Does Market Competition Encourage Strategic Action in the Private Education Sector?

According to the market hypothesis, market forces encourage schoolingorganizations to strategically outsmart their competition in ways that improve the quality of teaching and learning. Based on eighty interviews with private education owners or managers in Toronto, Ontario, we find little evidence that entrepreneurs respond to competition in the way that the theory predicts. Market competition does not inform how entrepreneurs understand their role in the wider education sector or how they make sense of their actions. Instead,entrepreneurs tie their program, hiring, and customer service decisions to an ideological commitment to students, defining themselves as educators. Our data suggest that this perception guides their actions more than market forces. This paper opens the black box of private education organizations, and offers a nuanced addition to mounting research that challenges the connection between market competition and school performance.