad La Salle Mexico City and Universidad Intercontinental, based on an adapted version of Pettigrew’s contextualist model. Using documentary sources and semi-structured interviews, the study found that accreditation acts as an external pressure to which organizations respond through discretionary internal adaptation. Changes were identified that align with accreditation agency criteria, along with strategic and reactive transformations shaped by resource allocation and internal perceptions of quality. Differences between the two cases are largely explained by the interplay of top-down and bottom-up implementation strategies. The findings suggest that organizational change in this context is complex, nonlinear, and shaped by both external pressures and internal dynamics.

Palabras llave : institutional accreditation; change strategies; private universities in Mexico; Pettigrew’s model; higher education; organizational isomorphism.

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