Organizational configuration s of modern universities, institutional logics and public policies-towards an integrative framework

Abstract

Given the highly differentiated and nuanced analyses of change processes in university systems provided by the TRUE project, the chapter first reviews this evidence along a set of common dimensions concerning variation in organizational university configurations and their linkages to HE policies and related environmental pressures. This review underscores the need for a more refined analytical framework to accommodate the diversity of empirical observations and provide a more nuanced approach on how environmental contingencies impact organizations. In the last section, we propose a framework building on recent developments in neo-institutional theory, arguing that concepts like institutional pluralism and organizational hybridity provide useful analytical lenses for understanding changes in contemporary university organizations, the potential of which remains largely unexplored.