How Colleges Work: The Cybernetics of Academic Organization and Leadership

A Roadmap for Educational Research in Pharmacy

“…Special attention should be given to the design, selection, and/or construction of valid data collection instrument(s) to ensure that they are aligned with research question(s) and research design. One must be mindful of the need to engage a statistician Leadership framework 26 Theory of experiential learning 32 Intergroup contact theory 37 Academic disciplines 22 Higher education 27 Theory of identity development 33 Model of institutional departure 19 Adult education and andragogy 23 Model for assessing change 28 Piaget theory of cognitive development 17 Polkinghorne practice theory 38 …”

Humboldt Meets Schumpeter? Interpreting the ‘Entrepreneurial Turn’ in European Higher Education

“…Clark (1983: 75) observes that, "under the steady pounding of larger scale, greater specialization, and multiplying complexity" higher education systems have a natural tendency for symbolic disintegration. Such developments have also been documented as occurring within universities themselves, to a large degree due to the loosely-coupled nature of their internal structures and activities (Birnbaum 1988). By fostering rationalization (Ramirez 2010) and centralization (Clark 1998), the entrepreneurial paradigm promises to enhance task-integration (coupling), thus, it is argued, increasing universities' ability to more efficiently respond to emerging environmental demands .…”

“…(Pinheiro et al 2014a) (Pinheiro et al 2014a) (Pinheiro et al 2014a) (Pinheiro et al 2014a) (Pinheiro et al 2014a) (Pinheiro et al 2014a) (Pinheiro et al 2014a) (Pinheiro et al 2014a) (Pinheiro et al 2014a) (Pinheiro et al 2014a) (Pinheiro et al 2014a) An additional dilemma relates to the assumption that enhanced structural integration through a tighter coupling amongst sub-units and their respective activities will automatically result into a faster speed of response to emerging (market) demands (Pinheiro et al 2014b). Over the years, social science scholars, including higher education researchers (Birnbaum 1988;Hölttä and Karjalainen 1997), have suggested that loosecoupling is advantageous in situations characterized by increasing complexity and ambiguity as it allows different sub-units to sense their environments and respond accordingly, even if this means increasing the overall levels of disintegration across the board. Ironically, by strategically attempting to more closely integrate university structures and activities in order to foster 'unity of action', universities' central steering cores may instead end-up curtaining rather than enhancing the ability of the organization as whole to more efficiently respond to unforeseen external events.…”

“…The traditional notion of university systems as relatively de-coupled from external events and dynamics (Birnbaum 1988;Clark 1983) has gradually been replaced by increasing external expectations for addressing the demands of various stakeholders (Benneworth and Jongbloed 2010). Against the backdrop of the competitive challenges brought by the rise of a knowledge-based economy, there has been a new impetus towards modernizing universities (Maassen 2009;Olsen and Maassen 2007;Turunen 2009).…”

The Myth of University Strategy. Market Niches and Organizational Careers of Russian Universities

“…A universitywould be growing -or trying to grow-in all possible directions without much control exercised by the central authority. Such "organizational anarchy" has been mentioned in descriptions of American research universities [Birnbaum 1988] and confederations of colleges similar to Cambridge. Organizationally, they had very much in common with post-Soviet universities, at least at the early stage of the latter's evolution.…”