0000000000264053
AUTHOR
Joakim Caspersen
Managing mergers – governancing institutional integration
- Despite striking similarities, the adoption and implementation of policy shifts regarding higher education governance vary considerably across the globe, suggesting a mixed picture of diversification and isomorphism both within and across national higher education systems. By unpacking one particular structural reform process, this paper focuses on mergers as both a governance tool and a governance result in higher education. The paper analyzes the strategic decisions taken by Norwegian higher education institutions during 2014 in the light of a proposed national reform to merge institutions in order to enhance quality in higher education. The empirical basis of the paper consists of anal…
Reformer i UH-sektoren. Det muliges kunst
Public sector reform tends to harbour competing ambitions, problems and solutions. Reforms in higher education policy are no exception. They are often multi-faceted phenomena, partly because higher education institutions are complex organizations with wide-ranging expectations and demands from a variety of stakeholders. This chapter argues that higher education institutions cannot ‘organize away’ competing objectives, but rather aim to create organizational designs which help complex institutions to live with complex reforms. The chapter examines the ‘Structural Reform’ in Norwegian higher education and how higher education institutions responded. Launched in April 2015, it resulted in a la…