0000000000291219
AUTHOR
Bjørn Stensaker
Handling Uncertainty of Strategic Ambitions—The Use of Organizational Identity as a Risk-Reducing Device
Organizational identity can be designed to reduce the risks of uncertainty about future states of public organizations and the inherent potential issues related to evaluation and assessment. As such, organizational identity may shape a congruent and credible self-representation of the university, where a consistent narrative articulates compliance to diverse institutional frameworks, commitment to organizational distinctiveness, and a sensible rationale for strategic change. By examining the strategic plans of four European universities over a 10-year period of major organizational change, the paper discusses the subtleties of the specific combinations of the three different functions and t…
When mergers fail: a case study on the critical role of external stakeholders in merger initiatives
ABSTRACTOne can, in principle, identify numerous arguments for mergers in higher education (HE), including efficiency, diversity, quality, and regional needs. This diversity can be explained by the growing societal interest in the sector, not least concerning the contributions from HE to society at large. However, research on merger processes has tended to prefer intra- and inter-institutional dynamics within the HE sector, paying less attention to the role of external stakeholders, and their view concerning the arguments for mergers. This paper argues that merger outcomes are heavily dependent on the role and actions taken by external stakeholders. Through the analysis of a failed merger a…
Does It Really Matter? Assessing the Performance Effects of Changes in Leadership and Management Structures in Nordic Higher Education
AbstractUniversities are public organisations, which operate in a highly institutionalised environment. They are heavily dependent on public resources. As such, universities are susceptible to shifts in governance arrangements but are also far from being passive recipients of reform agendas. They face demands from multiple internal constituencies (academics, administrators, students, managers) and from a variety of external stakeholders. This chapter explores the interplay between governance arrangements resulting from policy shifts and university dynamics. It sets the stage for the book, asking the following research questions: (1) what characterises changes in governance regimes in Nordic…
Nordic Higher Education in Flux: System Evolution and Reform Trajectories
AbstractThis chapter provides a brief description of how the four national systems included in this study—Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden—are currently organised and structured. In doing so, it illuminates several specific features such as the types and sizes of the institutions, enrolment patterns, performance measures, and funding. In addition, the chapter gives a snapshot of how higher education systems have evolved historically by shedding light on policy dynamics from the late 1990s to 2013, the baseline period for the FINNUT comparative study, the research project that provides the basis for this edited volume. This is followed by a section describing the aim, methods, theoretica…
Strategizing Identity in Higher Education
Presentation on department page: http://www.uia.no/no/portaler/om_universitetet/oekonomi_og_samfunnsvitenskap/statsvitenskap_og_ledelsesfag/ forskning_isl/isl_working_papers_series There is a growing body of literature shedding light on processes of strategy making within public universities. Yet, to date, only a handful of studies have analysed the role that organizational identity plays in such processes. This paper addresses this knowledge gap, by investigating how identity mediates processes of organizational change across two comprehensive universities based in Northern Europe. Our data and analysis reveal that identity has the potential to provide organizations, like universities, wit…
Strategic Actor-Hood and Internal Transformation
In most European countries, the Nordic region included, higher education (HE) has undergone a profound transformation in the last couple of decades. This process is partly a result of substantial changes in society - such as declining birth rates, an ageing population and the rise of a global knowledge-based economy - in tandem with broad policy efforts aimed at modernising the public sector (Peters & Savoie, 1998) as a means of guaranteeing the future sustainability of the (Nordic) welfare state (Christiansen, Petersen, & Haave, 2005).
Organizational Persistence in Highly Institutionalized Environments: Unpacking the Relation Between Identity and Resilience
AbstractDespite growing academic interest in understanding the conditions under which resilient organizations adapt to challenging circumstances, little attention to date has been paid to the role played by ‘soft’ factors such as identity as an enabler or property of resilient behaviour. In this chapter, we propose that different forms of legitimacy contribute to the framing of acceptable identities affecting the endurance of central elements over time, thus shaping resilience. By splitting up forms of legitimacy and by analysing elements of organizational identity separately, we provide a novel framework that enables a deeper understanding of identity formation processes in complex environ…