By Dr. Vlad Krotov
My first accreditation mentor, a business school dean hired to take our business school through AACSB accreditation, says something along the following lines: It’s better to be an unaccredited school than to start an accreditation project and fail at it. That statement stayed with me throughout my career, and I often share it when mentoring schools pursuing initial AACSB accreditation.
At first glance, this statement may sound overly dramatic. However, many experienced accreditation professionals quietly understand why it contains a great deal of truth. Business school accreditation is not simply an internal quality improvement initiative. Once a school publicly announces that it is pursuing accreditation from organizations such as AACSB International, EFMD Global, or AMBA/BGA, it creates expectations among faculty, students, alumni, employers, governing boards, and university leadership. A failed accreditation initiative can damage institutional credibility and create internal skepticism toward future improvement efforts.
Ironically, one of the biggest threats to accreditation success is rarely discussed openly: leadership turnover. Accreditation projects are highly vulnerable to disruptions caused by dean turnover, accreditation director departures, faculty champion burnout, institutional memory loss, and momentum collapse before peer review visits. While schools often focus heavily on technical compliance with accreditation standards, many accreditation failures are actually rooted in organizational instability and poor knowledge management. Schools that successfully navigate these risks usually invest in strong processes, embedded accreditation cultures, centralized documentation systems, dashboards, and external consulting support that preserve continuity even during periods of institutional change.
Accreditation Projects Are More Fragile Than They Appear
From the outside, accreditation projects often appear highly structured and stable. Schools develop strategic plans, establish Assurance of Learning (AOL) systems, create committees, assign responsibilities, and produce detailed timelines that may span several years. These visible structures create the impression that accreditation is an orderly and institutionalized process.
In reality, however, many accreditation initiatives are far more fragile than they appear. Behind the formal structures, the success of the project often depends on a surprisingly small number of individuals who carry the initiative forward through persistence, expertise, and institutional influence. In many cases, the accreditation effort relies heavily on:
- A motivated dean who champions the initiative
- An experienced accreditation director or assistant/associate dean who coordinates operations
- Faculty champions who maintain engagement of other faculty and staff across departments
When even one of these individuals leaves the institution, the entire accreditation effort can become destabilized. Deadlines begin slipping, assessment activities lose momentum, faculty participation weakens, and strategic priorities shift. In some cases, accreditation projects that appeared healthy for years suddenly enter periods of confusion and stagnation.
Risk 1: Dean Turnover and Shifting Institutional Priorities
A dean often serves as the political, financial, and strategic sponsor of an accreditation initiative. The dean secures resources, persuades faculty to participate in assessment activities, communicates the importance of accreditation to university leadership, and maintains institutional momentum during difficult phases of the process. Without strong executive sponsorship, accreditation initiatives can quickly lose visibility and institutional support.
The challenge is that business school dean turnover is extremely common. Accreditation projects frequently span five to seven years, while dean tenures are often much shorter. As a result, many schools experience one or even multiple leadership transitions during a single accreditation cycle.
An incoming dean may:
- Have different strategic priorities
- Question the value of accreditation
- Redirect budgets toward other initiatives
- Reorganize committees and reporting structures
- Replace accreditation leadership
- Delay or pause accreditation activities
The effects of these changes are not always immediately visible. In many business schools, accreditation momentum gradually erodes over time. Faculty members become uncertain about institutional priorities, committee participation declines, and long-term accreditation-related projects lose direction. Even when the accreditation initiative formally continues, the internal energy behind it may weaken significantly.
In some cases, new leadership may fully support accreditation but still unintentionally create disruption by restructuring processes or introducing new priorities before understanding the historical logic behind existing systems. Accreditation work depends heavily on continuity, and even well-intentioned leadership transitions can generate organizational instability.
Risk 2: Accreditation Director Turnover and Institutional Memory Loss
Many schools underestimate how much operational knowledge resides inside the head of a single accreditation director or assistant/associate dean in charge of an accreditation project. These individuals often serve as the institutional “connective tissue” that links together faculty qualifications, Assurance of Learning (AOL) processes, strategic planning documentation, and other accreditation processes.
