Introduction

The dominant ideals about the organization and governance of universities have changed over the last few decades. The way in which organizational and decision-making structures within universities are justified are informed by two broad set of ideas about university governance. According to the first, we may consider the university as a republic of scholars whereas the second regards the university as a stakeholder organization. In the former, institutional autonomy and academic freedom are seen as two sides of the same coin — which means that leadership and decision making are based on collegial decisions made by independent scholars. In the latter, institutional autonomy is considered a basis for strategic decision making by leaders who are assumed to see it as their primary task to satisfy the interests of major stakeholders and where the voice of academics within the institutions is but one among several stakeholders. Academic freedom is therefore circumscribed by the interests of other stakeholders, and decision making is taking place within more hierarchical structures designed to provide leaders the authority to make and enforce strategic decisions within the organization. Whereas power is supposed to be vested in the professoriate both regarding major decisions and the management of daily affairs according to the first ideal, it is supposed to be vested in stakeholders when major decisions are to be made and in leaders and strong managerial structures in connection with day-to-day management. In this paper, we shall first look at some general supranational trends that are often assumed to influence developments on a global scale. Then, we shall 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 as to how and to what extent changes have taken place in different countries. Finally, we discuss how change and variation may be understood in terms of the concept of higher education regimes.

International Trends

The last decades have undoubtedly been characterized by a move from the 'republic of scholars' ideal towards the 'stakeholder university' ideal, and has been observed and commented upon by a number of observers (Keller, 1983; Teichler, 1988; Neave and Van Vught, 1991, 1994; Becher and Kogan, 1992; Dill and Sporn, 1995; Etzkowitz and Leydesdorff, 1997; Slaughter and Leslie, 1997; Bleiklie, 1998, 2005; Clark, 1998; Neave, 1998; Gornitzka et al., 2005; Olsen, 2005). However, two questions need to be addressed with connection to this. First, it is relatively easy to demonstrate that the notion of a move is valid if one looks at ideologies, beliefs and values as they are expressed by policymakers, higher education leaders and other interested parties. Changing beliefs and ideals do not necessarily lead to new practices. In order to understand the extent of change beyond the initial ideological shift, one must observe actual structures and behaviour at various levels within higher education institutions (Kogan et al., 2006). Second, in a period where notions of globalization are in vogue, the move is often seen as a globalizing process that leads to the transformation of traditional universities governed like republics of scholars into 'stakeholder universities' across the globe. This development in turn means that universities in different locations and countries are converging towards a common type of organizational structure. Again, there are reasons to ask whether these assumptions hold true against evidence from various nation states (Teichler, 1988; Neave and Van Vught, 1991; Musselin, 1999; Hood et al., 2004).

Within different national regimes, different components of the internal structures may be balanced in different ways, articulation between teaching and research may vary as may the subdivision of universities in departments, schools and curricula. These have been described and analysed in increasing breadth and detail. The main structural changes that have been noted are as follows:

• A far stronger role for central authorities in the determination of university objectives and modes of working. This is true of universities that used to be under detailed central controls and those that used to enjoy large degrees of autonomy, such as the Anglophone universities (Neave, 1998; Musselin, 1999, 2004; Kogan et al., 2006). Therefore, introduction of macro steering mechanisms, through national funding systems, evaluation and accreditation regimes or legislation, may all be tightly linked to and may profoundly affect governance at the institutional level.
• The creation of powerful managerial infra-structures that now parallel and to some extent replace the academic structures of deans, heads of departments and professors. In the latter case, the implication is that government by professionals or academics that used to be based on collegial decision-making bodies have become integrated into the administrative line of the organization and thus become part of top-down decision-making structures. This reverses the basis of legitimacy and the movement of decision-making premises. Whereas decision making used to be based on collegiate bodies that at each level of the organization were composed of representatives from the organizational level below, decisions are now often trusted with leaders who are appointed by and are supposed to implement the policies of leaders on the organizational level above their own so that department chairs are appointed by deans and deans by rectors. These structures are supported by the creation of directorates concerned with the economic development, marketing, quality assurance and international connections of the university.
• In many countries, the power of academically dominated senates has been paralleled or replaced by councils, boards or trustees who incorporate representation from the world of business, public services and politics. These and their chairpersons in particular reinforce the corporate nature of the reformed university. The power of the academic had already been substantially modified from the 1960s onwards by the admission of junior academics and students to senates and other decision-making bodies.
• A movement of power so that institutional leaders — rectors, presidents or vice-chancellors — who used to act as primi inter pares are now nearer the position of chief executives running a corporate institution. This means less detailed interference from central authorities through laws and regulations in day-to-day operations and budgetary decisions and more focus on goal management by objectives and result.

