International student mobility has become an integral part of higher education development worldwide. While research has examined individual benefits of overseas study and its macro-level impacts, the contributions of returning graduates to institutional development remain underexplored. This study investigates how returnee faculty contribute to university development. Drawing on a dialectical perspective and resource dependency theory, we initially hypothesized that distinctions between returnee faculty and locally-trained colleagues would generate tensions that ultimately drive university transformation. Through a qualitative case study at a Vietnamese public university, we conducted in-depth interviews with 18 returnee faculty and 4 administrators, supplemented by participant observations and analysis of institutional documents. Our findings reveal unexpected dynamics. While returnee faculty demonstrate distinctive characteristics in research approaches, pedagogical practices, and service expectations compared to local colleagues, these differences rarely translate into organizational change. Institutional factors—notably organizational arbitrariness and state-regulated evaluation mechanisms—effectively neutralize potential dialectical tensions. While returnee faculty frequently propose constructive initiatives, their implementation and institutionalization depend heavily on management decisions. Most significantly, we discovered that returnee faculty tend to orient their professional contributions toward disciplinary communities beyond institutional boundaries. This challenges fundamental assumptions about returnee faculty as institutional change agents. Our study contributes to organizational change theory by demonstrating how institutional structures can neutralize rather than amplify inter-group tensions, and advances understanding of academic identity by revealing how returnee faculty navigate between international professional standards and local institutional constraints. These findings have important implications for policies aimed at leveraging returnee faculty for university development.
Chau et al. (Wed,) studied this question.