1. ^aDepartment of Administration and Organisation Theory, University of Bergen, Christiesgate 17, Bergen N-5007, Norway. E-mail: ivar.bleiklie@aorg.uib.no
2. ^bProfessor Emeritus of Government, Brunel University, UK

Abstract

The article analyses how the dominant ideals about the actual organizational patterns of university governance have changed over the past few decades away from the classical notion of the university as a republic of scholars towards the idea of the university as a stakeholder organization. In this article, we first look at some general supranational trends, often assumed to influence developments on a global scale. Then, we present some ideas about change processes in universities and academic organizations and analyse how they may help us understand how change may be promoted or limited by the characteristics of such processes. In the following section, we present some research findings about national variation regarding the extent to which changes have taken place in a comparative cross-national perspective. Finally, we discuss how change and variation may be understood in terms of the concept of higher education regimes.