Country-branded universities, which include a country in their name, are a type of higher educati... more Country-branded universities, which include a country in their name, are a type of higher education institution found in many countries globally. We consider these universities as transnational higher education institutions, for they ‘borrow’ or ‘transfer’ elements of the affiliated country across national borders. Surprisingly, there is very limited research on this phenomenon. The aims of this research are to identify what exactly in practice crosses national borders from the affiliated country to a country-branded university, and to develop a framework for country-brand authenticity in transnational higher education (TNHE). The data used in this research was provided by expert informants, who were individuals holding a senior or middle management position at a country-branded university. The proposed framework for country-brand authenticity in TNHE has four main dimensions, namely affiliated country connections; teaching and learning; governance and human resources; and student experience and development. These four dimensions are supported by eleven themes. The most often mentioned concepts were related to the curricula, pedagogy/didactics, and foreign accreditation themes. We offer suggestions for further research using our country-brand authenticity framework.
In this research we attempt to empirically validate a modelusing signalling theorythat explains i... more In this research we attempt to empirically validate a modelusing signalling theorythat explains important antecedents and consequences of students' attitude towards internationally accredited business schools. Using a quasi-experimental design, we collected data from undergraduate students of eight countries across four scenarios. The results of our overall model suggest that students' concern for achievement is strongly correlated with their attitude towards international accredited schools. Students' attitude towards accredited business school is a strong predictor of school reputation and legitimacy and both influence their support intentions. The study also indicates that multiple accreditations do not moderate the relationships in our proposed model.
This paper reflects on the use of methods in higher education research. My point of departure is ... more This paper reflects on the use of methods in higher education research. My point of departure is that it appears that higher education scholars publishing their work in what we generally see as the relevant higher education journals of our field make use of a limited set of methods. Whereas there may be good reasons to select certain methods, there are some concerns. These concerns pertain to researchers not making use of the richness of methods available, possibly choosing easily applicable methods, or applying less rigorous methods. If this were the case, higher education research does not sufficiently live up to its aim to increase our (academic) understanding of key phenomena in higher education.
This paper offers a historical analysis of organizational identity development at a particular Du... more This paper offers a historical analysis of organizational identity development at a particular Dutch university, the Vrije Universiteit (VU) Amsterdam. Our analysis contributes to the discussion on what factors contribute to organizational identity maintenance and evolution. Whereas the literature suggests a rather straightforward development, with national and institutional governance arrangements offering more institutional autonomy and providing significant scope for identity development and profiling, this case study shows that these relationships between identity, governance, and autonomy are not that obvious. In this particular case, the opposite happened. Despite more autonomy, VU Amsterdam was not able to maintain its historically distinctive identity, nor was it able to replace this with a new, unambiguous identity. External factors (demographics) and internal dynamics (leadership strategies) explain the anomalies.
Organisational values are fundamental to the way organisations operate as they not only form the ... more Organisational values are fundamental to the way organisations operate as they not only form the foundation of an organisation's identity and mission but also determine the societal contributions an organisation pursues (Bourne & Jenkins, 2013). Universities, for example, not only follow their primary mission of providing high-quality education and research but also pursue a wide range of organisational values as a way to create value for society (Broucker et al., 2018; Lee et al., 2020). The extent to which universities uphold these organisational values (e.g., impartiality, transparency and reliability; Sataøen, 2015) is expected to have a significant impact on their effectiveness, performance and legitimacy. Given the fact that organisational values play a pivotal role within organisations and allow for a broad differentiation between universities, more insights are needed into the organisational values universities select to pursue
Journal of Studies in International Education, 2024
Higher education institutions actively pursue transnational strategic alliances at the organizati... more Higher education institutions actively pursue transnational strategic alliances at the organizational level, but what are the rationales, pathways and benefits behind this pursuit? A systematic literature review in the Web of Science and Scopus reveals the majority of studies touching on this topic are descriptive, lacking definitions and theoretical underpinnings, with the word 'strategy' used in a generic, redundant or implicit manner. None of the 72 studies identified in this research takes a combined approach to considering the "why", the "how" and the benefits derived from pursuing such alliances. This is necessary to explore the rationales and interconnected mechanisms that lead to strategic pathways, and to address the interplay between approaches taken and benefits derived. In addition to identifying a research agenda, this literature review points to the need for more comprehensive and theoretically grounded studies to support this emerging research area and evidence-based decision-making by policy-makers and senior leadership.
