Factors affecting the content of universities’ mission statements: an analysis of the United Kingdom higher education system

Seeber, Marco; Barberio, Vitaliano; Huisman, Jeroen; Mampaey, Jelle

doi:10.1080/03075079.2017.1349743

Cited by 63 publications

(60 citation statements)

References 35 publications

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“…Kosmützky and Krücken (2015) contend that German universities balance similarity and distinctiveness by positioning themselves in different, but internally homogeneous 'competitive groups', which permit them to shield competition from universities with different profiles and push for competitiveness within the same group. Confirming these results, Seeber et al (2019) argue further that this trade-off depends not only on the institutional proximity between UK higher education institutions, expressed by the affiliation to a specific mission group (Russell group, 1994, Million+, University Alliance, GuildHE), but also on the geographic proximity between them. Bowl (2018), Jin and Horta (2018) and Huisman and Mampaey (2018) consider age and status of universities and illustrate how older and higher-status institutions prefer not to deviate from historically based institutional expectations, whereas younger and lower-status universities are more prone to unconventional positioning paths.…”

Section: Attempts At Balancing Conflicting Hypothesessupporting

confidence: 53%

“…Against this backdrop, scholars of organisation and higher education have analysed the processes of strategic positioning-strategic planning and decision making, sense-making and sense-giving in strategic change and branding and identity construction (Pedersen and Dobbin 2006;Frølich et al 2013;Mampaey et al 2015;Stensaker 2015;Seeber et al 2019;Paradeise and Thoenig 2018). Equally, outcomes of strategic positioning have been investigated to make sense of how universities locate themselves in the academic field according to their educational portfolio, research output, technology transfer and regional development (Bonaccorsi and Daraio 2008;Ljungberg et al 2009;Vuori 2016;Seeber et al 2019; .…”

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confidence: 99%

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The determinants of university strategic positioning: a reappraisal of the organisation

2019

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This paper makes a contribution to the debate on university organisational actorhood by theorising the determinants of institutional strategic positioning. It argues that besides environmental forces and managerial rationality, the organisational dimension needs to be accounted for. Addressing the mixed empirical evidence in the relevant literature, we conceptualise the organisational dimension as a meso-level intervening variable mediating both external influences (outside-inside) and organisational action (inside-outside). We operationalise the organisational dimension along three components: organisational structure, identity and centrality, which are further elaborated in sub-components and indicators. A set of hypotheses to be tested in empirical research is provided. The paper offers new perspectives on the dynamics of change in higher education and on strategic agency of organisational actors.

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Section: Attempts At Balancing Conflicting Hypothesessupporting

confidence: 53%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

The determinants of university strategic positioning: a reappraisal of the organisation

2019

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“…Aldrich and Ruef 2006), and the relationship of these with the positioning of the said organisations (c.f. Fumasoli and Huisman 2013;Seeber et al 2017).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Institutional perspectives in transition: research groups’ profiles and embeddedness in organisational and national context

Nokkala

Diogo

2019

High Educ

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Research into differentiation and profiling of knowledge producing institutions through the lenses of institutional logics and field embeddedness have proliferated in recent years. By discussing this process in the context of research groups, as those basic units in which knowledge production epistemically and practically takes place, this article offers a contribution to the theoretical discussion on organisational differentiation. Based on a small-N comparative case study of research groups operating in different national and organisational contexts on a single, highly competitive and interdisciplinary applied sciences field, nanosciences, the article proposes research group profiles as heuristic devices to explore both the embeddedness and strategic agency of research groups.

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“…However, scholars increasingly demonstrated how legitimacy and distinctiveness can be pursued concurrently by HEIs since these are both relevant for them (Fumasoli and Huisman 2013;Mampaey et al 2015). Empirical studies evidenced how positioning is often more a 'balance' between legitimacy-seeking and distinctiveness-seeking behaviours (Pedersen and Dobbin 2006;Seeber et al 2017;Morphew et al 2018), in order to be 'as different as legitimately possible' (Deephouse 1999, 47).…”

Section: Why and How Positioning Of Heis Might Affect Diversity Of Hementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Moreover, empirical studies on institutional positioning have been mainly concentrated on detecting distinctive positioning efforts by analysing mission statements and strategic plans (Mampaey et al 2015;Seeber et al 2017;Morphew et al 2018). There are instead fewer empirical studies focused on how to analyse positioning quantitively (exceptions are e.g.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

What do positioning paths of universities tell about the diversity of higher education systems? An exploratory study

Barbato

Turri

2019

Studies in Higher Education

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What do positioning paths of universities tell about the diversity of higher education systems? An exploratory study Abstract Diversity in Higher Education system has been a central topic for both scholars and policy-makers for decades. Several studies have investigated how to measure diversity and the nature of its determinants so far; however, contradictory empirical evidence has emerged. This paper contributes to this literature by adopting a methodological approach that starts from the analysis of positioning paths of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in order to explore the diversity of HE systems. A comprehensive quantitative analysis performed across two HE systems over time shows how detecting the positioning of HEIs can provide information that an analysis of diversity at the level of the entire system might hide, in particular (I) if and how compliant and distinctiveness are concurrently displayed (II) in which dimensions positioning shifts are more likely to occur and (III) which groups of HEIs influence more the level of diversity in a HE system.

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Factors affecting the content of universities’ mission statements: an analysis of the United Kingdom higher education system

Cited by 63 publications

References 35 publications

The determinants of university strategic positioning: a reappraisal of the organisation

The determinants of university strategic positioning: a reappraisal of the organisation

Institutional perspectives in transition: research groups’ profiles and embeddedness in organisational and national context

What do positioning paths of universities tell about the diversity of higher education systems? An exploratory study

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