‘If I wasn’t a project manager, I’d look at it differently’: the impact of formality and accountability on entrepreneurial action within educational outreach programmes

ABSTRACT

This presented study explores the ongoing Uni Connect Programme run by the UK government to widen participation among underrepresented young people. The research focused on one specific local authority that delivers Uni Connect activities, gathering data from eight in-depth interviews (project manager N = 2, activity coordinators N = 6) and the Higher Education Access Tracker (HEAT). Analysis of the data was used to critically examine the practices of activity providers and activity coordinators involved in the local authorities Uni Connect initiative. The data was analysed using thematic analysis drawing from concepts of organisational flattening and the delegation of authority. The paper makes an original contribution by presenting a theoretical model that highlights organisational asymmetry in delivering educational outreach programmes when entrepreneurial activity designers are forced to operate within hierarchical systems. This is important to understand as systematic and impersonal issues within the organisation lead to poorer outcomes for students who require specific outreach, even when stakeholders recognise the needs.

KEYWORDS:

• Underrepresented young people
• education outreach
• organisational theory

Introduction

Since the United Kingdom’s (UK) coalition government in 2010, there have been pronounced moves towards implementing localism in developing government-led programmes. The state shifts away from centrally contrived diktats to trust local actors and stakeholders to meet their community’s needs (Boocock 2017). This ‘new localism’¹ flourished due to the perceived dysfunction in the top-down governance in delivering public services (Hodgson and Spours 2010). In education, however, the move towards localism has been a two-sided sword. On the one hand, the decentralising of government policy has blurred the responsibility of local authorities in their relationships with ‘Free Schools’, led to a disconnect between national and local policy goals, and created ‘messy markets’ where individual communities have different experiences of the same policies due to differing stakeholder choices (Sharma 2013; Kakabadse, Marzec, and Rose 2014). Despite this, localised education policies have also been vastly more effective when local administrations are not overburdened with bureaucracy. The programmes are designed with local representation, and they adopt clear and feasible objectives developed based on an identified need (Storey and Farrar 2009). The current research surrounding the role of localism has focused on balancing the role of national and local actors and the discretion the latter should be allowed in reconciling government policy with practical local action (Collins, 2013). This research explores a gap in our understanding of how the localist approach to implementing educational policy is impacted when cultivated in an area that has traditionally been centrally controlled, or management has used a rigid hierarchical model.

This paper is particularly focused on the localist approach taken in the Office for Student’s (OfS) National Collaborative Outreach Programme (NCOP), now known as Uni Connect, an initiative of the UK government which aims to close the Higher Education (HE) participation gap between underrepresented students and their more advantaged peers. The reasons for young people not attending university can be varied and complex. For a nationwide programme involving 29 consortiums of universities operating in vastly different environments (for example, differing levels of HE participation and Indices of Multiple Deprivation), the OfS decentralised the development of the ‘Theory of Change’² to local stakeholders to allow them to develop an effective outreach programme that meets their student’s needs. This paper focuses on how local actors behave when the retraction of state involvement leaves a vacuum of authority in educational outreach. It applies the theories of organisational flattening and delegation of authority to stakeholders working in the historically hierarchical environments of the UK education sector. The results indicate that if educational initiatives develop a localist approach to the development of the programme whilst maintaining a hierarchical system for performance measurement, practitioners will develop asymmetrical projects, prioritising the dominant stakeholders’ perceived interests over the impact on the beneficiaries. This is illustrated in the title of the paper, where an influential project stakeholder recognised the tensions between entrepreneurial action and the need for politically appropriate forms of performance measurement within the outreach programme but prioritised the latter at the cost of the former.

Educational policies for widening participation: An overview

The continuing gap in HE participation amongst underrepresented³ young people has long been a focus of the UK government, which sought to double their representation by 2021.⁴ The government aims to widen their participation focuses on outreach initiatives, such as Uni Connect, and their precursor, the National Networks for Collaborative Outreach (NNCO). Although a large amount of money has been spent on these outreach programmes, the question remains as to what the most effective way of increasing HE application from underrepresented students is (Department for Education 2017).