These movements add up to a situation in which the working conditions of the institutions are becoming standardized at the political level, institutional leadership is being strengthened, new managerial structures are being established and collegial structures are being weakened and replaced by stakeholder boards and a stronger bureaucratic line organization with a firmer top-down grip on internal organizational processes.

A powerful force lending support to the growth of managerialism has been the assertion of quite penetrative quality assurance procedures that replace the hitherto 'trustful' relationships between academics and their institutions as the belief in 'transparency' has replaced trust in expert and professional knowledge. Both research and teaching and learning are assessed by a variety of measures including various forms of external review, benchmarking, and performance indicators that shift judgements from the academic profession towards that of external bodies and institutional management. The use of peer reviews and in some cases significant participation by academics (e.g. in connection with the Research Assessment Exercise in the UK) in developing performance indicators, however, means that managerialism does not necessarily exclude influence by the academic profession.

These changes all add up to regimes appropriate to a stakeholder university. Independently of, but perhaps interacting with the different national higher education regimes, there are several current drivers for change in different university systems such as introduction of new degrees, changing funding criteria, direct regulation or competition.

From the organizational perspective outlined here, it may seem somewhat paradoxical that the call for change has been justified in terms of an organizational ideal that emphasizes efficiency as a general organizational quality and the organization as an instrument rather than some set of institutional values. This fact should not, however, be exaggerated without a closer scrutiny of empirical evidence. Initially, it is important to be aware of the fact that organizational ideals come in packages where more than one set of values are bundled together. Secondly, one cannot necessarily deduce actual practices in specific instances from general trends or ideals in policy documents or organizational plans.

As already indicated, the organizational ideals that we find in academia based on principles — such as professional self-regulation under which academics independently run their research and teaching operations, representative democracy that grants participatory rights to staff and students in institutional decision-making processes, bureaucratic steering by which the state regulates publicly funded educational institutions and corporate management as a means to render higher education institutions efficient and accountable — are not mutually exclusive, but the degree to which they are emphasized and dominate varies over time and across institutions and educational systems. Whereas in the 1960s and 1970s it shifted from professorial self-regulation towards some form of representative model although still dominated by academics, the emphasis since the late 1980s has (at least ostensibly) shifted towards a business model, while the representative model has been under attack as a prime example of 'weak' leadership. In addition, bureaucratic steering has always been an aspect of the way in which public and private universities have been managed.

In European public systems, the extent to which rhetoric based on the corporate management ideal has been followed up in practice varies and exists in a sometimes uneasy relationship with bureaucratic steering and the social responsibilities of universities as civil service institutions. One may also ask to what extent one is likely to find additional variation in African, Asian and Latin American countries. These observations lead towards three kinds of empirical questions. Firstly, how have the values that legitimize university governance structures varied over time? Secondly, how do the values that legitimize university governance vary across nations? Thirdly, to what extent have national differences in governance structures diminished over time, as supporters of the globalization thesis argue, or conversely, to what extent do national differences persist in the face of global processes of economic and ideological change?¹ This paper concentrates on some selected European experiences, with occasional reference to the US.

There are two major issues in the academic literature as well as in public debates about the changing governance of universities and higher education institutions not only in Europe and North America, but in many other parts of the world. First, there is a normative debate regarding the pros and cons of the changes, as to whether they are good or bad, and who benefits and who loses from them. The second debate is empirical-analytical, and here the question is to what extent the changes actually take place, how drastic they are, to what extent they are uniform across countries and global regions and to what extent universities and university systems are converging on the same organizational model and thereby becoming more similar than before.