Higher education institutions (HEIs) often function in an environment
where various institutional... more Higher education institutions (HEIs) often function in an environment where various institutional pressures force them to position themselves on a national-international orientation scale in order to gain legitimacy in the eyes of different constituents with different expectations. Empirical insights, however, on how HEIs respond to these forces and position themselves within this debate are largely lacking. Hence, this study builds on organizational identity theory and institutional theory to assess the national and international identity claims expressed by the mission statements, a dominant organizational identity narrative, of HEIs as well as institutional factors affecting the selected position. A mixed methods analysis of the mission statements of 120 US universities indicates that universities’ identity claims can be classified in five categories of national claims and five of international claims. The findings suggest that institutional forces affect the position of universities on the national/international continuum but that universities’ attempts to reconcile these pressures are much more refined than expected as universities try to strike a subtle balance between being similar and different.
This paper proposes an extension of the concept of organizational actorhood. This concept is ver... more This paper proposes an extension of the concept of organizational actorhood. This concept is very useful to understand contemporary higher education institutions, but it pictures these organizations as relatively passive, subject to normative pressures. The conceptualization lacks attention to dynamic agency of higher education institution. Using notions of accountability, legitimacy and identity, a reconceptualization is proposed. That reconceptualization stresses the agentic potential of higher education institutions to pro-actively test the boundaries of legitimacy and accountability and its capacity to continuously (re)negotiate its position in institutional contexts. Suggestions are offered for further research.
This paper offers a historical analysis of organizational identity development at a particular Du... more This paper offers a historical analysis of organizational identity development at a particular Dutch university, the Vrije Universiteit (VU) Amsterdam. Our analysis contributes to the discussion on what factors contribute to organizational identity maintenance and evolution. Whereas the literature suggests a rather straightforward development, with national and institutional governance arrangements offering more institutional autonomy and providing significant scope for identity development and profiling, this case study shows that these relationships between identity, governance, and autonomy are not that obvious. In this particular case, the opposite happened. Despite more autonomy, VU Amsterdam was not able to maintain its historically distinctive identity, nor was it able to replace this with a new, unambiguous identity. External factors (demographics) and internal dynamics (leadership strategies) explain the anomalies.
Research on academic staff experiences with mergers in higher education points out that they ofte... more Research on academic staff experiences with mergers in higher education points out that they often struggle with the change process. Reform appears to go hand in hand with uneasiness and even anxiety, but studies also report mixed results: part of those involved share concerns, others report positive experiences. This study on mergers in Norwegian higher education uses a survey among academic staff, enabling us to compare the experiences of academic staff at merged institutions with staff at institutions that did not merge. We find that academic staff at merged institutions are less positive about developments within their study programmes and research units compared to those not having been part of a merger process. Further fine-grained analyzes show that both background characteristics of respondents and discipline play a role as well. Our contribution to the literature on mergers is that attention should be paid to the background characteristics of academic staff, for these factors are important to understand impact.
In the sociology of education, opponents of deficit thinking would be seen as important change ag... more In the sociology of education, opponents of deficit thinking would be seen as important change agents, potentially inspiring radical policy change aimed at reducing systemic discrimination of specific socio-demographic groups. That is, contestation of deficit thinking can in theory lead to its destruction. In this paper, we argue that contestation can be overruled or downplayed via public discourses. From a discourse-historical approach, we illustrate how contestation was attenuated in the context of ethnicity in Flemish higher education in the period 1985–2020. We show how a variety of discursive processes eventually marginalize anti-deficit narratives in mass media texts, even though these stances were dominant at certain moments. The major contribution of
our study is that it highlights important discursive mechanisms underlying the reproduction of deficit thinking in times of contestation.
