Organization and Governance of Universities
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Organization and Governance of Universities Ivar Bleikliea and Maurice Koganb a
Department of Administration and Organisation Theory, University of Bergen, Christiesgate 17, Bergen N-5007, Norway. E-mail: [email protected] b Professor Emeritus of Government, Brunel University, UK.
The article analyses how the dominant ideals about the actual organizational patterns of university governance have changed over the past few decades away from the classical notion of the university as a republic of scholars towards the idea of the university as a stakeholder organization. In this article, we first look at some general supranational trends, often assumed to influence developments on a global scale. Then, we present some ideas about change processes in universities and academic organizations and analyse how they may help us understand how change may be promoted or limited by the characteristics of such processes. In the following section, we present some research findings about national variation regarding the extent to which changes have taken place in a comparative crossnational perspective. Finally, we discuss how change and variation may be understood in terms of the concept of higher education regimes. Higher Education Policy (2007) 20, 477–493. doi:10.1057/palgrave.hep.8300167 Keywords: governance; organization; organizational change; higher education institutions; higher education regimes
Introduction The dominant ideals about the organization and governance of universities have changed over the last few decades. The way in which organizational and decision-making structures within universities are justified are informed by two broad set of ideas about university governance. According to the first, we may consider the university as a republic of scholars whereas the second regards the university as a stakeholder organization. In the former, institutional autonomy and academic freedom are seen as two sides of the same coin — which means that leadership and decision making are based on collegial decisions made by independent scholars. In the latter, institutional autonomy is considered a basis for strategic decision making by leaders who are assumed to see it as their primary task to satisfy the interests of major stakeholders and where the voice of academics within the institutions is but one among several stakeholders. Academic freedom is therefore circumscribed by the interests of other stakeholders, and decision making is taking place within more hierarchical
Ivar Bleiklie and Maurice Kogan Organization and Governance of Universities
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structures designed to provide leaders the authority to make and enforce strategic decisions within the organization. Whereas power is supposed to be vested in the professoriate both regarding major decisions and the management of daily affairs according to the first ideal, it is supposed to be vested in stakeholders when major decisions are to be made and in leaders and strong managerial structures in connection with day-to-day management. In this paper, we shall fir
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