About the project
There is considerable public interest in how to facilitate high quality education and research. Yet, external policy initiatives in higher education often seem to lead to limited changes or unintended consequences. This is often explained by the enduring unique and specific characteristics of universities, as complex, bottom-heavy and so-called "loosely coupled" organisations. The latter is often taken as a way to describe university organisation as having various non-rational, unstructured and unplanned characteristics.
While this description of universities as "loosely coupled" is widespread in research on higher education, we have also found that this description is often assumed rather than systematically and explicitly analysed. Thus, in this project we focus on questions such as: What is "coupling" to start with, how do coupling patterns look like, and how does it matter?
Objectives
In our conceptual thinking, we employ theoretical perspectives from organisational studies, including organisational institutionalism and sensemaking processes. Methodologically, we employ data from a nationwide survey and extensive qualitative case analysis that systematically combines interview, observation and document data.
One line of analysis is to focus on how new and temporary structural configurations operate within existing organisational structures. We explore both Centres of Excellence in research (SFF) and education (SFU), and other temporary centres. We conduct data collection in three case institutions where both interviews and observational methods are employed.
Our second line of analysis focuses more broadly on coupling patterns within modern universities, that is, how formal organisation interacts with academic work processes by using various survey techniques.
Cooperation
The project is a collaboration between researchers from the Department of Education at University of Oslo (UiO), the Department of Political Science at University of Oslo, the Nordic Institute for Studies on Innovation, Research and Education (NIFU), the Department of Government at University of Bergen (UiB) and the Department of Political Science at Aarhus University.
Ayla Rubenstein (UiO), Torstein de Besche (NIFU) and Sara Hagfors (UiB) are employed as research assistants in the project.
Financing
Research Council of Norway, Young Researcher Talent grant scheme.
Time frame
The time frame for the project is August 2021–July 2025.