This article investigates the form of European universities to determine the extent to which they resemble the characteristics of complete organizations and whether the forms are associated with modernization policy pressure, national institutional frames and organizational characteristics. An original data set of twenty-six universities from eight countries was used. Specialist universities have a stronger identity, whereas the level of hierarchy and rationality is clearly associated with the intensity of modernization policies. At the same time, evidence suggests limitations for universities to become complete, as mechanisms allowing the development of some dimensions seemingly constrain the capability to develop others.
Institutional diversity-the variety of higher education institutions within a higher education system-has been a popular theme in higher education (policy) research. Despite the large amount of work, key challenges to a better understanding of institutional diversity have hardly been addressed. We argue that particularly the problems of conceptualizing and measuring diversity across higher education systems are underestimated. This article therefore focuses on selecting salient dimensions of difference (i.e. important dimensions of organizational action), setting the perimeter of the populations studied, dealing with outliers and choosing appropriate diversity measures. We highlight the careful steps that need to be taken to make comparisons across higher education systems meaningful and use European data to illustrate the consequences of particular choices.
The paper draws on institutional theory with special attention to recent contributions that aim at developing its micro-foundations. We address the question of how individual higher education institutions deal with institutional pluralism. We develop an analytical framework inspired by institutional theory, the sensemaking perspective in organisation theory and strategy-as-practice to connect the macro-transformation processes of the organisational field and the micro-processes of organisational strategising
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