ABSTRACT
This paper aims to deal with lingering governance issues of a prestigious university in a developing country of Southeast Asia. It provides a description of environments, changes, and university stakeholders’ perceptions in terms of governance arrangements of Chiang Mai University (CMU), which was selected as a National Research University in Thailand. The analytical framework was composed of: (1) context-underpinning factors; (2) incentive arrangements and funding; and (3) monitoring and oversight mechanisms. The study adopted a qualitative approach. There were 27 interviewees. They were top executives and academics of CMU, and senior officials working for governmental agencies and independent organizations. The study highlighted that the contextual factor of bureaucratic mindset was a crucial factors affecting the institutional governance arrangements in terms of incentive arrangements and oversight mechanisms. In addition, the application of three disciplinary perspectives from agency theory can be a fruitful framework for analyzing higher education governance.
Acknowledgements
The author gratefully acknowledges the academic support, scholarships, travel grants and friendship from the University of Hong Kong, the European Union, the University of Oslo, the University of Tampere, the University of Aveiro during his studies of Ph.D. degree and Master’s degree. The author also greatly appreciates those research participants of CMU and different organizations in this study, including the feedbacks from the paper reviewers. This earlier version of this paper is a part of the author’s Ph.D. dissertation at the Faculty of Education, the University of Hong Kong. It has been edited and rewritten.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.