Universities, Public Policy and Organizational Change

The rising influence of the business enterprise model as an organizational ideal has constituted an increasing institutional contextual pressure for change over the last decades in many countries. Few doubt that the expectations that face universities and their performance are changing. A number of processes have been identified as drivers behind the changing ideals that institutional leaders are supposed to sustain (Bleiklie and Byrkjeflot, 2002). The rise of mass education during the 1980s and 1990s made higher education and its costs more visible and contributed to a more intense focus on how higher education institutions are organized and managed. New ideas about university management and funding have altered the political rhetoric and discourse about higher education issues (Neave, 1998, 2002). The idea that universities ought to be organized and managed as business enterprises and become 'entrepreneurial' universities (Clark, 1998) has deeply influenced the normative debate about organization and leadership in higher education. Thus, enthusiasts who envisage new alliances and forms of cooperation between economic enterprise, public authority and knowledge institutions as necessary and with desirable consequences for academic institutions and knowledge production have had a strong influence on the public debate on these issues (Gibbons et al., 1994; Etzkowitz and Leydesdorff, 1997). Sceptics of these trends have, on the other hand, suggested that stronger external influence over academic institutions, symbolized by the rise of 'academic capitalism' (Slaughter and Leslie, 1997) and the 'ruin' of the university as a cultural institution (Readings, 1996), leads to the breakdown of internal value systems that sustain academic freedom and independent, critical scholarship. Enthusiasts and sceptics alike, however, tend to share the assumption that a radical change has taken place and focus on how new ideals and policies based on those ideals change the operating conditions for universities. The implications of such changing expectations are, however, contested issues. At least two empirical questions may be raised in this connection.

The first question focuses on the nature of organizational change. In the higher education literature, Becher and Kogan (1992, 176) have adapted two classical assumptions about organizational change to higher education. The assumption of radical change implies that change means that new ideals and goals simply replace established ones. The alternative is the assumption of organic growth or sedimentation. In this case, change is viewed as processes where new ideals come in addition to and are 'layered on top' of established ones. Much of the literature on change in higher education focuses on how traditional ideals are replaced by new ones, under the assumption that new ideals almost instantly lead to the introduction of new organizational structures and changed behaviour by organization members so as to represent the ideals adequately. If this is true, then universities have undergone a process of radical change. Alternatively, one may assume that new ideals are layered on top of existing ones in a process of sedimentation. Institutions are therefore faced with a number of expectations, based partly on traditional and partly on more recently adopted ideals. The structural and behavioural implications are therefore much more ambiguous and thus leave room for different interpretations and struggles as part of the implementation process.

The answer to the first question has implications for the second question. What are the organizational implications of ideological change? If organizational ideals develop in a goal replacement process, one may hypothesize that organizational forms develop through structural redesign processes. This kind of process gives the impression of well-integrated organizations in which activities and changes in one part of the organization have clear consequences for what goes on in the rest of the organization. This is the prevailing notion about organization in much of the management literature and among administration practitioners (Olsen, 2005). If organizational ideals develop in a sedimentation process, then this might also be true for how organizational forms are affected by such ideals — that is through a process of gradual change in which new structures are added to existing ones. This second process gives the impression of a more complex, loosely coupled organization in which activities and changes in one part of the organization have no or only diffuse implications for activities in the rest of the organization. Traditionally, organization theorists have conceptualized universities as complex (Damrosch, 1995), multifunctional (Parsons and Platt, 1973; Kerr, 1995) and loosely coupled organizations (Weick, 1976). Indeed, the very ideas of loose coupling and corresponding processes were developed by students of decision making in universities (Cohen et al., 1972). The new trends that face universities may be regarded as attempts at changing the organizational characteristics that used to be regarded as essential to universities. The two perspectives sketched above produce highly divergent expectations as to the likely outcome of such attempts.