Research documenting the individuals’ performance from underrepresented social backgrounds in educational institutions and their social mobility in the UK national context is not scarce. The research indicates that there are complicated and diverse explanations, at the micro, meso and macro levels, as to why learners from underrepresented backgrounds do less well in education. While some studies examine student participation and attainment at the HE level (e.g. Torgerson et al., 2014), other studies take a step back and focus on pupil attainment at the pre-school and primary school levels and pupils’ progress into and attainment in secondary schools (e.g. Shaw, Baars, Menzies, Parameshwaran, & Allen, 2017; Social Mobility Commission, 2016). Many children from economically deprived backgrounds are already underrepresented as early as primary school (Social Mobility Commission Report, 2016). The attainment gap between them and their peers from more affluent homes remains notable throughout their education. Even if some pupils from socially disadvantaged backgrounds out-perform their non-disadvantaged peers in primary school, the disadvantaged pupils start falling behind (Shaw et al., 2017). This effect was attributed to not receiving parental help in curriculum activities, having no access to external paid tutor services available to more affluent peers, and not participating in any extra-curricular activities. These are enriching in terms of knowledge and experience and building social networks that can benefit a pupil in the future (Shaw et al., 2017). Thus, the existing inequalities in access, retention, and performance in HEI that are in the scope of the proposed project do not emerge suddenly after the GCSE or A-levels exams. However, they result from complex social and societal processes and build up throughout a pupil’s educational life cycle.

Social and ethnic inequalities continue beyond primary and secondary school and are widely visible in educational choices made by 16-year-olds, even when controlling for factors such as institutional availability or prior school attainment (Henderson et al., 2016). For instance, pupils eligible for free school meal (eFSM) were more likely to finish their education at 16 than non-eFSM pupils. Prior to a change in the law in 2015, there was a participation gap between the groups; students from underrepresented backgrounds were less likely to attend sixth form-based provision than more affluent peers from professional backgrounds, which in turn is negatively associated with these pupils’ chances of being accepted into university. Pupils from underrepresented backgrounds are in general less likely than their more affluent counterparts to participate in HE. Moreover, previous studies point out that even if a pupil from a high need area successfully enter, HE, the gap and challenges associated with their disadvantage is still present and affect their academic performance. Students from lower-income backgrounds or mature students with caring responsibilities are at a higher risk of dropping out or performing worse than their non-disadvantaged peers, most likely due to work and/or caring obligations they have during their studies (Sheffield Hallam University, 2016).

Parental involvement in a child’s educational attainment significantly influences the students’ attitude towards HE (Gorard, See, and Davies 2012). Children’s families play a key role in conceptualising their understanding of HE, and the information children receive on HE (Brooks 2003). It is common for middle-class parents to encourage their children to go to university and help them with their studies and introduce different extra-curricular activities (Bathmaker et al., 2013). Middle-class families’ children often are more aware of their options; they know how to play the game and mobilise their’ capitals in both active and internalised ways to position themselves advantageously for a future career’ (Bathmaker et al., 2013: 730). By playing the game, middle-class students obtain, develop, and mobilise their social, cultural, and economic resources (ibid., 730). This echoes with Hodkinson and Sparke’s (1997) idea that young people’s careers are based on assessing how far they can ‘see’ and, therefore, what options are available to them. If a young person wishes to become a surgeon but does not know any surgeons in their local area or social circle, they would have more limited horizons for action and less social capital if they wish to pursue that career.

This paper explores the difficulties of stakeholders’ engagement with targeted underrepresented students with a one-size-fits-all approach to outreach activities. The question is to what extent these activities support the underrepresented students or whether they become the reason why the students fall behind. The following section provides the theoretical framework that helps demystify this question.

