Shadow organising: emerging stakeholder collaboration in higher education to enhance quality

ABSTRACT

Much research is currently addressing how to establish, maintain and govern stakeholder collaboration in higher education. In this article, the concept of shadow organising, i.e. stakeholder imitation of formal educational provision, is introduced to illustrate bottom-up, proactive ways to connect multiple autonomous organisations and stakeholder groups within and outside universities (such as professional bodies, employers and student unions). The article exemplifies the concept of shadow organising by analysing emerging stakeholder collaboration in legal education. The case illustrates the collaborative but informal efforts of a range of supporting actors. The results show that the actors are connected to each other through concrete and practical actions, instead of agreements, regulations or partnerships, which have stabilised into a widespread latticework of interlinked activities: training law students, hiring law graduates, supervising learning processes and instituting quality control. Simultaneously, however, actors maintain their distinctive roles, identities and mandates without initiating official collaboration or a common discussion of objectives and rationales.

KEYWORDS:

• Stakeholders
• cross-boundary coordination
• inter-organisational collaborations
• legal education

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Legal education is offered in three of the four universities in Norway: Oslo, Bergen, and Tromso.

2. The aggregate results for students prior to the implementation of the ECTS Grading Scale were expressed on a 23-point scale, where the first 15 marks were laudabilis and the last eight Haud illaudabilis.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Karen Jensen

Karen Jensen is a professor of education at University of Oslo. Her research interests focus on the professions, epistemic communities, and, more generally, the ways in which the organisation of knowledge impacts learning and identity formation.

Tatiana Fumasoli

Tatiana Fumasoli is associate professor at UCL Institute of Education, London. Her research interests focus on organisation, management, and strategy of higher education institutions, as well as on the evolution of the academic profession.

Bjørn Stensaker

Bjørn Stensaker is a professor of higher education at University of Oslo. He has a special research interest in governance, leadership, and organisational change in higher education, and has published widely on these topics internationally.