During the past few decades traditional state-centred governing arrangements have been critiqued and replaced by alternative modes of governance. Higher education is one of the public sectors where such shifts in governance have been seen. As a consequence of the reshuffl ing of authority and responsibilities across the different levels in Dutch higher education, universities as organizations have become important foci of attention in the system ' s coordination. The main question addressed in this article is to what extent we can speak of an organizational transformation of Dutch universities. Based on conceptual ideas from researchers such as Hinings (1996), Ferlie et al. (1996) , and Brunsson and Sahlin-Andersson (2000) , we use a framework that focuses attention on the concepts of the construction of identity, hierarchy and rationality to systematically analyse the various aspects of transformations of professional organizations.

The expectations and demands with respect to teaching and research have been changing for universities due to changes in their institutional environments. Born out of changing national research policies and modern governance arrangements, efficiency, effectiveness and output-oriented cultures have become increasingly important. In this article we ask the question of what the consequences of these changing institutional environments are for the teaching-research nexus as experienced by academics at universities. We explore the changing practices of teaching and research in eight research units in research-led universities in England and The Netherlands. The sources of our empirical investigation are documentary evidence as well as interview data from 48 academics in biotechnology and medieval history. Our findings suggest that teaching and research are increasingly falling apart as two distinct activities. Success or failure in research acquisition and performance assessments has serious implications for the work portfolios in terms of teaching and research load of the research units.

New Public Management reforms have fostered universities to focus on performance and competition which has resulted in different pressures to perform and disruption of strong teaching-research balance at universities. The imbalanced division of teaching research workloads may be gendered and can strengthen the differences in research productivity among male and female academics. This study uses survey data of Dutch academics carried out in 2015 at selected three universities to understand how pressure to perform has influenced the workload balance and what is the relationship between teachingresearch balance and research productivity of female and male academics across different disciplines in different organizational contexts. The findings support the Hattie and Marsh's Common Wisdom model and show that balanced teaching research workloads improve research productivity across gender groups. Further, we show that the perception of managerialism at a university is an important mediating factor of gender balance in research productivity.

Purpose Organizational learning in higher education institutions depends upon the ability of managers and academics to maintain a flow of knowledge across the structural boundaries of the university. This paper aims to understand the boundary conditions that foster or impede the flow of knowledge during organizational change at a large public university. Design/methodology/approach Interview data were collected from 51 academics and 40 managers at the selected university. The analysis focused on two initiatives that managers sought to implement to improve organizational performance. Findings For one of these initiatives, managers engaged in knowledge transformation that enabled managers and academics to learn and collaborate across group boundaries. For the other initiative, managers relied on knowledge transfer practices, which failed to establish productive cross-boundary interactions to support organizational learning. Practical/implications When seeking to implement new initiatives to enhance institutional performance, university managers and academics can view organizational change as a learning process that involves creating and moving knowledge across organizational boundaries. Under conditions of change, the creation and movement of knowledge may require the development of new structures and the use of communications that have a high level of media richness. Originality/value This study provides one of the first empirical investigations of knowledge sharing dynamics during organizational change in a higher education setting.