Differentiating universities: some insights from organization studies

ABSTRACT

Differentiation has gained widespread acceptance across the Ontario policy community as a mechanism that can improve the overall quality of the PSE system. Though much has been said locally about the supposed benefits of differentiation, including its ability to reduce programme duplication and boost institutional efficiency, little attention has been given to the challenges that promoting differentiation will present. Drawing on insights from the field of Organization Studies, this piece outlines how institutionalized environments, and the behaviour they prescribe, actively suppress the ‘natural’ occurrence of differentiation. In turn, it presents strategies that can be employed by policymakers to maximize institutional compliance with differentiation policies, as well as a series of peripheral tactics they can employ to disrupt the isomorphic forces within the university sector.

KEYWORDS:

• Differentiation
• organization theory
• Canada
• Ontario

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this manuscript. In addition, he would like to declare that the opinions expressed here are his alone, and do not necessarily reflect those of the funder.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 In Ontario, Canada, for example, a variety of specialized technical institutes emerged during the mid-twentieth century. They were established by the provincial government to provide practical and occupational training than that available at local universities. As Skolnik (2010) and others note, however, there was little public demand for such novel institutional type, with students favouring broader, liberal and more traditional types of education available at existing institutions. This resulted in the amalgamation of these institutions into the more conventional colleges and universities in existence today (Fleming 1971). See Pizarro Milian, Davies, and Zarifa (2016, 23–24) for other international examples.

2 This ‘drift’ towards university-like forms has characterized the evolution of several institutions within Ontario PSE. Consider that, for example, Ryerson University gradually evolved from a polytechnic to a full-fledged university over the last three decades. Sheridan College has also publicly expressed its desire to take a similar path, one that has also been recently travelled by OCAD University.

3 Prior to becoming the Ministry of Advanced Education and Skills Development, the Ministry went by the name of ‘Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities’. In older materials, the latter is cited (‘MTCU’), but it should be noted by the reader that these are the same entities.

4 By ‘behavior’, I refer both to strategic action and forms of organizing, and thus, both structure and process.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by the Ontario Ministry of Training, Colleges & Universities through their Ontario Human Capital Research and Innovation Fund (OHCRIF) grant program.