Not Just Figureheads: Trustees as Microfoundations of Higher Education Institutions

Barringer, Sondra N.; Riffe, Karley A.

doi:10.1007/s10755-018-9422-6

Cited by 23 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…There are three reasons for this. First, as lay overseers, trustees are charged with spanning the boundary between campus and the world beyond (Barringer & Riffe, 2018; Eckel & Kezar, 2016). Put another way, the “lay” component of the role means that trustees are always both part of and apart from the organization.…”

Section: Boards Universities and Multiple Fieldsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The aggregate pattern of affiliations maintained by the board as a whole is likely to be one of these conditions. Indeed, board composition is a component of a university’s organizational identity (Barringer & Riffe, 2018). A trustee’s tie to a particular firm or industry might matter more in one board context than in another.…”

Section: Boards Universities and Multiple Fieldsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Our theoretical model posits that board ties and university activities are associated both with each other and with other aspects of these organizations. Board composition is a core component of organizational identity (Barringer & Riffe, 2018), much as money and research production are closely related to university status (Taylor, 2016;Taylor & Cantwell, 2019). Although our empirical model places board composition first in time-an acknowledgment that university activity takes time to unfold-it is possible that causality could be reversed in some cases.…”

Section: Limitationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Scholars have explored the training and selection of trustees (Kezar, 2006); influences that may tempt trustees from their fiduciary responsibilities (Bastedo, 2009a, 2009b; Pusser, 2004); the role of trustees in diversity, equity, and inclusion (Morgan et al, 2021; Rall et al, 2018, 2020); and trustees’ role in philanthropy (Barringer & Riffe, in press; Proper, 2019; Zeig et al, 2018). One strand of literature focuses on the various ways that boards shape the behaviors and practices of the universities they oversee (Barringer & Riffe, 2018; Barringer et al, 2020), examining the networks that trustees knit together among various industrial firms and government entities (Barringer & Slaughter, 2016; Barringer et al, 2019; Pusser et al, 2006) and exploring potential consequences of those connections for academic research (Mathies & Slaughter, 2013; Slaughter et al, 2014). This scholarship highlights the ability of boards to shape the universities they steward.…”

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confidence: 99%

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University Board Connectivity, Finances, and Research Production, 1985–2015

Taylor

Barringer

Slaughter

2022

Teachers College Record: The Voice of Scholarship in Education

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Background/context: A growing body of evidence indicates that trustees link the boards of research universities to organizations in other fields. It is less clear whether these board characteristics indicate distinct university contexts with which particular activities would be associated. Research questions: We ask three questions. The first two are descriptive and focus attention on the changing characteristics of university boards: How do boards tie universities to other sectors of society? How has the composition of these ties changed over time? The third is inferential and attends to possible relationships between board characteristics and university activities over time: Are there relationships between board ties to external organizations and university activities? Research design: We answered our first two questions using descriptive analyses. We answered the third question using regression analyses, inclusive of fixed board-level effects, which estimated the within-unit association among board characteristics, control characteristics, and the dependent variables associated with activities of interest. Data collection and analysis: Our sample consisted of the 54 boards that oversaw members of the Association of American Universities. Data were compiled in 10-year increments between 1985 and 2015. Historical data on university boards were created using Standard and Poor’s Register of Corporations, Directors, and Executives and the Capital IQ Personal Intelligence database, both of which provided time-verified data about the affiliations of individual trustees at a given moment in time (e.g., 1985, 1995). We merged these data with information on university characteristics drawn from existing secondary data sources. Findings: Consistent with other analyses, sampled boards were increasingly connected to organizations in other fields over time. Connections grew especially rapidly between 1995 and 2015, with particularly notable growth in ties to the finance industry. In inferential analyses, the total number of ties to external organizations was associated with increases in total publications and with the share of publications in the biological sciences. Board characteristics were not associated with variation in other variables (e.g., endowment growth). Conclusions/recommendations: Our findings suggest that board characteristics are more likely to be associated with some university activities than others. It is less clear why this is the case. Our paper therefore lays important groundwork for future research on the ways in which individual trustees may directly coordinate, indirectly facilitate, or be selected because of their ties to particular external organizations.

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Section: Boards Universities and Multiple Fieldsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Boards Universities and Multiple Fieldsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Limitationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

University Board Connectivity, Finances, and Research Production, 1985–2015

Taylor

Barringer

Slaughter

2022

Teachers College Record: The Voice of Scholarship in Education

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Many of the recent studies on governing boards are focused on campus-level boards (Barringer & Riffe, 2018;Commodore, 2018;Tierney & Rall, 2018). Given our interest in state-level political dynamics, we broadened our review to map significant actors in postsecondary education policymaking and note their relationship to SLGBs.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%