Introducing the Complexity of Educational Diversification

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Processing societal expectations:entrepreneurship initiative decision-making at a research university

Abstract Deploying systems-theoretical conceptuality, this paper improves understanding of the organisational consequences of the intensified societal engagement of a research university. Aligning its work with Luhmannian organisational analysis, it addresses the dynamic interplay between two modes of administrative decision-making communication, namely, the traditional professional administration and the New-Public-Management-oriented (NPM) managerial techniques. Our research observes how the politico-economic conditions of the society translate into the university’s decisions concerning an initiative to engage in start-up entrepreneurship. The article contributes to higher education literature by showing that the university’s professional administration is a discrete organisational function internally differentiated into specialised administrative branches, each of which operates according to a sense-making regime associated with its primary societal system reference, such as education, science and the economy. The article also demonstrates the structurally conditioned differences in branch-specific temporalisations of the entrepreneurial initiative during decision-making. Inspired by the Luhmannian view on temporality, we demonstrate how administrative decisions synchronise the varied structural time horizons within the university’s professional administration. Focus on temporality in decision-making thus allows us to see how the NPM-inspired managerial techniques are operationalised in administrative communication at universities. Consequently, the paper argues that university administration is a complex dynamic entity, which varyingly aligns itself to national policy scripts, and only selectively enacts features of a global trend known as NPM

Emergence of a potentialising organisation in University self-governance:temporalisations in strategies

Abstract Referring to failures in policy-driven public governance research this paper looks at strategising in higher education. It expands horizons for understanding university strategies in a more nuanced way than hitherto has been done. Deploying systems theory, it shows how different temporalities co-exist in strategies and how their change reflects the university’s capacity to meet future contingencies. Extending the current research on strategising, the paper uses the present’s past, the present’s future, the future’s present and the future’s future as temporal categories to understand strategies. It shows how strategies evolve from traditional linear planning orientation to a novel potentiality-seeking mode with unique meanings attached to unknown futures. It claims that universities develop such responsive contingency awareness to construct a leeway for their self-governance in the face of unexpected future conditions. This change is characterised by the emergence of a potentialising organisation seeking to turn indeterminant futures into its developmental resources

Decidedly undecided change:producing spielraum for organizational periphery

Abstract Extant strategy practice and process studies highlight the duality of change and stability, regarding strategic change as an accomplishment of both movement and recursiveness, which are also displayed by the observed difference in strategy-making between the organizational centre and its periphery. In this study, we examine the emergence of new strategic themes and related organizing in two research universities’ organizational peripheries. By adopting a systems-theoretical view and drawing on Luhmannian organizational analysis, we are able to examine the co-existence of stability and change in each communication event, aiming to reduce complexity but also giving rise to novel complexities, providing ‘spielraum’ for peripheral development activities. The study contributes to the SAPP-oriented stream of studies on strategic change in general and emergent strategy studies in particular by providing an alternative theoretical viewpoint on the centre-periphery dynamics in strategic change and showing how organizations un/decide on new strategic themes, and through what dynamics they might become introduced and organized in established organizations

Saami Educational and Knowledge Claims in School Systems of the Nordic Countries

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