Organisational flattening and the delegation of authority

This paper applies a theoretical framework developed on the concepts of organisational flattening and the delegation of authority to its findings. Organisational flattening removes vertical hierarchical structures and replaces them with horizontal ones (Powell 2002). This process has often been a decreasing bureaucracy method, improving communication, and increasing teamwork. However, it has also critically been seen merely as a cost-cutting exercise to remove middle management and replace them with an increased number of junior-level positions (Liu and Moskvina 2015). Diagrams 1 and 2 offer a comparison of the two organisational models.

As a management practice, organisational flattening has been utilised in businesses and educational institutions. The surrounding research focuses on the attitudes and perceptions of the structural change on employees and stakeholders and the challenges of adapting embedded structures without challenging the incumbent organisational culture (Powell 2002). The cultural dimensions considered within this paper are drawn from research on the delegation of authority that contrasts entrepreneurial and rigid administrative structures and how they react to the change associated with organisational flattening (Levi and Zehavie, 2015). Entrepreneurial administrative structures have been able to reform effectively during periods of delegation, with bureaucrats adopting flexibility and pragmatism whilst being motivated by the potential outcomes of their work. Within more rigid administrative structures, the goal is to fit perspective changes with the pre-existing legal-institutional framework, with reforms needing broad institutional support, policy outcomes are less important than policy compatibility (Levi and Zehavi 2015).

Previous research suggests that the UK education system falls into the latter category. With educational reform associated with political sponsorship, there has been a need to develop evidence-based solutions that are able to survive in the political arena, creating an emphasis on performance measurement, outputs, and value for money (Ferlie, Musselin, and Andresani 2008). Within these structures, where there are regular consultations with recognised stakeholders, beliefs and behaviours will perpetually reinforce the status quo, as those charged with delivering on policy seek to appease the dominant interests (Stoker 2006).

Both organisational flattening and the delegation of authority have had similar positive outcomes attributed to them, such as empowered leadership, increased employee satisfaction, improved team performance, and better service user satisfaction (Lorinkova, Pearsall, and SIM 2013; Wagner 1994; Ahearne, Mathieu, and Rapp 2005). However, these outcomes are context-driven. Whereas organisational flattening may lead to more employees becoming empowered, the average amount of power an individual has been shown to decrease as decision-making processes become more concentrated at the top (Liu and Moskvina 2015; Wulf 2012). In addition, when a structural change is committed to, without consideration given to the cultural dimension, there can be less clarity in job roles, junior employees become sceptical of senior manager motivations for change, and the continued use of hierarchical language may further inhibit changes (Clutterbuck 1995; Dondero 1996). These issues are further compounded in environments where there is an emphasis on target setting, policy documentation and demands for accountability measures, all characteristics of the UK education sector (Powell 2002).

The two concepts are combined to build a theoretical base to evaluate the research’s findings, illustrated in Diagram 3.

The delegation authority refers to the policy implementation being moved ‘downstream’ to the local authority practitioners by allowing them to design localised theories of change and removing the structural position of those who traditionally designed the outreach provision on behalf of the state. Organisational flattening refers to the performance management of the project now being delivered directly to the dominant stakeholders from the practitioners. Although the dominant stakeholders would have always received information regarding performance management, the retraction of their influence over the policy development means that practitioners (in particular, project managers) must review how they communicate success or failure to those who control the future of the programme.

The key tension in the removal of vertical oversight in programme planning is the need for the internal stakeholders to contextualise success. With the UK education sector traditionally being steeped in target setting, policy goals, and accountability, an assumption may be that those charged with designing programmes will seek to measure performance in a manner consistent with previous reporting models, regardless of the dominant stakeholders’ attempts to move away from this model. This can, however, lead to the exacerbation of horizontal tensions within the outreach team itself when attempting to balance performance measurement and policy implementation. Literature suggests that teamwork builds during times of organisational flattening, but power may also diminish. Although members of the outreach team may at first feel empowered by the move to entrepreneurial action in the implementation of policy with less stakeholder oversight, this may significantly diminish as managers seek to ensure the political survivability of the delivery programme, encouraging action that falls in line with previous expectations. The research presented here adds to the theory by exploring how stakeholders in rigid administrative structures, such as the UK education sector, react to the delegation of authority where a similar flattening of the broader organisation has removed the traditional source of direction or information. By understanding how educational administration structures react to these facets, more robust management approaches can be taken to educational outreach and a more comprehensive understanding of the impact administrative changes can have on student experiences.

