No abstract

With the implementation of the new steering model (NSM), universities should align themselves more closely with management principles. Especially, the heads of faculties must cope with higher demands of management tasks. As a result, more management positions are established and organizational structures are changed. To shed light on how structures change, we investigate the faculties of one comprehensive and one technical university within Germany – which are similar in many factors – using the contingency approach. Information about context factors and the number and type of established positions is gained from a systematic analysis of their homepages. Dimensions of the organizational structure are used to interpret the results. Our comparison shows that the technical university, which has established itself as an entrepreneurial university, orients its organizational structure more towards the NSM than the comprehensive university, which is reflected by more support positions in faculty management. Thus, the profile and type of the university seem to be crucial context factors, while our study revealed that the number of students of the faculties and the number or type of degree programs are less crucial context factors.

One of the main discussions in higher education is whether universities have appropriately adapted their structures and processes in response to the New Public Management (NPM) reforms and the Bologna Process. There are no profound empirical investigations on the extent to which faculties take elements of the reforms into account in terms of administrative processes and organizational structure dimensions according to the bureaucracy approach. This article examines how German faculty managers perceive bureaucratization processes by evaluating organizational structure dimensions. For this, we interpret interviews with 16 experts of German faculties through qualitative content analysis to extract in-depth manifestations of these dimensions. Our results show that the dimensions formalization, standardization, specialization, configuration, internal support functions, team self-coordination, and (de)centralization reflect elements of the NPM and Bologna reforms in the perception of faculty staff. These dimensions are complemented by decoupling mechanisms, i.e., discrepancies between formal structure and common practice, which hinder reform implementation. Besides, we identify elements of post-NPM approaches like network governance and neo-Weberianism supplementing reform implementation. We highlight (dys)functional effects of the dimensions by assessing them with criteria of effectiveness. Our results foster a deeper understanding of faculty organization by demonstrating levels of bureaucratization using profound examples of the interviewed persons.

After the latest reforms in higher education according to the NPM (New Public Management), the autonomy of universities and the organizational perspective have been strengthened. According to predominantly used neo-institutional research in higher education, organizations adapt their structure by the pressure of legitimacy from outside. So the research question arises, if universities are actors and if so, what are the influencing factors on organizational structure. The goal is to point out the reasons for organizational design and if they act on their own or only adapt changes by pressure from outside. For this, interviews with 16 experts in faculty management are conducted and interpreted using qualitative content analysis according to Mayring and Grounded Theory. The results show that it is possible for faculties to change and design their organizational structures. There is staff responsible for this task. They work in the faculty between management and administration. Reasons to change the organizational structure are not caused by legitimacy. Much more, the new tasks cause a real need for new positions. This argumentation is not in line with neo-institutionalism. So the results strengthen the thesis that neo-institutionalism is not sufficient anymore to explain the organizational change of universities.