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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Images of higher education: developing and administering translation studies programmes in Germany

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This paper will draw on Gareth Morgan’s management classic, Images of Organization, to explore how translation studies programmes are developed and administered at Mainz University in Germany. Morgan identifies various metaphors that can be used to interpret the ways in which organisations are structured and managed. In accordance with his suggestions for reading organisational life, I shall first provide a survey of how his entire range of metaphors can be applied to the management of translation studies programmes, and then proceed to integrate the insights gained by building two detailed storylines. Since there can be no single ‘correct’ interpretive frame, I shall create two alternative storylines based on the metaphors of organisations as machines and as organisms. My focus will be on the role played by two types of documents, assessment regulations and module handbooks, and by the university bodies involved in their production and administration. While Mainz University will serve as an example, the ...