There is a growing trend for countries in Europe to introduce tuition fees for international students. The introduction of such fees has raised concerns that marketization will have a negative impact on the fundamental nature of universities. That it undermines their purpose in research and education and prevents them from fulfilling their social mission. The general purpose of this research it to better understand the real and potential threats posed by marketization through empirical inquiry that investigates the impact of marketization on universities within real-life contexts. The focus of the research is on how three Swedish universities processed and adapted to the policy change. Swedish universities were selected for the research, since tuition fees were introduced within the last ten years (2011/12), a long enough period to detect significant changes within organizations (Purser & Petranker, 2005). The method of data collection and analysis is based on Holstein and Gubrium’s (1995, 2009) active interview-method for datacollection and Gläser and Laudels’s (2010) qualitative content analysis. The research design is based on Yin’s (2018) approach to case studies and Luhmann’s (2006) systems-theory. Single-case and cross-case-synthesis provide the basis for analytical generalizations. The results of this study offer a mixed picture. From a longitudinal university stakeholder perspective universities have benefited in several ways from the policy shift despite some negative effects. Additional organizational capacity development and hybridity enabled the universities to exert agency, acting independently and making their own free choices. They deliberately shaped what “marketization” and “market-orientation” meant in their local context and were able to balance educational and commercial logics. Adaptation was most prominent in university administration. Academic staff did not report that the integrity of their work was compromised by the introduction of tuition fees. Leadership style and personal agency were found to have had a significant impact on both assertion of marketorientation and its institutional embeddedness. II This study makes two major contributions to the discussion of higher education internationalization and marketization. The introduction of a new theoretical and methodological approach provides insights into the importance of organizational and individual perception for adaptation processes. The research demonstrates that Swedish universities responded to their specific idea of what the policy shift would mean for them, suggesting that organizational change following reform cannot be understood as a direct response to external stimuli. Thus, analysis must consider university internal processing mechanisms. The second major contribution of this study is the need for a more nuanced differentiation in research and commentary between marketization as “ideology” and marketization as “application of business practices”. The thesis argues that the first is problematic as dominant paradigm for higher education sector regulation because its theoretical premises are flawed. Marketization as “application of business practices” however provides universities with a toolbox for manoeuvring within the realities of a partially marketized global higher education landscape, evaluating threats and opportunities and planning for the future.
L’introduzione di tasse universitarie rivolte agli studenti internazionali è un trend sempre più in aumento in tutti i paesi europei. Tale fenomeno ha sollevato preoccupazioni riguardanti un possibile impatto negativo che tale mercatizzazione potrebbe avere sui principi fondanti delle Università. Ciò si tradurrebbe nell’indebolimento della missione educativa e di ricerca accompagnato dal mancato conseguimento della missione sociale dell’Università. La presente attività di ricerca si pone l’obiettivo di analizzare le minacce reali e potenziali derivanti dalla mercatizzazione attraverso un’indagine empirica in grado di investigarne l’impatto sulle università in contesti di vita reali. La ricerca si focalizza sulle modalità di elaborazione ed adattamento alla nuova policy di tre università svedesi, selezionate poiché hanno applicato le sopraccitate tasse nell’arco di dieci anni a partire dal 2011/12, periodo considerato sufficientemente lungo per riscontrare cambiamenti significativi all’interno delle organizzazioni (Perser & Petranker, 2005). Il metodo di raccolta dei dati e di analisi si basa su quello delle interviste attive di Holstein e Gubrium (1995, 2009) per la raccolta dati, e sul metodo di Glaser e Laudel (2010) per l’analisi qualitativa del contenuto. L’impostazione della ricerca si basa sull’approccio di Yin (2018) per quanto riguarda i case study e su quello di teoria dei sistemi di Luhmann (2006). Il singolo caso e il cross-case-synthesis forniscono le basi per le generalizzazioni analitiche. I risultati del presente studio mostrano un quadro variegato. Da una prospettiva longitudinale di stakeholder universitario ne deriva che nonostante alcuni effetti negativi, le università hanno beneficiato in diversi modi del cambiamento di policy. Un ulteriore sviluppo della capacità organizzativa e dell’eterogeneità ha permesso alle università di agire in maniera indipendente e di scegliere liberamente. Esse sono state in grado di delineare il concetto di “mercatizzazione” e “orientamento al mercato” all’interno del loro contesto, bilanciando le logiche educative con quelle di mercato. La capacità di adattamento è stata molto evidente all’interno dell’amministrazione universitaria. Lo staff accademico non ha rilevato ripercussioni sull’integrità del proprio operato nonostante l’introduzione delle tasse. Si è rilevato che lo stile IV di leadership