Reforms are often presented as radical changes introduced as the outcome of thorough and well-planned structural redesign, and based on the assumption that human behaviour easily lends itself to steering by changes in formal structures. Actual reform processes, however, tend to depart from this ideal. More often than not the gradual and organic processes of change, means that reforms, for better or worse, tend to accomplish less than originally announced. Yet, in order to make choices among political alternatives, one sometimes need models that clearly represent the principles on which the alternatives are based.

Although academic institutions develop gradually and the introduction of new social values adds to their complexity rather than changing them radically, this does not mean that change cannot take place abruptly and be radical. But it does mean that the circumstances under which rapid change takes place are relatively unusual and specific. Both external pressure and internal dynamics are important in accounting for the conditions for rapid organizational change (Greenwood and Hinings, 1996).

The most influential account of the processes that have affected the discourse about academic organization during the last decades can be found in contributions such as those by Gibbons et al. (1994), and Etzkowitz and Leydesdorff (1997). Starting with the process of transformation from elite to mass higher education, the story runs more or less as follows: from the 1960s onwards, and with the until now last wave of expansion during the 1990s, the transformation was an international process that affected educational systems and societies, at least in Europe, North America and Austral-Asia, in a uniform way with respect to a number of general characteristics (Ramírez, 2003). Increased participation rates made higher education and research important to much larger population groups than before and this, in turn, made it less exclusive and less associated with elevated social status. The number of university faculty grew and, with their loss of exclusiveness, they experienced a loss of social status and power within their institutions. From the 1980s, globalization and neo-liberalism have put increasingly strong pressures on universities to behave like businesses. It is argued that this will make them more efficient in providing education and research services in large quantities, more competitive on the international market place and better able to secure outside funding, and so to reduce their dependence on public support. In order to enable universities to meet these challenges, university reformers have set out to integrate universities, tightening the links between the different parts of the university organization in order to make them more efficient, manageable and accountable.

Correct as this argument may be, it is important to keep in mind that universities, no less than previously, are pursuing multiple goals, serving various constituencies and interest groups. They are embedded in different and powerful national settings (Krücken et al., 2007). The replacement of goals or addition of new goals, such as efficiency, manageability, accountability and profitability, does not necessarily have any direct implications for leadership and organizational behaviour. Teichler (1988) has demonstrated how the exact implications of the transition to mass higher education systems have varied across countries depending on what institutional and organizational patterns that were developed in order to deal with higher education expansion. Comparative evidence from countries such as Australia, France, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, United Kingdom and the United States suggests that the solutions have been contested and shaped by established institutional structures (Musselin, 1999; Hood et al., 2004; Kogan et al., 2006). The evidence demonstrates how reforms, apparently justified in terms of common ideals such as autonomy, accountability, efficiency and quality, were not only introduced in institutional settings that were quite different but also followed different paths.

National Variation

One common characteristic that applies to European countries is that higher education, because of its sharply increasing size and budgetary significance, has become more politically salient over the last decades. Accordingly, central government authorities, whatever their leaning, have become more concerned about the cost of higher education and more interested in affecting its product in terms of candidates and research than before. This means that although governments might steer in a more decentralized manner than before, they are interested in steering a wider array of affairs. In this latter sense, power has become centralized although discretion and responsibilities have become decentralized to individual institutions.

The comparative evidence indicates that the general ideological pressure in individual countries is mediated through specific national policies based on experiences and issues that constitute powerful political, legal and financial operating conditions. These national influences have moulded and given shape to the general trends that affect systems internationally. This means that although the values that justify the policies are quite similar, the countries that are affected by them started out from different positions characterized by considerable variation as to the extent of institutional autonomy, and have since moved in quite different directions. For example, English universities did enjoy considerable autonomy until about 1980 and have since experienced stronger government control and less autonomy; Swedish universities experienced a move towards more autonomy, whereas Norway until recently found herself in a middle position characterized by a less drastic and more mixed combination of reform measures (Kogan et al., 2006).