The article identifies current trends with respect to the governance and management of institutio... more The article identifies current trends with respect to the governance and management of institutional performance in higher education institutions and discusses how recent developments in this area can be interpreted. It is argued that performance governance is changing with respect to the way performances are documented, measured and disseminated. It is argued that meaning creation and the relationship between institutional achievements and their significance for current societal challenges are becoming more focal. The article showcases recent policy initiatives and practices with respect to performance and accountability. The article ends by highlighting possible implications for institutional management and leadership.
In this research we attempt to empirically validate a modelusing signalling theorythat explains i... more In this research we attempt to empirically validate a modelusing signalling theorythat explains important antecedents and consequences of students' attitude towards internationally accredited business schools. Using a quasi-experimental design, we collected data from undergraduate students of eight countries across four scenarios. The results of our overall model suggest that students' concern for achievement is strongly correlated with their attitude towards international accredited schools. Students' attitude towards accredited business school is a strong predictor of school reputation and legitimacy and both influence their support intentions. The study also indicates that multiple accreditations do not moderate the relationships in our proposed model.
Despite increasing scholarly interest in the phenomenon of quality culture, the existing literatu... more Despite increasing scholarly interest in the phenomenon of quality culture, the existing literature is largely silent on or ambiguous concerning how to realise such a quality culture. In this paper, insights from the field of socio-technical systems design (STSD) are used to explore how to enhance a quality culture. STSD seems to be able to add to the realisation of a shared value of collective ownership and continuous improvement by using a systematic approach; by paying attention to cultural and psychological aspects, structural and managerial aspects, as well as by participation of lecturers, support staff and leadership. Research using the STSD approach in higher education is still scarce and, therefore, additional empirical studies are needed to explore the potential of STSD to enhance a quality culture.
Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management, 2021
Market rationality, neoliberal approaches and ever-increasing productivity objectives are widesp... more Market rationality, neoliberal approaches and ever-increasing productivity objectives are widespread in higher education discourse and practice. Academic employment has become more uncertain as scholars are more commonly employed on non-tenured, fixed-term contracts. Research shows the resulting detrimental impact on staff well-being and health, which has led some universities to engage in policy initiatives aimed to counter the unwanted effects. Departing from an institutional logic perspective, this contribution investigates the new career policy for contractual scientific staff of a Flemish university. Effective since 2019, it mandates the switch to contracts of indefinite duration and supplementary pension rights for specific contractual scientific staff categories. An in-depth analysis of its implementation unveils its potential (un)intended ramifications – e.g., the perpetuation of employees’ job uncertainty, avoidance strategies, increasing detrimental pressures on research managers, tensions among research groups’ members, and changes in the recruitment process criteria.
Much research has been done on students' role and position within higher education systems and in... more Much research has been done on students' role and position within higher education systems and institutions. Different concepts have been developed and employed to offer a thorough account of students' (shifting) ontological status. While they contribute to our understanding of the complexity of the students' experience, existing concepts might limit attempts to articulate an overarching perspective on students' multifaceted role(s). We contribute to the current debate by proposing the employment of the concept of prosumption-a combination of production and consumption-to develop a broad and nuanced account of the complexity and heterogeneity of students' role(s) and position(s) within higher education.
The field of higher education research is fast-growing, both in number of publications and in geo... more The field of higher education research is fast-growing, both in number of publications and in geographical reach. There is however limited evidence on how this growth in publication influences the structure of the underlying co-authorship network. This is important as structural network parameters can change quickly in a fast-growing network, leading to fundamental different network structures, e.g., in terms of hierarchy, fragmentation, and inequality. Ultimately, these network structures can influence the current and future innovation and knowledge production in the field. Empirically, we construct 34 different co-authorship networks of all authors published in 28 higher education journals listed in Web of Science between 1976 and 2018 and perform bibliometric network analyses. We find that the growth of publications and authors in the higher education research field leads to increased clustering among authors, creating a dense core of well-connected author clusters. At the same time, we observe an increasing inequality in the network. The co-authorship network is characterized by high fragmentation and reveals a coreperiphery structure. Our analysis shows that co-authorship is a selective process, driven by a Matthew effect based on previous publications. As a result, core authors are unlikely to co-author with newer, less established authors. Moreover, we also detect a growing inequality in the average impact of an article. We conclude the paper by discussing possible explanations and by offering some suggestions for future research.