Experienced accreditation directors typically understand:
- How faculty qualification classifications were interpreted historically
- Where prior assessment evidence is stored
- Why certain processes were designed in specific ways
- Which peer review recommendations require ongoing attention
- How metrics were calculated in prior reports
- Which faculty members are supportive or resistant to accreditation activities
When an accreditation director leaves abruptly, schools often discover that years of institutional knowledge disappear with them. The replacement may inherit incomplete spreadsheets, poorly organized files, missing documentation, unclear timelines, and fragmented committee structures. In some cases, the institution may not even fully understand how prior reports were assembled.
At that point, the school is no longer simply managing accreditation. It is managing organizational memory loss.
This problem becomes especially severe when schools rely on highly customized or informal systems maintained primarily by one individual. If data definitions, reporting processes, and assessment procedures are not properly documented, institutional continuity becomes highly vulnerable to personnel changes.
Risk 3: Faculty Champion Burnout and Disengagement
Almost every successful accreditation initiative depends on a small group of highly engaged faculty members who actively support the process. These faculty champions often lead Assurance of Learning (AOL) efforts, coordinate curriculum mapping exercises, develop assessment rubrics, mentor colleagues, and advocate for continuous improvement practices across the school.
However, accreditation work is time-consuming and often administratively exhausting. Faculty champions frequently balance accreditation responsibilities alongside teaching, research, advising, and service obligations. Over time, many experience burnout, frustration, or disengagement.
In addition, faculty turnover is a normal part of university life. Faculty champions may:
- Retire
- Accept positions at other institutions
- Go on sabbatical
- Shift their priorities toward research
- Lose motivation after years of administrative work
When these individuals leave, accreditation systems often continue formally but lose much of their energy and momentum. Meetings still occur, reports are still submitted, and committees continue to exist. Yet the deeper commitment to continuous improvement gradually fades.
This creates one of the most dangerous forms of accreditation failure: the illusion of compliance. On the surface, processes appear functional. In reality, the institution may simply be performing accreditation rituals without meaningful engagement or improvement.
Risk 4: Momentum Collapse Before Peer Review Visits
Leadership turnover becomes particularly dangerous during the final stages leading up to a peer review visit. This phase requires schools to present a coherent institutional narrative supported by consistent evidence collected over multiple years.
At this stage, schools must:
- Show alignment between mission, strategy, and outcomes
- Demonstrate continuous improvement
- Defend historical decisions
- Present coherent assessment systems
- Provide evidence of sustained faculty engagement
A school may technically possess the required data, but without the individuals who understand the historical context behind the systems, the accreditation story can quickly become fragmented, inconsistent, and tentative.
Peer review teams often detect these problems very quickly. Warning signs may include:
- Different leaders providing conflicting explanations
- Poorly understood metrics
- Disconnected assessment activities
- Strategic initiatives lacking continuity
- Evidence appears to be assembled hastily before the visit
Indeed, many accreditation failures are not caused by poor educational quality. Instead, they emerge because the institution cannot clearly demonstrate continuity, consistency, and organizational improvement over time.
Managing Accreditation Risk Through Organizational Continuity
This section discusses several major strategies for reducing accreditation risk through organizational continuity, including building robust and repeatable processes, embedding accreditation into everyday institutional operations, centralizing accreditation data through dashboards and integrated documentation systems, and using external consultants as long-term continuity partners. Together, these approaches help institutions preserve momentum, maintain institutional knowledge, and create accreditation systems that remain stable and sustainable across multiple accreditation cycles.
Building Robust Processes
One of the most effective ways to reduce accreditation risk is to build robust and repeatable institutional processes that do not depend excessively on specific individuals. Many accreditation failures occur because critical activities exist primarily as informal practices maintained by a small number of experienced administrators or faculty champions. When these individuals leave, the processes themselves often weaken or disappear entirely.
Strong accreditation systems require clearly defined workflows, responsibilities, timelines, and governance structures. Schools should establish formal processes and committees in relation to the following:
- Faculty qualification tracking
- Assurance of learning
- Curriculum review
- Strategic planning processes
- Assessment collection and reporting
- Continuous improvement discussions
- Overall accreditation management
These processes should be designed to continue functioning even during leadership transitions. The goal is to ensure that accreditation activities become institutional habits rather than temporary projects driven by individual personalities.
