Predicting a taxonomy of organisational effectiveness in U.K. higher educational institutions

Major developments in organisational theory have witnessed the emergence of several models of organisational effectiveness (OE) and change (Keeley 1978; Hannan & Freeman 1977; Miles & Cameron 1982). The integrative competing values framework suggests organisations adopt uniquely effective approaches reflecting their needs at different stages in their life cycle by addressing varying degrees of emphasis on systems resource, human relations, internal process, and rational goal orientations (Cameron & Whetten 1981; Quinn & Rohrbaugh 1983; Quinn & Cameron 1983). This coincided with, and complemented, the growing recognition of the importance of developing systematic means for organisational speciation (McKelvey 1975, 1982; Muchinsky & Morrow 1980) and using the resulting taxonomies emerging from these studies to underpin theory building and further research.The ongoing challenge of this era is, therefore, to continue to test and extend construct space and explore organisational typologies in line with these theoretical and empirical developments in order to provide practical utility for decision makers. Indeed, this was the impetus for large scale OE research programs involving higher educational institutions in both Australia and the U.K.This paper first briefly reviews highlights of the developments emerging from the Australian programs over a number of years. Framed in this context, the paper then summarises the study program in the U.K. aimed at further cross-cultural exploration of OE dimensions. Of particular interest was their usefulness in predicting and fleshing out a taxonomy of U.K. higher educational institutions, namely classical (red brick) universities, former polytechnics and colleges of advanced technology, and 60's greenfield universities.The results reinforced life cycle and resource dependency theory underpinning the competing values framework based explanations for inherent and systematic differences between these archetypes (Quinn & Rohrbaugh 1983; Lysons 1993). However, further research directions are also suggested.