Managing university culture: an analysis of the relationship between institutional culture and management approaches

Universities are complex social organizations with distinctive cultures. On the one hand, academic freedom and autonomy are inviolable values and, on the other hand, changing environmental conditions exert strong influence on the primary functions of universities. This paper analyzes the ability of university cultures to adapt to these changes and describes management approaches that mirror the specific culture of a university. Various methods for assessing culture are described, a typology for interpreting university culture is introduced, and management approaches are analyzed. For administrators as well as researchers this work helps to explain the implications of university culture for management processes. This integration steers university leadership in a new direction combining strategic and symbolic management actions.     

Building Adaptive Universities: Emerging Organisational Forms Based on Experiences of European and US Universities

Universities are facing dynamic environments to which they have to respond by developing new organisational forms often to enhance adaptation. Thereby, governance,management and leadership structures are changing – aiming at increased flexibility,efficiency and effectiveness. This involves new procedures to manage the relationship with the environment, new authority structures within universities, and new ways of resource allocation. Hence, this paper will present empirical results from a cross-national study of adaptive university structures vis-a-vis a changing socioeconomic environment. Based upon that, new organisational forms are introduced which better support and enhance the current trend towards more entrepreneurial universities. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

动态环境中的人力资源柔性与企业绩效——基于战略人力资源管理框架的实证研究

环境动态性的加剧使柔性的作用日趋凸显,传统的以"匹配性"为中心的战略人力资源(SHRM)框架让位于以"柔性"为中心的新框架,但是关于人力资源柔性的作用已有文献却未达成共识。基于战略人力资源管理框架的实证研究结果表明,在我国现阶段,人力资源柔性的两个构面(人力资本柔性和人力资源系统柔性)对组织绩效都具有正向积极作用。持续变化的内外部环境和竞争压力使企业不得不加强柔性能力的培育,当企业具备适应内外部环境与竞争变化的人力资源柔性能力时,将有效地改善绩效水平。同时,环境变量在其中的调节作用并不明显:人力资源柔性在高动态环境中对企业绩效的作用并不会高于在低动态环境中对企业绩效的作用。可能的原因是,人力资源柔性具有动态适应能力,能始终保持与环境变化相匹配,因而不论是在低动态环境中还是在高动态环境中都能有效发挥其作用。     

Extending educational planning discourse: A new strategic planning model

To academic visionaries the new century appears to have an emerging environment characterized by increased complexity, uncertainty, unpredictability which, some have argued, render traditional notions of planning and management irrelevant. The expectations of management and planning scholars carry the implicit assumption that somehow individual capability and organizational capacities will rise to meet the enormous challenges of this new environment. In the light of this situation the purposes of this paper are: (1) to briefly examine the limitations and criticisms of traditional educational planning; (2) to outline the emerging concepts and processes which collectively form a new paradigm for strategic planning; (3) to discuss the new model within the context of changing national policy and planning environments and increased localization; (4) to review the limited results of empirical research related to more participatory planning models; and (5) to offer a critique of the assumptions and practicality of the new model in the process of planning and sustaining educational change in developing countries     

University governance reforms: potential problems of more autonomy?

University governance reforms are very much a reflection of the broader New Public Management reforms that are focusing on increasing efficiency in public organizations. The article deals with how university reform ideas of a generic nature, emphasizing that universities should be treated and reformed like any other public organizations, are important and reflected in specific reform measures. The special empirical focus is on that universities through reforms are changing their formal affiliation to superior ministries in a more autonomous direction, implicating more autonomy in financial, management and decision-making matters. One the other hand, universities are also through reforms more exposed to more report, scrutiny and control systems, financial incentive systems, pressure to get resources from other sources than the government, cut-back management, etc. So a main question in the analysis is whether universities, as traditionally having quite a lot of real autonomy, through the reforms in fact are getting less autonomy, not more, like the reforms entrepreneurs often are promising. The analysis is based on a transformational approach from organization theory, representing a combination of structural, cultural and environmental factors of explanation for reforms processes and their effects. Empirically the article is based on the author’s own empirical studies of university reform and reviews of comparative studies.     

Judeo‐Christian theology and the environment: moving beyond scepticism to new sources for environmental education in the United States

In the USA, many environmental educators have paid little attention to Western Christian and Jewish ecotheology, in spite of its being a potentially rich resource for environmental education. In part, this neglect can be attributed to popular misconceptions about the influence of religious beliefs on environmental values. This essay reviews the results of relevant empirical studies within the environmental sociology literature since 1977 to clarify common misconceptions. Conclusions from these empirical studies and other sources may make it easier for environmentalists to reconsider the resources of ecotheology. Reconsidering ecotheology is also practical in that it provides environmental education a means of better connecting with the primary values of many citizens, offers new partnership possibilities for building environmental education infrastructure, and broadens the pluralistic base for environmental ethics. Several basic tenets of ecotheology offer starting points for educators by providing common ground between theology and environmental education.     

