Means-ends decoupling at the state level and managerial responses to multiple organisational identities in Ukrainian research universities

ABSTRACT

Drawing on the model of managerial responses to multiple organisational identities (integration, aggregation, compartmentalisation, deletion and multivocality), this article explores managerial responses in Ukrainian research universities whilst means-ends decoupling takes place at the state level. The latter term implies that practices of state policies are disconnected from the state’s core goal of enhancing public welfare. Data is taken from recent interviews with 11 top managers from three Ukrainian research universities. Our findings reveal that the greater the institutional complexity experienced by the university and the more the top managers maintain confidence in practices and organisational identities that deviate from the global model of the research university, the greater the means-ends decoupling at the organisational level. The university that sustains the least degree of means-ends decoupling at the organisational level shows aggregation as the managerial response, while the university with the highest degree of means-ends decoupling is characterised by multivocality with underdeveloped identities of research at the international level and knowledge transfer. As a higher degree of means-ends decoupling at the organisational level implies a larger efficiency gap and significant diversion of both human and financial resources, a managerial response that lacks synergy, in our case multivocality, also leads to the above-mentioned negative consequences.

KEYWORDS:

• Means-ends decoupling
• multiple organisational identities
• aggregation
• multivocality
• research university

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.