Organizational Differences among Universities in Three Socioeconomic Contexts: Finland, Spain and Ecuador. Relational Coordination Approach

Abstract

The knowledge of local culture is essential to establish competitive strategies in higher education. The objective of this research was to identify the organizational differences among three universities with different international contexts and satisfaction level. An approach was made regarding Relational Coordination (RC) attributes: accurate, frequent and problem-solving communication, shared knowledge, mutual respect and shared goals, by discriminant analysis method. A random sample of 300 students, 100 belonging to each university, was surveyed on the 23 RC variables in 2017–2018. First, the RC variables were evaluated by general linear model (GLM). The three universities—Arcada University of Applied Science (ARCADA) in Finland, University of Cordoba (UCO) in Spain and Agricultural Polytechnic of Manabi “MFL” (ESPAM) in Ecuador—and the two levels of student satisfaction—Low and High—were used as fixed factors. Second, a discriminant model was built with RC variables. A higher level of RC practices concerning to accurate, frequent and problem-solving communication achieved higher levels of satisfaction, regardless of the universities’ socioeconomic context. RC differentiation among three universities showed that shared goals with lecturers and administrative officers and problem-solving communication among classmates were the variables with the highest discriminant power. Two clusters were obtained, where UCO was the most differentiated university. In conclusion, organizational practices made a difference among the three universities. Discriminant analysis can be adapted and extended to different universities to improve quality.

Quantitative Comparison between Traditional and Intensive Face-to-Face Education through an Organizational Model

“…Incomplete surveys and those that showed logical inconsistencies were eliminated by using the random function of the spreadsheet software [42]. To make up the complete database for this study, a random sample of 370 students from third to fifth year (170 from TFE and 200 IFE) was taken, in the academic year 2018-2019 [43]. Degrees with an agri-food profile were selected due to the rural nature of growing economy of Ecuador [44].…”

An Organizational Model of Online Learning in the Pandemic Period: Comparison with Traditional Face-to-Face Learning

“…RC is an organizational model for task integration, where communication and relationship constitute the two main dimensions [21,22]. The communication dimension includes elements such as accurate and frequent communication aimed at solving problems [3,[22][23][24][25]. The relationship dimension focuses on shared goals, knowledge, and mutual respect among all profiles of an organization [3,[22][23][24][25].…”

“…The communication dimension includes elements such as accurate and frequent communication aimed at solving problems [3,[22][23][24][25]. The relationship dimension focuses on shared goals, knowledge, and mutual respect among all profiles of an organization [3,[22][23][24][25]. The RC model has been applied in different sectors such as healthcare [22], banking [26], or airlines [21].…”

“…The RC model has been applied in different sectors such as healthcare [22], banking [26], or airlines [21]. In addition, it has been studied in HE, showing that an increase in RC leads to an improvement in the results [3,23,24,[27][28][29].…”

“…Once SATISTotal was obtained, its main statistical descriptors (trend, dispersion, and asymmetry) were observed and a dichotomous satisfaction variable was determined for each university with two possible values: low satisfaction (LS) and high satisfaction (HS). A level of 19 points differentiated the two levels of satisfaction in UTEQ and a level of 20 points in UEB (Figure S1) [3,[23][24][25].…”