Administrators in higher education: organizational expansion in a transforming institution

Abstract

Recent European research has revealed growth in the number of administrators and professionals across different sections of universities-a long established trend in US universities. We build on this research by investigating the factors associated with variation in the proportion of administrators across 761 Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in 11 European countries. We argue that the enactment of expanded and diversified missions of HE is one of the main factors nurturing universities' profesional and administrative bodies. Our findings support such an assertion; regardless of geographical and institutional differences, HEIs with high levels of "entrepreneurialism" (e.g. in service provision and external engagement) are characterized by a larger proportion of administrative staff. However, we find no empirical support for arguments citing structural pressures and demands on HEIs due to higher student enrolments, budget cuts or deregulation as engines driving such change. Instead, our results point towards, as argued by neo-institutionalists, the diffusion of formal organization as a model of institutional identity and purpose, which is especially prevalent at high levels of external connectedness.Keywords Higher education . Professional and administrative staff . Organizational expansion . Functionalism . Neo-institutionalism . EntrepreneurialismThe last couple of decades have marked a shift in the very nature of higher education (HE) as a knowledge institution. The early nineteenth century Humboldtian model of an elite institution prioritizing the pursuit of knowledge on its own left its place to the late twentieth century myth of the knowledge society (Meyer et al. 2006). Higher education institutions (HEIs) are facing High Educ (2018) 76:213-229 https://doi.

Do non-academic professionals enhance universities’ performance? Reputation vs. organisation

“…This is largely related to the slow changes in the public perceptions about the merit of individual HEIs (Keith 2001), whereby reputation feeds into research funding and research networks, shapes employers' perceptions of graduate employability and influences students' choice of university. The findings are equally relevant for the wider neo-institutional literature documenting the diffusion of organisation as a model of institutional identity and purpose (Meyer 2000;Meyer and Bromley 2013;Baltaru and Soysal 2017). In this sense, universities are increasingly behaving as strategic actors, despite there being little evidence for the capacity of individual institutions to produce outputs via purposive organisational action.…”

“…The proliferation of non-academic professionals is argued to be symptomatic of the university increasingly articulating its identity as a purposive organisational actor i.e. 'an integrated, goal-oriented entity that is deliberately choosing its own actions and that can thus be held responsible for what it does' (Krücken 2011, 4, see also Baltaru and Soysal 2017).…”

Universities’ pursuit of inclusion and its effects on professional staff: the case of the United Kingdom

“…Universities are expected to employ more professional staff in strategic areas such as student recruitment (Lynch 2006) and to expand their human resources in order to deal with the operational needs associated with a larger student body (Gibb et al 2012). However, recent European-level research has shown that the relationship between administrative staff and the overall increase in student numbers is overestimated (Baltaru and Soysal 2017). The alternative perspective puts forward the argument that the proliferation of non-academic professionals can be best understood against the backdrop of new goals and missions assimilated by universities (Krücken 2011) that foster the growing differentiation of functions at the organisational level (Schneijderberg and Merkator 2013).…”

“…Recent research, on the other hand, shows that universities indeed adopt similar organisational responses by expanding and diversifying the body of their professional staff (Schneijderberg and Merkator 1 The principle of actorhood taps into the important assumption at the basis of the modern society, namely the ability of the individual to act autonomously and play a central constitutive role in the wider public life. This presupposes the centrality of the individual as an autonomous entity of high relevance to the collective good (Frank et al 1995). 2013; Baltaru and Soysal 2017). The author argues that in order to fully understand universities' organisational responses to the external demands, one must consider the broader cultural forces that shape universities as formal organisations.…”

“…The existing literature at the European level situates this expansion against the backdrop of new goals and missions attributed to universities (Baltaru and Soysal 2017; see also Schneijderberg and Merkator 2013). These studies have called for more national-level investigations to pursue an in-depth understanding of how the broader cultural environment shapes local dynamics of administrative growth in higher education.…”