Differences in influence: different types of university employees compared
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Differences in influence: different types of university employees compared Ton Kallenberg 1 Received: 11 February 2019 / Accepted: 8 June 2020/ # The Author(s) 2020
Abstract
Changes, improvements and innovations in university organisations regularly end up in sluggish processes and get stuck ‘somewhere’ in the organisation. It is argued that cooperation and mutual influencing of work processes between academic and professional employees of different departments can have a positive effect on these innovations. Because little is known about this mutual influence of work processes, research has been conducted on the extent of the experienced and desired influence on different types of university employees’ own work processes and the work processes of other departments. This article reports the results of a survey among different types of employees from universities from three different countries (the Netherlands, Flanders, Denmark), in which four groups of employees have been distinguished (academic staff, professional staff, academic middle managers and educational administrators). The results of the survey (N = 1397) show that the university may be seen as a patchwork in which departments and teams work independently of each other. A comparison between the groups shows that the academic middle managers and educational administrators do experience significant more influence on various processes. It is argued that these groups can play an important role during changes, improvements and innovation processes. Keywords Academic middle manager . Educational administrator . Academic staff . Professional staff . Change . Innovation
Data available on request from the authors The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, [email protected], upon reasonable request.
* Ton Kallenberg [email protected]
1
Faculty of Humanities, Leiden University, Lipsius Building, P.O.Box 9515, 2300 RALeiden, The Netherlands
Tertiary Education and Management
Introduction Within universities, many initiatives are being taken to change, improve and innovate. These initiatives not only concerns changes, improvements or innovations in the educational (learning) process (innovations in lectures, modules or curriculum) but also around the educational process (innovations in educational support or educational conditional processes). At the faculty level these initiatives are mostly undertaken from subject-specific and educational ambitions and considerations. At the central level, these initiatives also have a strategic character to distinguish the organization in a positive way from national and international competitors and/or to respond to the changing world of higher education (Kallenberg 2013). While improvements and innovations seem to be coordinated and structured, the reality is inflexible and they regularly end up in sluggish processes and get stuck ‘somewhere’ in the organization (Buller 2015; Kallenberg 2016a). There are several explanations for these proces
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