An important component of building robust processes is documentation. Well-designed processes must be supported by clear documentation explaining how activities are performed, how decisions are made, and how data is interpreted. The role of documentation systems and centralized data management will be discussed in more detail later in this section.
Embedding Accreditation Into Everyday Institutional Operations
The most resilient schools eventually reach a point where accreditation is no longer treated as a separate initiative operating alongside normal institutional activities. Instead, accreditation becomes embedded within the everyday operations of the business school.
In mature systems:
- Assessment becomes part of routine academic practice
- Faculty qualification tracking is used for evaluation, tenure and promotion decisions, making the processes continuous rather than episodic
- Strategic planning becomes an important annual or even quarterly activity, where strategic plans are reported on and updated regularly
- Committees are formed and regressed on an annual basis
- Data collection becomes standardized and ongoing
- Continuous improvement discussions become culturally normalized
This level of institutionalization is critical for surviving leadership turnover. When accreditation exists only as a standalone project, transitions in leadership can easily disrupt momentum. However, when accreditation processes are integrated into the operational fabric of the business school, organizational continuity becomes much easier to maintain.
Embedding accreditation into daily operations also reduces the likelihood of “last-minute compliance behavior,” where schools scramble to assemble evidence shortly before peer review visits. Instead, evidence generation and continuous improvement occur naturally as part of normal institutional activity.
Centralizing Accreditation Data Through Dashboards and Integrated Systems
Strong documentation and centralized data systems play a critical role in preserving institutional memory during periods of organizational change. Many schools remain heavily dependent on scattered spreadsheets, disconnected files, email archives, and locally maintained records that become difficult to interpret when personnel changes occur.
Schools that successfully manage accreditation continuity typically invest in centralized systems that preserve:
- Historical assessment evidence
- Faculty qualification records
- Strategic planning metrics
- Accreditation timelines
- Committee decisions
- Continuous improvement documentation
- Prior peer review feedback and responses
These systems make accreditation processes more transparent, visible, and sustainable across the organization.
Without strong documentation, new administrators and faculty members may struggle to understand prior institutional decisions, leading to inconsistency, duplication of effort, and loss of continuity.
Increasingly, schools are also using dashboards and integrated accreditation reporting systems to improve visibility and accessibility of accreditation data. Centralized dashboards can help leadership monitor progress, identify gaps, and maintain continuity even during periods of administrative transition.
Using External Consultants as Continuity Partners
External consultants can also serve an important stabilizing function for accreditation initiatives. Many university leaders view consultants primarily as technical experts who help schools interpret accreditation standards or prepare reports. While these functions are important, experienced consultants often provide another critical benefit: organizational continuity.
Long-term consultants frequently maintain knowledge of:
- Prior strategic discussions
- Prior peer review recommendations
- Earlier accreditation reports
- Assessment methodologies
- Institutional commitments made over time
- Previously identified weaknesses and improvement plans
During periods of leadership turnover, consultants may become one of the few remaining sources of long-term process memory. This continuity can be especially valuable when new deans, accreditation directors, or committee members are attempting to understand the historical context behind accreditation systems.
Consultants can also help business schools maintain momentum during periods of uncertainty by providing stability, external accountability, and strategic direction. In that sense, external consultants often function not only as advisors but also as institutional continuity partners who help preserve organizational learning across accreditation cycles.
Conclusion
Many schools assume that accreditation failure occurs because accreditation standards are too difficult or require substantial resources. In reality, the more common problem is organizational fragility. Accreditation projects often depend too heavily on a small number of individuals whose departure can destabilize the entire initiative. And in higher education, leadership turnover is not an exception. It is inevitable. Thus, the schools that succeed are not necessarily the schools with the largest budgets or the most sophisticated reports. They are the schools that build accreditation systems capable of surviving institutional change, preserving organizational memory, and maintaining momentum and continuity even during periods of leadership changes.