Late entry into a market is an institution strategy that has been little researched in the contex... more Late entry into a market is an institution strategy that has been little researched in the context of higher education. The purpose of this research was to identify and analyse the different positioning and differentiation strategies adopted by late entry institutions to gain a competitive advantage. The sample consisted of seven campuses established by foreign universities in the UAE between 2012 and 2018. Data were collected from sources freely available in the public domain, such as institution websites and promotional materials, as well as wider media coverage. Applying a content analysis procedure to institution websites, the results revealed that although the communicated identities and strategies adopted by institutions are largely homogeneous, they also implement a range of positioning and differentiation strategies. One of the strongest differentiation strategies appears not related to any part of the marketing mix but to the targeted market segment – specifically, targeting students of a specific nationality.
Although a large number of studies have explored the main causes of gender inequality in academia... more Although a large number of studies have explored the main causes of gender inequality in academia, less attention has been given to the processes underlying the failure of gender equality initiatives to enhance gender representation, especially at the professorial level. We offer a critical discourse analysis of recently promulgated gender policy documents of the five Flemish universities, and demonstrate that defensive institutional work is a fundamental process underlying resistance to gender equality in the academic profession. That is, powerful organizational actors resist gender change by (un)intentionally deploying a combination of discursive strategies that legitimate what we describe as non–time-bound gender equality initiatives: The expected outcomes are undetermined in time, and they delegitimate concrete, time-bound measures that define specific outcomes against well-defined deadlines. By explicitly bringing a temporal dimension into our analysis, we argue that defensive institutional work deflects questions regarding what ought to be achieved when, and contributes to the slow pace of gender change in academia.
Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education, 2021
A growing literature addresses the experiences of international students in higher education. How... more A growing literature addresses the experiences of international students in higher education. However, limited attention has been paid to how satisfied international students are with their educational experience (gown) and their non-educational experiences related to e.g. culture, transportation, administrative matters and housing (town). This paper presents findings from a study on 392 international students that have spent a period in one of the higher education institutions located in the city of Ghent, Belgium. We explore which socio-demographic variables and students’ motivations predict their overall satisfaction and satisfaction regarding specific dimensions: housing, culture/lifestyle, education and administration. The findings illustrate that financial security and academic motivation positively predict general satisfaction as well as all or most of the four specific dimensions of satisfaction. Socio-demographic variables hardly play a role, apart from religion and the difference between the home and host country’s level of educational development.
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Papers by Jeroen Huisman
where various institutional pressures force them to position themselves
on a national-international orientation scale in order to gain legitimacy
in the eyes of different constituents with different expectations. Empirical insights, however, on how HEIs respond to these forces and position themselves within this debate are largely lacking. Hence, this study builds on organizational identity theory and institutional theory to assess the national and international identity claims expressed by the mission statements, a dominant organizational identity narrative, of HEIs as well as institutional factors affecting the selected position. A mixed methods analysis of the mission statements of 120 US universities indicates that universities’ identity claims can be classified in five categories of national claims and five of international claims. The findings suggest that institutional forces affect the position of universities on the national/international continuum but that universities’ attempts to reconcile these pressures are much more refined than expected as universities try to strike a subtle balance between being similar and different.
with national and institutional governance arrangements offering more institutional autonomy and providing significant scope for identity development and profiling, this case study shows that these relationships between identity, governance, and autonomy are not that obvious. In
this particular case, the opposite happened. Despite more autonomy, VU Amsterdam was not able to maintain its historically distinctive identity, nor was it able to replace this with a new, unambiguous identity. External factors (demographics) and internal dynamics (leadership strategies) explain the anomalies.
our study is that it highlights important discursive mechanisms underlying the reproduction of deficit thinking in times of contestation.
time, and they delegitimate concrete, time-bound measures that define specific outcomes against well-defined deadlines. By explicitly bringing a temporal dimension into our analysis, we argue that defensive institutional work deflects questions regarding what
ought to be achieved when, and contributes to the slow pace of gender change in academia.