Metamimesis: Consultants as a Mechanism of Institutional Isomorphism in Higher Education

Colleges and universities across the United States spend billions of dollars a year on consultants, and often, these consultants earn their fees by telling administrators how to be more similar to peer or competitor institutions. This paper seeks to understand the role of consultants in spreading institutional isomorphism across the higher education field. It draws on documentary evidence to ask whether, in cases where change is driven by consultants, it is accurate to say that changes have occurred due to mimetic isomorphism, or whether instead mimetic isomorphism is a convenient excuse enabling Breckert’s (2010, p. 158) “distraction from authorship,” and advances a new model of meta-mimesis in which isomorphic pressures shape the hiring of consultants who themselves disseminate particular practices to the colleges and universities with which they work.