Considering organizational change, one might say that formerly, the ideal university governance arrangement claimed authority in its capacity to represent the professoriate as members of an egalitarian and autonomous disciplinary community. Now, governance arrangements claim authority on a basis that is radically different from representing the collective of faculty members. Today's managers claim authority by formulating strategies that the organization's stakeholders request, and by giving directions to their academic staff that shall induce them to contribute to the pursuit of the strategic goals of their institution. The tension between these ideals is alive and well within today's universities and they may be illustrated by the following formulation by Kogan and Hanney (2000, 195): 'One of the genuine challenges for any head of institution is to ensure there is a balance between managerial accountability and giving a say to the academic community'. Although national trajectories vary regarding the development of institutional autonomy, current developments seem to challenge the link between academic autonomy at the institutional level and individual autonomy of academics within the institutions.

The situation in the US seems to be somewhat different from the European one. The pattern of higher education organization and management structures appears to be more stable. The system expanded earlier and is of a size and diversity that make it unusually capable of absorbing growth and change while retaining its basic structural features.

As pointed out above, institutional governance arrangements are often shaped to a considerable extent by national governance structures through legislation, funding systems and systems for evaluation, accreditation and control. Therefore, if we consider the forms of public sector control that are applied and how they may combine in different ways to form specific governance regimes, it may be easier to form a more complete picture of governance arrangements and their development at the institutional level. A study comparing changes in government regulation of higher education in eight countries — Australia, France, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, United Kingdom and the United States — during the late 1980s and 1990s found a number of differences that are relevant in this context (Hood et al., 2004).² The study focused on the use of four types of government regulation of research and higher education as one of three public sectors. The four types of regulation — 'oversight', 'mutuality', 'competition' and 'contrived randomness' — were developed in order to be able to analyse formal and informal forms of government control comparatively across nations, across different public sectors and their development over time. 'Oversight' corresponds roughly to a classic form of government control through laws, regulations and other forms of control from above. 'Mutuality' means control by formal or informal group processes and may have many shapes and forms, but in academic life the typical form is the collegiate body that we find in traditional university governing bodies dominated by professors, hiring committees, peer review bodies, research funding councils and so on. 'Competition' may be any form of institutionalized rivalry, such as in competition for research funds or academic positions. Finally, 'contrived randomness' is understood as any way in which control of individuals may be exercised to make their lives unpredictable, for example, by random inspections or audits, selection of office holder by lot or other random selection processes.

The study revealed the following pattern: the US stood out from the other countries by being less exposed to direct regulation or 'oversight'. The UK stood out as the only country where random control ('contrived randomness') plays a certain role.³ Autonomous collegial decision making ('mutuality') still plays an essential role in all university systems, but enjoys a stronger position in continental Europe than in the Anglo-American countries and Japan. Conversely, competition plays a stronger role in systems with many and influential private institutions (Japan, the US) and countries that have pursued more radical New Public Management policies (Australia).

I shall conclude this discussion by pointing out that the business enterprise ideal has influenced governance of the university systems analysed above, and of the institutions within them, only to a limited extent. The research has demonstrated that being affected by common external forces pushing all systems in the same direction does not necessarily mean that they are becoming more similar to one another. National distinctive features still exert a heavy influence on the formulation of current reform policies, and previous findings of this sort continue to be supported by more recent projects (Paradeise, 2007). The findings reported above indicate that national peculiarities have survived and that some of the oft-cited differences between regions such as the Anglo-Saxon world and continental Europe still persist.

Furthermore, we may draw two conclusions about current organizational characteristics for universities in Europe and North America. Universities still enjoy considerable institutional autonomy. However, the connection between institutional and individual autonomy has been seriously weakened, if not severed, in many countries (Bleiklie, 2005; Kogan et al., 2006). If one wishes to sustain some measure of individual academic freedom as an essential part of university teaching and research, then the question arise: What are the values on which such autonomy might be based? In the next section, we shall look at how regional and national organizational configurations may shed further light on the future of university organization and governance, and the forms of regulation on which it is based.

