کد مقاله | کد نشریه | سال انتشار | مقاله انگلیسی | نسخه تمام متن |
---|---|---|---|---|
553902 | 873559 | 2009 | 9 صفحه PDF | دانلود رایگان |
For a business school, the selection of its peer schools is an important component of its International Association for Management Education (AACSB) (re)accreditation process. A school typically compares itself with other institutions having similar structural and identity-based attributes. The identification of peer schools is critical and can have a significant impact on a business school's accreditation efforts. For many schools the selection of comparable peer schools is a judgmental process. This study offers an alternative means for selection; a quantitative technique called Kohonen's Self-Organizing Map (SOM) network for clustering. In this research, we first demonstrate the capability of SOM as a clustering tool to visually uncover the relationships among AACSB-accredited schools. The results suggest that SOM is an effective and robust clustering method. Then, we compare the results of SOM with that of other clustering methods, such as K-means, Factor/K-means analysis, and kth nearest neighbor procedure. The objective of this study is to demonstrate that a two-dimensional SOM map can be used to integrate the results of various clustering methods and, thus, act as a visual decision support tool.
Journal: Decision Support Systems - Volume 47, Issue 1, April 2009, Pages 51–59