Patterns of strategies in Swiss higher education institutions

This paper contributes to the debate on strategic capability of academic organizations by presenting three case studies of Swiss Higher Education Institutions. Strategies are conceived as instruments by which universities manage their organizational processes and deal with their environments in order to select a portfolio of activities and find an appropriate position in the higher education system. Our findings show that strategies are at the same time a matter of intentions and actions: first, they relate to current HEI's position within the national Higher education system—and to relevant normative models—as well as to the degree of institutional autonomy. Second, even within participatory governance structures, organizational strategies appear to be initiated by the academic administrators, then substantially shaped and subscribed by academics at different stages. In this perspective, the dynamic relation of formal and informal processes holds diverse functions from making academics accept a strategy, to controlling and coordinating decentralized organizational structure

Strategizing Identity in Higher Education

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, with substantial flexibility during strategic change processes, not only as a tool for legitimating change in the eyes of internal and external constituencies, but also as a strategic mechanism for coping with an increasingly turbulent and volatile external environment. The paper is part of recent re-discovering of the role played by the more tacit dimensions of organizations (culture, identity, logics, etc.) operating within highly institutionalised environments

A Multi-level Approach to Differentiated Integration: Distributive Policy, National Heterogeneity and Actors in the European Research Area

This paper argues that differentiated integration can be understood more thoroughly by using a multi-level approach that conceives of the nation state as an aggregate of partly autonomous subunits and actors. The participation of such components in European integration is influenced by a combination of type of policy through which integration is pursued, national heterogeneity, their loosely coupledness within national systems. By examining the case of the European Research Area, we document patterns of differentiated integration across governance levels and discuss how the following factors shape these patterns: the competitive nature of the European distributive instruments, stark variation in national and sub-national material conditions and in the governance of national research systems, as well as the normative and cognitive factors specific to the research policy sector. The conceptual and policy-based implications to the debate on European differentiated integration are discussed

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 the implications for institutional leadership

Scholarly or socially relevant? An examination of European academic associations

The academic profession has been long recognized as a pivotal source of belief and identity alongside the discipline and the institution of belonging. However, the ways in which academics as a professional group organize themselves towards common objectives that possibly transcend systems, institutions and disciplines, has not been explored so far. Therefore, the goal of this article is investigate how academics organize themselves in the pursuit of their professional, scientific and scholarly interests outside the university setting and across national higher education systems. We address this question by studying European academic associations. Drawing from World Polity Theory, studies on Professions and Professionalism, as well as on Interest Groups, we derive expectations as to the growth in number of academic associations and their aims. Based on the analysis of 324 associations, our findings show that assuming that the founding of academic associations is related primarily to the emergence or presence of international organizations needs to be revisited, as foundations appear to be affected by other contingent events as well. As to their aims, there is more variety than usually posited and five types of academic associations can be identified. We discuss the implications of on-going European integration in higher education and research from theory and policy perspectives

Strategy as evolutionary path: Five higher education institutions on the move

Strategy in universities has been a controversial issue in scholarly debate. On one side higher education institutions have been considered specific organizations whose essential nature hinders strategy and the coordination and control functions thereby entailed. On the other side, new public management reforms requiring strategic capability to be developed have been the object of critical scrutiny with respect to their underlying ideology and their implications for the functioning of academia. Against this backdrop, this research aims at contributing to this discussion by providing an analytical framework in order to observe strategy by presenting the analysis of five higher education institutions. Strategy is conceived as a coherent pattern of actions at the organizational level, which must be recognized as such by relevant actors. This definition allows to look retrospectively at the combination of deliberate and emergent strategies that produce organizational undertaking as a continuous stream of actions that are consistent over time. At the same time, two important dimensions are addressed: internally, actors’ convergence on strategy making; externally, institutional positioning within the national higher educational system. University strategies are investigated by means of an embedded multiple case study based on the Swiss system: five higher education institutions have been selected to reflect variety according to institutional types (three cantonal universities, one federal institute of technology, one university of applied sciences) to size, age, mission, budget and research intensity over a period of twelve years, from 1996 to 2008. Different patterns of strategic actions are observed according to three aspects: first, the five higher education institutions developed distinctive strategies focusing on different core activities. In this perspective, research represents a key area, however, strategies emphasizing education, governance structures and finances have also been detected. Second, strategies reflect different degrees of coherence, measured by looking at the consistency of actions across the different key activities. Strategy as a coherent action is directly connected to the interplay of actors: the five cases reflect a high degree of variety, shaped by governance structures which frame the context within which managers, academics and policy makers take action. However, the relation between actors and governance is reciprocal, as the first may be able to mobilize the second by triggering and sustaining a change of structure in order to support their own interests. The examination of university positioning has portrayed different institutional trajectories: all five schools have changed their position within the higher education system, repositioning in a distinctive niche. In so doing, they have displayed different degrees of agency by transforming strategically their context to acquire resources

Patterns of strategies in Swiss higher education institutions

This paper contributes to the debate on strategic capability of academic organizations by presenting three case studies of Swiss Higher Education Institutions. Strategies are conceived as instruments by which universities manage their organizational processes and deal with their environments in order to select a portfolio of activities and find an appropriate position in the higher education system. Our findings show that strategies are at the same time a matter of intentions and actions: first, they relate to current HEI’s position within the national Higher education system – and to relevant normative models – as well as to the degree of institutional autonomy. Second, even within participatory governance structures, organizational strategies appear to be initiated by the academic administrators, then substantially shaped and subscribed by academics at different stages. In this perspective, the dynamic relation of formal and informal processes holds diverse functions from making academics accept a strategy, to controlling and coordinating decentralized organizational structures