Data collection and analysis

This paper is based predominantly on qualitative research gathered from in-depth interviews with project managers, activity coordinators, and leaders involved in the local authorities Uni Connect initiative. The quantitative data was collected through the Higher Education Access Tracker (HEAT) to support the qualitative data and was also used to provide attendance figures for students who partook in outreach activities.

In-depth, semi-structured interviews were conducted to understand the stakeholders’ perspectives involved in the local authority’s Uni Connect provision. The Uni Connect provision includes eight people overall, and the research team conducted interviews with eight members of this team as part of this case study. These participants included: i) the project managers, who run the Uni Connect team, and ii) activity coordinators, who manage and run the Uni Connect activities. Researchers seek a deeper understanding of a subject and aim to gain insight beyond ‘the basic facts of who, what, when, and where’ often opt for in-depth interviews (Guest et al., 2017, p.5). Since conducting in-depth interviews allow researchers to obtain ‘deep answers to their questions from experts on the issue’ (Guest et al., 2017, p.5).

The goal of the interviews with the activity leaders was to ascertain their experiences in the field where they engage with students and observe the impact of their activities first-hand. The activity coordinators worked in a team responsible for preparing and delivering the local authority’s Uni Connect activities. These activity leaders can either design activities themselves or facilitate an external partner’s activity in local schools. Interviewing the team’s project manager provided the researchers with a greater understanding of how the team was managed and the activity leaders were selected. All the interview questions were prepared and draw upon issues identified in the widening participation literature. Overall, two project managers and six activity coordinators took part in the research (n = 8). The participants were assigned pseudonyms to protect anonymity.

We applied thematic analysis to the material collected (Clark and Braun, 2016). The thematic analysis provides the researchers with flexibility in terms of the constitution of data (ibid.) The interviews and transcripts from the participants writing were coded manually and divided into relevant categories before themes were identified (ibid). Two themes from the research have been identified: the influence of the perceived dominant interests and the development of an isomorphic programme. These themes were selected as they best highlight the tensions that have emerged during the development of the programme. The first theme focuses on how the programmes’ dominant stakeholders negotiate and influence the programme’s design and define its success, whilst the second theme highlights how this leads to important aspects of educational outreach for underrepresented students (such as parental engagement) being removed. Instead, the focus has been on outreach practices which have ‘mass appeal’ and offered value for money, rather than those that may have significant impacts on student outcomes.

The influence of the perceived dominant interests

Each local authority team involved in the Uni Connect programme targeted students in a sustained programme of two or more activities to encourage them into higher education. The consortiums were given several wards to work where higher education participation was low, given the students’ academic attainment in the area. Across the year, the focused on local authority managed to exceed its target of 20% in all but one of the wards, where school engagement was challenging, with the successful wards seeing an average of 63% sustained engagement.

The programme, funded by the Office for Students, did not develop a central Theory of Change for the project, despite the recommendations in evaluating the previous government outreach project, the National Networks for Collaborative Outreach (NNCO) (Stevenson, McCaig, and Madriage, 2017). With this lack of direction, the focused-on administration management sought to deliver what they did know the Office for Students was looking for and the numbers of students engaged with. This became the focus of the project managers:

[Referring to a high attendance activity] So for me, that one’s good because we’ve met our numbers for the Office of Students. Remember, I’ve always got this business hat on with my role, so we’ve met that (Emma).

High impact activities became informally defined by the number of students attending on a cost/benefit analysis rather than the potential impact on their higher education choices:

Well actually, probably to do a presentation to a whole year group is a really good benefit measure for us because it will probably take an hour and a half out of the day by the time you’ve travelled there, done your presentation and then come home again, or come back to the office. But that we’ve been able to speak to 150 young people, so that would be a good one for us (Emma).