Towards leadingful leadership literacies for higher education management

This paper locates ‘leadingful leadership literacies’ as a lens for considering changing contexts for leadership and work in higher education management. It makes a contribution to higher education leadership studies by offering an empirical account of expanded notions of leadership. These extend the field beyond those unwilling to critique managerialist knowledge claims. I will argue that not only managerialist practices per se are of concern as we face discontinuous change in the sector – changes which move well beyond rationalist truth claims – but that these remain largely unchallenged and have moved into spaces that should be (re)claimed by leadership.     

How Choice Changes the Education System: A Michigan Case Study

In countries around the world policy makers propose that parents should exercise more control over the choice of schools that their children attend. This paper considers the ways in which the introduction of new opportunities for school choice changes the education system. It argues that choice affects the education system as a whole by introducing new actors into the system, by changing the terms of relationships among existing actors, and by creating new pressures within the system that require new responses. The nature, magnitude, and consequences of these effects cannot be predicted in advance, as they depend on a number of factors including the social and economic context. The empirical basis for this paper derives from a case study of the implementation of choice policies in the state of Michigan in the US, but the conceptual issues raised have important implications for the study of school choice wherever such policies are adopted.     

Kulturelle Partizipation bei Jugendlichen als Feld der Person-Umwelt-Transaktion

What motivates adolescents to cultural participation? This question is important for the discourse on aesthetic education, in which cultural participation is regarded as contributing to the development of adolescents’ personality, values, and competencies. However, research on this issue suffers from fragmentation. Unconnected research on cultural participation from the sociology, cultural education, and differential psychology literature are reviewed, and it is shown how they may be supplemented using the theory of planned behaviour and integrated in a single theoretical framework. This framework centers on cultural participation as a field of person-environment transaction. Participation is regarded as being determined by both person and environmental variables and has the potential of changing these variables. On both its person and its environment sides, the model contains domain-specific determinants that mediate effects of the domain-general variables on which research on cultural participation has focused up to now. An overview of own empirical research related to the model is given and avenues for future research on cultural participation are discussed.     

The balance between teaching and research in Dutch and English universities in the context of university governance reforms

The expectations and demands with respect to teaching and research have been changing for universities due to changes in their institutional environments. Born out of changing national research policies and modern governance arrangements, efficiency, effectiveness and output-oriented cultures have become increasingly important. In this article we ask the question of what the consequences of these changing institutional environments are for the teaching-research nexus as experienced by academics at universities. We explore the changing practices of teaching and research in eight research units in research-led universities in England and The Netherlands. The sources of our empirical investigation are documentary evidence as well as interview data from 48 academics in biotechnology and medieval history. Our findings suggest that teaching and research are increasingly falling apart as two distinct activities. Success or failure in research acquisition and performance assessments has serious implications for the work portfolios in terms of teaching and research load of the research units.     

Education for Environmental Action in the Community: new roles and relationships

This paper will begin with a critical overview of environmental education as it is currently taught and practised, drawing on empirical data as well as structural and theoretical arguments. Five principal shortcomings are suggested: environmental education is invariably based on a teaching and learning model which is top‐down and centre to periphery; environmental education does not lead to action competence; environmental education lacks authenticity; the track record of demonstrable success in changing the attitudes and values of children to the environment is questionable; the social, cultural and political context must facilitate participation and change. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of four models of the relationship between schools and the local community.     

Learners and Learning in Environmental Education: A critical review of the evidence

Recent analyses of the field of environmental education research have highlighted its rapidly expanding size and increasingly diverse nature (e.g. Hart & Nolan, 1999). This article reports on a review of a particular part of this field - namely, recent empirical studies of learners and learning in primary or secondary school environmental education. The review focuses specifically on the nature and quality of the evidence generated by the work in this area. The concern with evidence is motivated by the tendency of previous reviews to focus on methodological trends more than research findings. Claims have also been made that environmental education theory and research have overlooked 'the children who are the subjects of environmental education' (Payne, 1998a, p. 20). This review contends that efforts to address such shortcomings need to be informed by a thorough and grounded understanding of what studies have, and have not, been undertaken on students and learning, and what is known, and not known, from the evidence that these studies have generated. In its methods, the review seeks to be systematic, comprehensive and analytical. Its findings are based on careful scrutiny of over 100 journal articles, books and reports, published between 1993 and 1999. It proposes that the current evidence base on learners and learning can be understood in terms of six concentrations or nodes of evidence. Three of these are well established (students' (i) environmental knowledge (ii) environmental attitudes and behaviours, and (iii) environmental learning outcomes), while three can be regarded as emerging (students' (i) perceptions of nature, (ii) experiences of learning, and (iii) influences on adults). The recent research evidence and key messages associated with each of these nodes are discussed in successive sections of the review. Overall, the review suggests that the evidence base on learners and learning, while considerable in size, is less diverse in terms of methodological and theoretical approaches than the wider environmental education research field within which it is situated. The evidence base also provides more information about students' environmental knowledge and attitudes than about their educational experiences and preferences, and more about learning outcomes than about learning processes . These characteristics, however, are not static. The research and evidence base on learners and learning is developing and changing as new foci emerge, bringing with them different methodological and conceptual approaches. The review identifies issues and challenges arising from the recent evidence on learners and learning for research users, researchers and future reviews of the field. As well as highlighting possible practical implications of the research, it makes a case for studies focused more explicitly on learning and the role learners play within this process. It also suggests a need for user reviews as well as academic reviews in the field of environmental education.     

