The management of higher education
institutions has changed considerably over the last few
decades. Most analyses in Europe usually focus on how
the autonomy of institutions evolved, how the governance
structure developed, and what kind of management
roles and techniques appeared. Less attention has been
paid to the change of formal organizational structure
which, according to the contingency theory, has a
significant impact on the efficiency and effectiveness
of organizations. There is even less research on these
issues in Central and Eastern European higher education.
In this paper, the evolution of the organizational
structure of Hungarian institutions is analyzed from a
contingency theory perspective. The relationship between
environmental factors (such as size, complexity, and
stability of environment) and organizational responses
(e.g., centralization and decentralization) is examined
