Organizational Change in Higher Education Ministries in Light of Agencification: Comparing Austria and Norway

Abstract

Reorganizing the bureaucracy is expected to improve public sector governance. In line with other policy sectors, the modernization of European higher education was characterized by such reform attempts during the past decades. The national reform agendas of most European countries in the late 1990s and early 2000s included, amongst other things, organizational changes in the ministerial bureaucracy, the establishment of public agencies in key policy areas such as quality assurance and internationalization, and in general a focus on reorganizing the governance arrangements in the higher education sector. Although considerable research has been conducted on different aspects of the governance reforms in this sector, such as institutional autonomy, funding mechanisms, or academic freedom, evidence on how the ministerial bureaucracy itself changed as an organization is still limited. The aim of this thesis is to address organizational change in the ministerial bureaucracyin the literature defined as the process of administrative reorganization-and its effects on the sector's governance by studying, amongst others things, the establishment of public agencies in this policy sector.To this end, this study makes use of conceptual and analytical approaches from the fields of public administration, public policy, and higher education research and is grounded in an organizational theory approach. The starting point is the assumption that effective governance arrangements can be determined via the organizational design of central administrative organizations.The analytical concepts developed and applied are ministerial authority, agency autonomy, organizational capacity, and bureaucratic accountability.The study is designed as a comparative case study of two higher education ministries undergoing a comprehensive reorganization process. The empirical context of this study is the Austrian and Norwegian higher education policy sectors, where administrative reorganization and the establishment of public agencies were key components in the governance reforms of the early 2000s.The collection and analysis of statistical data on organizational developments, legal frameworks, policy documents, and key expert interviews with bureaucrats, policymakers, and academics provides the empirical evidence for this study.The theoretical framework and empirical analysis of this study are outlined in three journal articles, each addressing different aspects of the organizational changes and governance reforms in the respective higher education administrations. Article 1 examines the organizational transformations in the Austrian and Norwegian ministries and the subsequent agencification processes with a focus on developments in ministerial authority, agency autonomy, and organizational capacity. Article 2 addresses the governance relationship between ministries and agencies and how areas of responsibility between the two bureaucratic levels are defined. Article 3 focuses on the effectiveness Part II: ArticlesArticle 1 Friedrich, P. E. (2019). Or...

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