Further compounding this was the need to utilise the resources they were provided with correctly, with them being directed in a manner which was assumed to fulfil dominant stakeholder needs:

So yes, I always look in it with a bit of a business hat on. And perhaps if I wasn’t project Manager, I would look at it differently, but I’ve obviously got to look at it in a cost/benefit matrix really. But we’re moving towards offering less projects going forward. So, less projects but those projects that we do offer, making them more high impact so that we’re working smart (Emma).

Other stakeholder needs were taken into consideration and influence the programme design, however, rather than focus on student impact, the priority was scheduling it between the restraints of the school day. This meant that activities that were evidenced to have a positive correlation to higher education choices were reduced to short assemblies:

We have an overall five assemblies that we offer to schools and we do say that they are more than welcome to be an assembly, so 15–20 minutes long, or they can be a workshop. They actually did originate as a workshop and then we were advised to cut them down because schools tend to have a shorter period, 15, 20 minutes and we can fill those slots easier, so that’s what we did (Ashley).

This is particularly impactful on the underrepresented students the Uni Connect programme is focused on with the previous literature suggesting that outreach programmes, such as workshops, deliver cultural capital otherwise unavailable (Bathmaker et al., 2013; Gorard, See, and Davies 2012). The annual report for the local authority showed that 63.46% of the targeted students rarely or never discussed university with friends or family, compared to 48.49% of their more advantaged peers (Karlidag-Dennis et al., 2019). Workshops, which allow for personal conversations and small group discussions, were seemingly sacrificed for large scale assemblies potentially reducing programme effectiveness. It was further reported to us that sometimes schools lacked the resources to fulfil any required action needed to make any outreach effective:

So one school, for example, it was one of our Uni Connect schools, they were really on board with it but only a handful of students completed the final assignment because the teacher, for her own admission, said she didn’t have time to chase students up (Rob).

Due to this, the practitioners found it easier to provide activities for which all students could attend, alleviating pressure for the schools to find interested students, or removing them from lessons:

Maybe it’s - maybe the schools hadn’t had the time to identify Media students or English students or History, whoever could do that radio traineeship. I don’t know. And because it’s all free because we fund it they don’t have to pay for anything! It’s a complete no-brainer. The only stumbling block to that is taking them out of lessons (Frances).

The practitioners were unable to offer the schools further support, their own time taken up by increased administration, an issue highlighted in the existing literature (Clutterbuck 1995; Dondero 1996):

But unfortunately, this job never gives us the luxury of time to sit back, reflect, review. I’m sure [the Manager is] doing that but we don’t get the luxury of time to do it[…] If anything, I think we offer too much because we just give ourselves too much work (Frances).

Further to this, the practitioners delivering the activities felt unable to influence the choices in activities, regardless of their own experiences. One participant shared their experience from a previous role:

For example, (it) was called NHS Discovery Day. We arranged to take people from, I think it was about 80 students, into a hospital for the day and had them carouselling around different departments with members of staff of that department giving them an hour, workshop or information about the insides of how a hospital ran(…)We ran a book club for students who had English as a second language. The whole idea was to help encourage engagement within the social side of Britain as well as being able to further their English language abilities in reading and writing (John).

After talking about how their ideas were previously taken into consideration, they also emphasised that currently the coordinators did not think they could take the initiative:

Co-ordinators don’t get to choose. We might come across something new and come back and suggest it. Pretty much when we started the plan for the two years had been laid down already so programme was built as either things have worked or haven’t worked, or something may not have needed as much money to run. There’s been, ‘Oh look, there’s a little bit left, anybody got any ideas?’ So, we’ve had some input for newer things, but we don’t have the decision making in that (John).

The participants emphasised the significance of having the ability to make decisions about the activities they run and make meaningful choices for the students they work with. This shows us that the dominate stakeholders’ needs were prioritised by the project managers over the practitioners’ local experiences.

