Cameron's dimensions of effectiveness in higher education in the U.K.: a cross-cultural comparison

Abstract

A number of dramatic changes have occurred in the higher education system since the Jarratt Report into efficiency and effectiveness in the United Kingdom. Building on Cameron's (1978Cameron's ( , 1981Cameron's ( , 1986 seminal work on organisational effectiveness (OE) in higher education, this paper describes a test of his approach in the U.K. in an effort to establish the groundwork of an organisational effectiveness perspective for policy decisions, organisational analysis and management, and further research. Overall, the findings indicate that the scales developed by Cameron in the U.S. demonstrate considerably higher levels of reliability in the U.K. than in Australia. The explanation appears to be related to cultural differences in that the U.S. and the U.K. have stronger enduring traditions linking reputation and resources (Bigelow 1980). These and results of more detailed analysis suggest the importance of further study to unravel both cultural specific interpretation and thicker descriptions of organisational issues to facilitate future policy and management decisions (Lysons 1990a(Lysons , 1990b.

Predicting a taxonomy of organisational effectiveness in U.K. higher educational institutions

“…The first stage of the study program involved examining the organisational effectiveness dimensions in higher educational institutions in the U.K. (Lysons & Hatherly 1992). Cameron's questionnaire was reviewed to clarify terminology ambiguous or misleading in the U.K.…”

“…However, a major proportion of the common variance explained (39.9 of 85.4%) continued to involve "organisational health" which was noted as problematic for management to interpret and apply (Lysons & Ryder 1989). Indeed, organisational health emerged as the dominant effectiveness factor in all of the studies in the U.S., and Australian as well as the U.K. (Lysons & Hatherly 1992). These will be considered in the discussion later.…”

Basic Skills Programming at California Success Centers

“…Data were coded in two ways. In the first coding we drew upon the organizational effectiveness literature (Cameron, 1981(Cameron, , 1986Jones & James, 1979;Lysons & Hatherly, 1992;Lysons, Hatherly, & Mitchell, 1998) and coded data according to the following five characteristics of educational programs: (a) institutional and program leadership, (b) human resources, (c) financial resources, (d) the nature of the curriculum and academic planning, and (e) organizational performance assessment. The second coding utilized our three theoretical frameworks and focused on (a) the ecological context in which the college program is embedded (i.e., ecology), (b) the historical-cultural forces comprising the college program (i.e., history-culture), and (c) the organizational structure of the college program (i.e., organization).…”

Attaining a Sustainable Future for Public Higher Education: The Role of Institutional Effectiveness and Resource Dependence

“…Lysons (1990), and Lysons and Hatherly (1992) have tested this construct in Australian and United Kingdom context respectively. While findings in Australian context support only four of Cameron's nine dimensions, findings in the U.K. setting show much higher level of reliability for the nine dimensions studied.…”