Hospitality management education in business schools: insights from Scotland using actor- network theory

This paper employs actor – network theory to examine hospitality management education in Business Schools, using Scotland as a case study. It pursues two objectives: first, to explore how hospitality discipline and knowledge are produced within this context; and second, to analyze its knowledge network in relation to disciplinary boundaries, stakeholder expectations, and institutional demands. Drawing on Latour principle of following the actor, hospitality discipline and knowledge are conceptualized as relational and continuously negotiated through relationship among diverse human and non-human actors with competing interests. Findings drawn from thirteen semi-structured interviews across four Scottish universities show that hospitality discipline and knowledge are increasingly shaped by institutional imperatives such as performance metrics, quality assurance frameworks, and employability agendas often at the expense of disciplinary distinctiveness. Hospitality academics respond by adapting curricula and pedagogical practices to sustain vocational relevance, thereby revealing the intellectual, organizational and social dynamics of hospitality disciplinary identity formation.