A Research Review of Nurse Teachers’ Competencies

The conceptions of what constitutes nursing competence and how such competence is taught and learned are changing, due to rapid changes in in the health sector. Nurse teachers’ competencies for providing high-quality, up-to-date nursing education, are developing accordingly. This paper reviews the existing research on nurse teachers’ competencies and addresses how this research identifies, describes, and conceptualizes these competencies. A rigorous search, retrieval and appraisal process identified 25 relevant studies for inclusion in the review. A thematic synthesis was applied to the findings of the studies and subsequent themes were synthesized. The thematic synthesis of the empirical evidence resulted in the five broad themes: academic, nursing, and pedagogical competencies; attitudes; management and digital technology. However, these separate elements appeared to be highly integrated. Hence, this paper indicates that nurse teachers’ competencies may be assessed using a holistic approach, which could bring together the disparate attributes required for successful professional performance in specific situations.     

Adapting Higher Education through Changes in Academic Work

Internationally, changes to academic work are a response to the massification of higher education and a changed and changing higher education context. The majority of these adjustments involve a casualisation of academic work, widely characterised as being of a de‐skilling nature, alongside the emergence of new, as well as changing, roles that typically function across traditional boundaries and frequently involve elements of up‐skilling. The paper points to the value of the latter group of adaptations, characterising them as ‘direct‐response’ changes to new environmental conditions. In contrast, de‐skilling adaptations, classed as ‘indirect‐response’ changes, are viewed as impacting negatively on key aspects of higher education. Inter‐professional teaching practices are advocated as an alternative to the casualisation strategy, based on the belief that it would empower large numbers of existing groups of higher education workers to make a fuller and richer contribution to student learning and help prepare them for an uncertain future.     

Finnish-Baltic Cooperation in Environmental Education

The requirements for engineering education are changing. Sound technical knowledge is still the basis of the engineering profession but multi-sectoral skills are becoming increasingly important. In the Baltic countries, increased environmental and socio-economic problems have made it clear that narrow curricula are not sufficient. Tampere University of Technology (Finland) and Tallinn Technical University (Estonia) have jointly organized postgraduate courses in water and environmental management. Much emphasis has been placed on economy, policy, management and environmental issues. When the participants come from several countries and their background education is not only engineering, very interesting and useful interdisciplinary discussions have been experienced.     

我国经济转型过程中包装设计艺术的发展趋向——以糖果造型与包装设计为例

继传统的农业经济形态、工业经济形态之后,大审美经济形态的萌发为世人注目。新的经济形态的产生为社会的发展提出了许多新的课题。现代包装设计艺术机遇与挑战并存。入世承诺的进一步兑现、外来包装设计艺术的冲击、能源的危机、环境的恶化,也是现代包装设计必须应对的问题。包装设计艺术要适应从消费经济行为向体验经济行为的过渡、从不可回收利用的开环式结构走向可循环利用的闭环式结构,这将是我国包装设计艺术的整体发展趋向。     

Environmental Education for Sustainability: defining the new focus of environmental education in the 1990s

The history of environmental education reveals a close connection between changing concerns about the environment and its associated problems and the way in which environmental education is defined and promoted. In the 1990s, mounting concern over environment and development problems has meant greater support for an educational approach, which not only considers immediate environmental improvement as an actual goal, but also addresses educating for ‘sustainability’ in the long term. Although some education literature has embraced this new focus of environmental education for sustainability (EEFS), it has failed to outline the essence of this approach and has neglected questions about how it differs from the environmental education of the 1980s. No document exists to date which translates the goals of EEFS into guiding principles for its development in schools. Essentially, EEFS needs further definition. This paper is an attempt to engage the debate about what constitutes this new focus of environmental education and how it may differ from conventional approaches to environmental education.     

安徽城乡居民收入来源结构研究

通过对2001—2009年安徽省城乡居民收入来源的实证分析,结果表明安徽省城乡居民收入在总体增长较快的同时,还存在收入水平相对较低、收入差距不断扩大、收入结构不够优化等突出问题;在分析了问题存在原因的基础上,最后提出了相应的解决思路。     

Productions of space: Civic participation of young people at university

Civic participation of young people around the world is routinely described in deficit terms, as they are labelled apathetic, devoid of political knowledge, disengaged from the community and self‐absorbed. This paper argues that the connectivity of time, space and social values are integral to understanding the performances of young people as civic subjects. Today's youth negotiate unstable social, economic and environmental conditions, new technologies and new forms of community. Loyalty, citizenship and notions of belonging take on new meanings in these changing global conditions. Using the socio‐spatial theories of Lefebvre and Foucault and the tools of critical discourse analysis this paper argues that the chronotope, or time/space relationship of universities, produces student citizens who, in resistance to a complex global society, create a cocooned space, which focuses on moral and spiritual values that can be enacted on a personal level.