Interdependency management in universities: a case study

Abstract

There remains uncertainty in scientific discussions regarding the governance of universities in new public management regimes in terms of who actually ‘rules’ in the university. Apparently, a strengthened management leadership is confronted with continuing elements of academic self-regulation and professional autonomy in knowledge production and diffusion. Organisational and academic rationales coexist in today's management of universities. This article endeavours to clarify some of the ambiguities pertaining to the coexistence of two authorities by demonstrating the working of ‘interdependency management’ that is taking place within universities. For this purpose, the authors have scrutinised research, teaching and recruitment policies in one Swiss university that is subject to such ambiguities. The study confirms existing research in that a command-and-control system is not applied. Policymaking in universities is instead based on a mix of negotiations in faculties that are taking place in the ‘shadow of hierarchy’, negotiated bargaining between faculties and leaders and occasional unilateral decisions of leaders. This mitigates latent conflicts between management and the academic community: strategic orientations of the university are generally accepted by the academic community while the academic community has influence on policy formulation and maintains defining powers over policy substance.

Keywords:

• university governance
• new public management
• leadership
• interdependency management

Notes

1. New public management has a relatively coherent underlying ideational framework. Its application in reality has, however, led to different methods of implementation varying the relative powers of the leadership, boards of trustees, and the academic community (Paradeise, Reale, and Goastellec 2009a).

2. The Swiss part of this international comparative project – ’Re-structuring Higher Education and Scientific Innovation (RHESI): Consequences of Changes in Authority Relations for the Direction and Organisation of Research’ (supported by the European Science Foundation) was financed by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF project n° 10HE13-125814/1).

3. Switzerland has a federal system subdivided into constituent units, the ‘cantons’. Ten cantons out of 26, finance – though for a minor part together with the federal government and financial support of some other cantons – a university.

4. The university has eight faculties altogether. We have chosen four for closer investigation: Sciences; Economic and Social Sciences; Theology; Psychology and Educational Sciences. In all faculties, interviews were held with middle management.

5. At the university, the rectorate decides to use a portion of this amount to support indirect costs of research activities (central administration) and another portion to support research activities inside the university. The allocation is based on the number of professors in each faculty and on the numbers of SNSF projects in each faculty.

6. For 2010, for example, the numbers of SNSF projects per faculty were as follows: Faculty of Sciences (68), Faculty of Psychology and Education (21), Faculty of Arts (16) and Faculty of Theology (3).