Isomorphic programme design

The prioritisation of delivering on the perceived dominant interests has led to the development of an isomorphic programme. Whether or not a project is high impact, low attendance is enough to have an activity removed from the programme:

[The belief that] that four interactions between mentee and mentor over four weeks was acceptable, and that’s not acceptable. Not for the amount of money and the intention of that relationship, it’s not good enough (…) I really, really am disappointed with that and I shall not be - we won’t be picking it up after Christmas. And if any other Uni Connect says, ‘I’m thinking about it’, we’ll say don’t do it. Because it’s just been a waste of money and time (Lisa).

This included an activity called mentoring. Despite the evidence presented in the annual report that expected grades was a significant barrier to halting underrepresented groups applications to higher education:

Due to this, outreach activities that were able to be delivered to a high number of students, both Uni Connect targeted and not, were used. The reliance on assemblies, as discussed in section 5, however, has led to junior practitioners questioning their use:

And when you are presenting to a whole year group, I wonder - so if we go around and talk about, I don’t know, study schools or why go to university, if they’re actually taking all that information in. Are we just another load of people that are in front of them, talking? Because we go in and we present to a whole year group. We never go in and have just Uni Connect students (Frances).

Further to this, subjects which were impactful on student choices were not considered if they were unable to fulfil the performance measurement criteria of high attendance. Parental engagement, for example, was noted by most of our practitioners as the biggest influence on student HE decisions:

I guess it depends what your upbringing is and what your parents’ experience is. Because ultimately your parents are the influences, so it depends what they’ve been through (Ashley).

If your parents are behind you and they’ve been to university or they want you to go to university, it’s massive, absolutely the biggest barrier (John).

I didn’t mention parents, going back to motivation. Parent’s engagement is crucial. Again I’ve worked in wider participation for quite a long time now and you know that if people aren’t given the same messages at home that they’re getting at school regarding education, regarding anything - careers, jobs, whatever - then you need to have that whole view (Rob).

Despite this, it was noted that parents were difficult to engage with:

I think it is difficult to access parents but at the same time I think there could be more work done, and work is being done again with our co-ordinators, is that you build up relations with students and then we can arrange events, events where parents can come in and be part of that (Ashley).

I tried to do parent workshops in English, maths science and other things on a parents evening. And it doesn’t work, because all the parents want to do is go and speak to their teachers about how their son’s doing with languages or whatever it is. They don’t want to do a workshop (John).

It was indicated that the difficultly in outreach, requires innovative approaches and therefore having high costs for lower engagement:

We’ve had a few. But for example, one idea I would want to get off the ground is having a HE supper evening. So, getting those, say, Year 11s from a school in, with their parents and giving them dinner, fish and chips or something. And actually, then getting them to sit down, giving them the information about Higher Education and then allowing them to ask questions about what their concerns are and trying to, again demystify some of those questions that they have (Ashley).

There are also issues with the types of parents who do attend parental outreach events, with those who do attend, already more than likely to be engaged with their child’s education.

And also, the parents that you need to come in are the parents that don’t come in. So those 70 [that attended an event] are the parents of children that are going to encouraged to go to university (John).

The participants explained that in the 2018/19 academic year only two activities were conducted that sought to engage with the parents of targeted students. In the following academic year, two parental activities were conducted a HE booklet was sent out and a UCAS event was organised.

Activities which were able to be delivered to a large audience took priority. An example of this, are the programmes set up to ‘myth-bust’ and give insight into the financial reality of Higher Education, including the risks:

And I think that also incorporates the breaking down those myths about Higher Education and how much it costs to go to university and having a student loan, and being aware of, ‘The household income is this much, so I’m entitled to this much’ (Ashley).

I think a lot of people assume they’re going to get a really good, really well-paid job when they graduate from university, and that’s one of those myths that we come across all the time, which is unfortunate (John).

However, the information delivered to the students is not specific to the targeted students, and instead is a broad delivery of information:

We can touch upon what UCAS student finance, why go, benefits of going, breaking down those myths, as I mentioned earlier. Actually, break down the student loan. It doesn’t - and when you are paying it back it’s actually cheaper than your phone contract, depending on how much you are earning (Ashley).

