Detailed View

Export the results of this page in detailed view as PDF
V. Foreign Higher Education and Education Systems, International Relations, Bilateral Relations
B. Essays, Commentaries, Statements
Author RAMIREZ, Francisco O. (CHRISTENSEN, Tom)
Title The formalization of the university : rules, roots, and routes / Francisco O. Ramirez ; Tom Christensen
Publication year 2013
Source/Footnote In: Higher education. - 65 (2013) 6, S. 695 - 708
Inventory number 34633
Keywords Ausland : Norwegen : einzelne Hochschulen ; Ausland : USA : einzelne Hochschulen ; Hochschule : Verwaltung allgemein
Abstract This article examines changes in the formal organization of two universities and two schools within these universities, the University of Oslo and Stanford University. We focus on role differentiation, rule formation, and resource seeking structures and describe organizational developments along these dimensions. We find that both these universities travel similar routes involving greater role differentiation, rule formation, and resource seeking activities. Both universities more explicitly function as organizational actors influenced by a global environment that favors the more socially embedded and the more managed university. However, we also find persistent differences in how these universities respond to the global environment, differences that reflect the different historical roots of different universities. A tradition of professorial self-governance at the University of Oslo, for example, fosters greater resistance to the managed university ideal. The latter emerges earlier and develops to a greater degree at Stanford University. We conclude that university routes are influenced both by common (now globalized) rules of the game and by their different organizational roots. We use ideas from the neo-institutional and path dependency perspectives to make sense of both growing commonalities and persistent differences. (HRK / Abstract übernommen) Christensen, Tom, E-Mail: tom.christensen@stv.uio.no