Do Governance Structures Matter in Research Productivity? An International Comparison of University Governance Structures and National Contexts

Abstract

Over the past couple decades university governance has become a popular topic in the debate of university productivity due to the rise of New Public Management (NPM) and international ranking systems like the Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU) rankings. These factors have worked together to encourage university leadership and national policymakers to reform university governance to become more like a free market and therefore more research productive. These reforms follow a global public governance NPM reform agenda that was a reaction to the rise of the welfare state. In relation to university governance NPM reforms align especially well in the Anglo-Saxon countries that have been historically more free market oriented. The question that arises from these developments is wither these changes influence production? The STJU Rankings show that universities coming from a variety of countries with market-oriented systems and not have similar rankings. What then is the source of university productivity? Three universities were chosen using a public governance ideology developed by Olsen & Maassen (2007) that isolates three dominate university governance ideologies. of economy, open society, and national agenda driven ideologies three universities are linked based on governance and respective national contexts. This thesis uses these ideology types to analyze the similarities and differences between the university governance structures to see if they do align to these different ideologies. To complement this research, national context indicators are also analyzed to see if they can account for the similar research production. The findings of this study reveal that indeed the governance structures are different and therefore cannot fully explain the similar research production of the chosen universities. The national context indicators do reveal that research production can be tied to several other factors of the university and that the NPM reforms have mixed results in productivity between the universities.