unita all’agency personale hanno avuto un forte impatto sia sull’orientamento al mercato che sul suo radicamento istituzionale. La presente tesi dottorale offre due importanti contributi al dibattito sull’internazionalizzazione e la mercatizzazione dell’istruzione universitaria. L’introduzione di un nuovo approccio teorico e metodologico fornisce approfondimenti in merito all’importanza della percezione individuale e organizzativa nei confronti dei processi di adattamento. La ricerca dimostra come le università svedesi si siano adattate alla loro idea di quello che il cambiamento di politica sulle tasse universitarie avrebbe significato nel loro contesto, tenendo conto delle proprie peculiarità. Ciò suggerisce che un cambiamento organizzativo a seguito di una riforma non può essere inteso solo come una risposta diretta a degli stimoli esterni. L’analisi deve per forza tener conto anche dei meccanismi di elaborazione interni delle università. Il secondo contributo significativo è rilevare il bisogno di un’attività di ricerca caratterizzata da una differenziazione meno netta tra “mercatizzazione” intesa come “ideologia” e mercatizzazione quale “implementazione di pratiche aziendali”. La tesi argomenta che l’ideologia della mercatizzazione è da considerarsi problematica quando diventa il paradigma dominante nella regolamentazione dell’ambito dell’istruzione universitaria, considerato che le sue premesse teoriche presentano dei vizi di forma. La mercatizzazione, se intesa come implementazione di pratiche aziendali, è in grado di fornire alle università strumenti adeguati per operare all’interno di una realtà in parte già orientata al mercato, consentendo loro una valutazione delle criticità e delle opportunità ai fini di una pianificazione a lungo termine.
RICKMANN, JEROME, MARKET SMART, NOT MARKET DRIVEN. ORGANIZATIONAL PROCESSING AT SWEDISH UNIVERSITIES AFTER THE INTRODUCTION OF TUITUION FEES FOR INTERNATIONAL NON-EU-STUDENTS, LEASK, BETTY, ZIGURAS, CHRISTOPHER, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore Milano:Ciclo XXXIII [https://hdl.handle.net/10807/285009]
MARKET SMART, NOT MARKET DRIVEN. ORGANIZATIONAL PROCESSING AT SWEDISH UNIVERSITIES AFTER THE INTRODUCTION OF TUITUION FEES FOR INTERNATIONAL NON-EU-STUDENTS
Rickmann, Jerome
2021
Abstract
There is a growing trend for countries in Europe to introduce tuition fees for international students. The introduction of such fees has raised concerns that marketization will have a negative impact on the fundamental nature of universities. That it undermines their purpose in research and education and prevents them from fulfilling their social mission. The general purpose of this research it to better understand the real and potential threats posed by marketization through empirical inquiry that investigates the impact of marketization on universities within real-life contexts. The focus of the research is on how three Swedish universities processed and adapted to the policy change. Swedish universities were selected for the research, since tuition fees were introduced within the last ten years (2011/12), a long enough period to detect significant changes within organizations (Purser & Petranker, 2005). The method of data collection and analysis is based on Holstein and Gubrium’s (1995, 2009) active interview-method for datacollection and Gläser and Laudels’s (2010) qualitative content analysis. The research design is based on Yin’s (2018) approach to case studies and Luhmann’s (2006) systems-theory. Single-case and cross-case-synthesis provide the basis for analytical generalizations. The results of this study offer a mixed picture. From a longitudinal university stakeholder perspective universities have benefited in several ways from the policy shift despite some negative effects. Additional organizational capacity development and hybridity enabled the universities to exert agency, acting independently and making their own free choices. They deliberately shaped what “marketization” and “market-orientation” meant in their local context and were able to balance educational and commercial logics. Adaptation was most prominent in university administration. Academic staff did not report that the integrity of their work was compromised by the introduction of tuition fees. Leadership style and personal agency were found to have had a significant impact on both assertion of marketorientation and its institutional embeddedness. II This study makes two major contributions to the discussion of higher education internationalization and marketization. The introduction of a new theoretical and methodological approach provides insights into the importance of organizational and individual perception for adaptation processes. The research demonstrates that Swedish universities responded to their specific idea of what the policy shift would mean for them, suggesting that organizational change following reform cannot be understood as a direct response to external stimuli. Thus, analysis must consider university internal processing mechanisms. The second major contribution of this study is the need for a more nuanced differentiation in research and commentary between marketization as “ideology” and marketization as “application of business practices”. The thesis argues that the first is problematic as dominant paradigm for higher education sector regulation because its theoretical premises are flawed. Marketization as “application of business practices” however provides universities with a toolbox for manoeuvring within the realities of a partially marketized global higher education landscape, evaluating threats and opportunities and planning for the future.File | Dimensione | Formato | |
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