The data extracted from HEAT has shown us that this has led to a situation where only 30.52% of the events organised by the practitioner team saw a majority (over 50%) of the attendees being a part of the programmes intended targeted cohort, with 12% having under 20% targeted attendance. This shows us that as opposed to develop a highly targeted outreach programme, instead the practitioners are focused on broad deliveries to large groups where the intended audience make up a smaller proportion.

Discussion

The research opened with a hypothesised theoretical model to examine the tensions in the programme design of the Uni Connect initiative caused by the gap between the performance measurement and policy implementation (See Diagrams 3 and 4).

Traditionally in policy that is top-down driven, the two streams (policy implementation and performance measurement) are united as the latter is designed to measure the impact of the former (Hodgson and Spours 2010). However, with the dominant stakeholder moving the creation of a Theory of Change downstream for practitioners to develop, a separation between the two streams has evolved in the programme. Policy implementation has been delegated to the practitioners, with the charge of developing an outreach programme that will positively impact underrepresented students’ higher education choices. However, the second stream has remained hierarchical, with the dominant stakeholders maintaining influence over the practitioners with oversight through performance measurement standards unrelated to student impact, instead focused on numbers of engaged students on a ward-by-ward basis. Due to this, the objectives set for performance were met, with all but one targeted ward far exceeding the targets set by the Office for Students. However, the emphasis on performance measurement has led to specific activities such as those involving parental engagement, not finding institutional support if they are high cost or delivered low numbers, regardless of the impact it was felt they would have.

As suggested in the previous literature, within rigid administrative structures, there is a need to ensure that any outcomes delivered to fit within the pre-existing legal-institutional framework (Levi and Zehavi 2015). Despite both the policy and performance measurement sections of the programme being top-down dictates, the lack of a formal structure of assessment for the former has seen the project managers move their attention to the latter, emphasising effectiveness and value for money over the impact on student higher education choices (Ferlie, Musselin, and Andresani 2008). The previous literature has also highlighted issues caused by attempting to add entrepreneurial thinking into rigid administrative thinking. However, our research suggests this is not the case, and the lack of formality in assessment for policy implementation suppresses pre-existing entrepreneurial thought within rigid administrative structures (Levi and Zehavi 2015).

The studied Uni Connect practitioner team displays a narrow organisational structure, with two project managers overseeing a team of five activity coordinators. Both project managers considered their job to deliver on the performance measurement targets to the Office for Students, carrying out cost/benefit analysis on each of their projects with high attendance being considered high impact. Our research identified that entrepreneurial thought exists within the activity coordinator team; however, the lack of a formal assessment system means there is little to no institutional support for its expression. Therefore, the evolution of the programme has been isomorphic as the activity coordinators seek to ensure their projects suit the institutional needs of their managers or other stakeholders, such as schools. With both policy and performance measurement being top-down, we argue that the formality lends legitimacy to the project managers’ actions. The reason for this is the need for regular consultations with recognised stakeholders within rigid administrative structures (Levi and Zahavi, 2015). With no mechanism for entrepreneurial thought to be assessed, project managers cannot legitimise these actions and instead focus on what they know to be in the dominant stakeholder’s interests.

The other organisation tensions we found in our case study examination are supported in the existing literature. The characteristics identified to accompany periods of organisational flattening and a delegation of authority within rigid administrative systems are present, there has been a focus on target setting and accountability, decision making is concentrated with the managers, and junior members are unable to influence the choices made by the organisation despite their recognition of unfulfilled student needs (Powell 2002; Liu and Moskvina 2015; Wulk, 2012). These junior members are sceptical of management, there is increased bureaucracy, and the system remains outcome-driven (Dondero 1996; Ferlie, Musselin, and Andresani 2008). This paper adds to our knowledge of these organisational challenges by suggesting that the lack of formality within the presented theoretical model creates these tensions rather than resistance against shifts in organisational culture (Powell 2002). Notably, both activity coordinators and the project managers recognised the need for more entrepreneurial action and expressed a desire to carry it out but felt constrained by the boundaries of performance measurement.