University Governance and Emerging Knowledge Regimes

The previous discussion has emphasized how changes in the organization of higher education institutions may be understood against the backdrop of higher education expansion and the need to control costs, spurred to a more visible and politically salient higher education system. The developments analysed may be seen as nationally distinct outcomes of the struggle to define the true nature of knowledge between actors such as states and politicians, institutional leaders and students, researchers and intellectuals and representatives of businesses and other organized interests in society. The key question here is how actors with different interests struggle for their interests in a broad sense, how they form coalitions or alliances, devise strategies and form regimes, characterized by preference for certain forms of government regulation and internal organization and leadership. In order to understand the different trajectories that higher education systems have followed, we shall distinguish between a few ideal typical constellations of knowledge regimes, and the actor constellations and interests on which they are based.

Modern universities and higher education systems are influenced by a number of developments that have created a thrust towards an extended concept of knowledge comprising both its theoretical and practical aspects, and with a stronger emphasis on utility and social demand (Bleiklie and Byrkjeflot, 2002). In the following, we shall argue that emerging knowledge regimes may be separated into at least two main groups. On the one hand, there is an academic capitalist regime, driven by university–industry alliances, economic interests and a commercial logic. In spite of its huge influence on the discourse about higher education and as a symbol of current changes in higher education institutions, the notion of 'academic capitalism' (Slaughter and Leslie, 1997) or 'entrepreneurial universities' (Clark, 1998), industry funding is an important source for relatively few top research universities, particularly in the US (Powell and Owen-Smith, 1998; Turk-Bicacki and Brint, 2005). In fact, the dominant pattern is that most higher education institutions are publicly funded and owned by national or regional governments. This might be taken as an argument to the effect that stability prevails in the face of all rhetoric about fundamental change. Managers, informed by the stakeholder university ideal, however, may support the spread of 'capitalism' and be supported by a combination of public austerity policies and stronger influence by external stakeholders through funding arrangements and university board positions.

Although universities are still predominantly public in most countries, the way in which public authorities run them has changed fundamentally, and this has been heavily influenced by notions of 'academic capitalism' and 'entrepreneurial universities'. It manifests itself in the notion of universities as business enterprises and the introduction of quasi-market mechanisms in order to promote competition and cost effectiveness. Furthermore, in many countries public universities have introduced student fees and they are playing an increasingly important part in funding higher education. Such public managerialist regimes are driven by university–state alliances, political-administrative interests and a semi-competitive logic based on incentive policies where public support depends partly on teaching and/or research performance. They come, however, in different versions that may be understood against the backdrop of the previous public regimes from which they have developed. Comparative studies of national systems have demonstrated how public regimes that dominated the European systems until the 1980s or 1990s were different in important respects. Although all in principle were public, different actor constellations, alliances and interests characterized the regimes (Musselin 1999; Kogan et al., 2006).

In countries like England, Norway and Sweden (Kogan et al., 2006), France and Germany (Musselin, 1999), one finds different institutional environments that distribute actors differently from country to country. Although English reforms in the 1980s and 1990s were radical, important features at systems level as well as the institutional level were preserved. The former may be illustrated by the continuous important role played by co-opted academic elites in designing systemwide regulation, such as the Research Assessment Exercises, and the status and role of the vice-chancellors at the institutional level. In Sweden, reform processes from the mid-1980s were characterized by early politicization and corporatist features with a strong role of the unions in higher education policies. Swedish reforms tended to be relatively radical but susceptible to change as the political balance has shifted back and forth between the political left and right. These features are quite different from the reform pattern of neighbouring Norway. Traditionally, reform policies have been a matter handled within a rather close relationship between the institutions and the Ministry of education. Policies have developed gradually in a consensual way that sustains established relationships and regime features. The radical Institutional Governance reforms introduced with the Quality Reform of 2003 have affected the organizational landscape profoundly, but at the same time institutions have been given the opportunity to adopt the reforms to the extent and at the speed they prefer. Similarly, in France, Musselin (1999) demonstrated how French reforms for a very long time have been moulded by the 'disciplinary logic' that has characterized the French higher education system since the Napoleonic university reforms as opposed to a logic by 'organization' that characterizes German reforms.

