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Multi-Level Governance in Universities: Strategy, Structure, Control

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Multi-Level Governance in Universities

Part of the book series: Higher Education Dynamics ((HEDY,volume 47))

Abstract

Governing universities is a multi-level as well as a highly paradoxical endeavor. The featured studies in this book examine critically the multifaceted repercussions of changing governance logics and show how contradictory demands for scholarly peer control, market responsiveness, public policy control, and democratization create governance paradoxes. While a large body of academic literature has been focusing on the external governance of universities, this book shifts the focus on organizations’ internal characteristics, thus contributing to a deeper understanding of the changing governance in universities. The book follows exigent calls for getting back to the heart of organization theory when studying organizational change and turns attention to strategies, structures, and control mechanisms as distinctive but interrelated elements of organizational designs. We take a multi-level approach to explore how universities develop strategies in order to cope with changes in their institutional environment (macro level), how universities implement these strategies in their structures and processes (meso level), and how universities design mechanisms to control the behavior of their members (micro level). As universities are highly complex knowledge-based organizations, their modus operandi, i.e. governing strategies, structures, and controls, needs to be responsive to the multiplicity of demands coming from both inside and outside the organization.

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Acknowledgements

First of all, the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung) deserves our deepest gratitude. Their funding of our research projects on the “economics of sciences” (RePort Grant No. 01PW11018) and “performance indicators in science” (IndiKon Grant No. 01PY13014) provided us with the infrastructure to tackle this international publishing project. In a similar vein, the two editors of Springer’s Higher Education Dynamics Series, Peter Maassen and Johan Müller as well as the publishing team around Yoka Jannsen deserve our appreciation for their support of our idea and the opportunity to develop this edited volume. Of course, we express our sincere gratitude to all the authors who contributed to this joint publication. Without their devotion to the topic and their commitment to the idea, the book would have never come about. Our sincere appreciation is extended to all reviewers and their constructive criticism of the submitted manuscripts. Their straightforward cooperation was a valuable support for us editing this book. Last but not least, we cordially thank Rebekka Stieve and Tanja Giba for proofreading the manuscripts.

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Frost, J., Hattke, F., Reihlen, M. (2016). Multi-Level Governance in Universities: Strategy, Structure, Control. In: Frost, J., Hattke, F., Reihlen, M. (eds) Multi-Level Governance in Universities. Higher Education Dynamics, vol 47. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-32678-8_1

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