Abstract
The article analyses how steering and organisation of German and Norwegian universities have developed after both countries with Humboldtian university traditions introduced New Public Management-inspired governance reforms during the first decade of the 21st century. The article outlines different organisation ideals and values involved in university governance. It suggests a perspective that focuses on the ambiguous and gradual nature of change in governance arrangements towards corporate enterprise ideals. It describes governance reform and changes in central government regulation, system characteristics, and organisation and governance of higher education institutions. Despite similar ideological, political and social pressures German universities resisted change for a longer period of time than Norwegian ones. As for all over change towards a corporate enterprise ideal Germany has moved towards hybrid arrangements, whereas Norway has experienced a reconfiguration of state steering. However, long-standing tradition rather than reform capacity seems to explain the differences.
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Notes
In some European nations, as in the Norwegian case, governance reforms in the 2000s are regarded as part of the Bologna process. However, the fact that certain national governments have chosen to bundle governance reforms together with their national Bologna reforms does not mean that these belong ‘naturally’ together or that one is the consequence of the other. Although we focus on reforms from 2000 on, we are aware of the fact that NPM-ideology in higher education reforms is not a recent phenomenon, but dates back at least to the 1980s (Paradeise et al., 2009).
The communities may be organised in different ways, for example, as a chair-faculty system around professorial chair holders and apprentice students or in disciplinary departments consisting of several professors and students (Ben-David and Zloczower, 1991).
In the German case with the beginning of the 1970s the other status groups (teaching and research assistants, students and non-academic staff) gained some formal rights of participation. These were legally fixed by federal framework law (Hochschulrahmengesetz: HRG) in 1976. According to a decision of the constitutional court, the dominant position of the professors was not shaken and the involvement of more groups in university governance — the so-called ‘democratisation’ of the universities — only brought about more veto powers and a lack of accountability for the results of the endless loops of decision-making processes in the many university committees and sub-committees.
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Bleiklie, I., Lange, S. Competition and Leadership as Drivers in German and Norwegian University Reforms. High Educ Policy 23, 173–193 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1057/hep.2010.3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/hep.2010.3