A suggested solution to this is for a more collaborative approach to policy implementation, which allows practitioners more regular contact with the dominant stakeholders and better understand their policy desires. This would fulfil the organisational need within the education sector for political buy-in and institutional support whilst allowing a mechanism for the expression of entrepreneurial behaviour. This is detailed in Diagram 5.

Collaboration within the initiative design would alleviate tension by creating a space where dominant stakeholders and practitioners could co-develop new organisational norms to better deliver educational outreach programmes. When practitioners are involved in these discussions, they are able to better understand policy desire and the political landscape, meaning performance measurement can be contextualised more effectively and used to develop entrepreneurial norms and encourage innovative practices (Ferlie, Musselin, and Andresani 2008; Stoker 2006). In terms of the case study, this may have allowed for further exploration of parental engagement methods or more targeted outreach for targeted students. The evolution of organisational norms would also suggest an alleviation of tensions between managerial practitioners and the junior members of their team, with the practical elements of outreach being decided early during the initiative design. Innovative outreach programmes and styles may be allowed more time ‘on the ground’ to develop, as opposed to being quickly retracted if they are seen to not be meeting numbers-based performance measurement criteria. A consequence of this, is that it continues the tradition of centralised involvement in initiative design, which the UK government has sought to move away from. However, it may be the case that incremental change is a more effective manner to influence organisational cultures than the full retraction witnessed within the NCOP/Uni Connect programme, this said, if the authors were not project evaluators, they may look at it differently.

Conclusion

Obstinately, the goal of delegating the Theory of Change to the local authority was to allow an entrepreneurial approach to programme design, with a focus on pragmatism and flexibility to meet student needs, with the dominant stakeholder recognising the same approach could not be used in each local context (Levi and Zehavi 2015). The research presented here questions whether it is possible to achieve this if expecting entrepreneurial behaviours to develop in an environment where a traditional rigid administrative structure exists within the exact project boundaries offers the project managers a source of institutional support and political buy-in.

Unlike previous literature, which suggests shifts in organisational culture constrain entrepreneurial processes, we found that both project managers and activity leaders were frustrated with being unable to utilise more innovative outreach. However, without a mechanism that allowed entrepreneurial and innovative outreach to be communicated to the dominant stakeholders, resources were instead dedicated to what was known to be in their interest. As a result, a programme has been developed that offers outreach of broad interest to all students, allowing buy-in from the schools and high numbers of engagement, despite the programme’s objectives of delivering targeted outreach to underrepresented students. The programme fails to deliver the cultural capital component recognised by the practitioners to underrepresented students, risking their participation in higher education.

Our study suggests that the issues with the system are not due to practitioner incompetence or a lack of desire for innovative outreach but by system deficiencies. Our suggested solution to this is a more collaborative approach in programme design, allowing the localised theories of change to be communicated and assessed by the dominant stakeholders.

Diagram 1. Example of hierarchical organisational model. 15 units with 8 being in junior positions, and 6 middle managers.

Diagram 2. Example of flattened organisational model. 13 units, with 9 being in junior positions with 3 middle managers.

Diagram 3. The research theoretical frame model.

Diagram 4. The theoretical model for the Uni Connect initiative design.

Diagram 5. Theoretical model to illustrate potential solutions to project tensions.

Data availability statement

All data underpinning this publication are openly available from the University of Northampton Research Explorer at 10.24339/f658aaa3-a763-4cce-8a14-d63ccfc8d03f

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. ‘New Localism’ is defined as the devolution of power to local authorities in the delivery of national policy.

2. Within the presented research, a Theory of Change denotes a systemic process of planning, implementing or evaluating purposeful change in line with the project’s goals.

3. Underrepresented young people categorised by Office for Students as students from areas of low higher education participation, low household income or low socioeconomic status; ethnic minority groups; carers; students with disability; and refugees (2020).

4. Uni Connect has had two parts; part one ran from 2017 to 2019 and part two started in 2019 and expected to finish in August 2021. OfS are also currently proposing a new approach to the Uni Connect programme from academic year 2021–22 to 2024–25 (OfS, 2021).