Thus, within the same main regime type, university systems may vary considerably with regard to important characteristics on key dimensions such as the role and strength of academic elites (cf. England), corporatist features (cf. Sweden), state structures (cf. Norway), academic institutions (cf. Germany) and academic disciplines (cf. France). As we saw, the five countries mentioned were characterized by the prominent position of one of these characteristics, which in turn shaped national policy processes as well as organization and leadership structures at the institutional level.

National systems, furthermore, appear to include both capitalist and managerialist regime features (Teixeira et al., 2004). Thus, public funding plays an important role for American research funding, and many US states own and contribute substantially to funding comprehensive state systems. On the other hand, many public systems incorporate capitalist elements, which may be illustrated by the way in which foreign students' tuition payments contribute in important ways to the funding of English and Australian universities.

Conclusion

These observations suggest first of all that when new knowledge regimes arise, their impact may be partial and may vary depending on the conditions with which they are faced. The emerging capitalist and managerialist regimes may be viewed as different responses to a number of general trends such as higher education expansion, the rise of 'knowledge society' and a different understanding of the purpose of higher education and research. What we have called an academic capitalist regime has in many ways become a global yardstick, despised by some, espoused by others. It has until now had a stronger impact on ideology and discourse than on the way in which universities are operated and funded. It may therefore express standardized norms with a global ideological impact that are far from always backed up by organizational arrangements and practical realities (Frank and Meyer, 2007; Meyer and Schofer, 2007). This is even clearer if we move from the systemic level to individual institutions where we are likely to find considerable variation across institutions within national systems (Musselin, 2004; Kogan et al., 2006). The practical impact of a commercial logic on Western university systems is still limited and in the field of research, it concerns mainly a relatively small number of major research universities. In many public systems in Europe, a semi-competitive logic between institutions has been introduced in which they are supposed to compete for students and research funding. This semi-competitive logic may provide an important rationale for organizational reforms whereby corporate structures are introduced. The way in which this might develop, however, depends on the extent to which corporate enterprise ideals are counterbalanced by existing institutionalized systemic features shaped by academic elites, corporative structures, state structures, academic institutions and disciplines (Bleiklie, 2007). It is an open question as to what implications these processes will have for institutional arrangements sustaining academic individual as well as institutional autonomy as fundamental characteristics of academic research and teaching. It is still early to determine how and to what extent the competitive or semi-competitive drive based on ideas of production efficiency will affect academic institutions internationally. Until recently, the extent to which it had gained a foothold varied considerably, weakened by still apparently quite resilient alternative values.

In this paper we have primarily discussed variations across nations and regime types. It is important to keep in mind that other sources of variation have not been addressed. The fact that we have not analysed how management and organization vary across individual institutions, across academic disciplines and subject areas and across different functions such as research, teaching and research does not mean that they are of lesser importance. They offer rather many opportunities for exciting research opportunities that are important to pursue in order to better understand organizational change in and variation among academic institutions.

Notes

¹ The globalization thesis applied to our topic would imply that we are headed for a global model of higher education. It is often based on an underlying presumption that there are standardizing forces at work, whether they are based on a Weberian notion of the bureaucratization of the world (Weber, 1978), on emergence of world systems of education (Meyer and Ramírez, 2000; Frank and Meyer, 2007; Meyer and Schofer, 2007) or on notions about globalization (Berger and Dore, 1996) and European integration. These theories make an argument that, at face value, seems convincing and important because they deal with some forceful processes that contribute to shaping our world. This may be seen in contrast to an alternative perspective that we find in historically oriented studies of state formation where the focus is on how specific national settings shape political processes (Evans et al., 1985).

² For the comparison and the eight country studies included, see Bleiklie (2004), Derlien (2004), Hirose (2004), Huisman and Toonen (2004), Montricher (2004), Peters (2004), Scott (2004a, 2004b), Scott and Hood (2004).

³ No use is made of unannounced audits or inspections. Most of the uncertainty or 'contrived randomness' comes from a system that tends to make it difficult to predict payoffs for good or bad performance in research and teaching (Scott, 2004b).

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