HEIK academic seminar Oslo November 2012

1. Organisational diversity in HE:
what do we know and what do we
still want to know?
Jeroen Huisman

2. Organisational diversity
 The policy “problem”
 What is diversity and how to measure it
 Theoretical explanations of diversity:
isomorphism, academic and vocational drift,
niche-seeking behaviour, positioning

3. Organisational diversity
Practical and HE policy concern
 How to maintain or increase diversity?
 Assumption: diversity is an inherent good
 Examples: Finland, Austria, US, EU …
Norway (Stjernö committee 2008)
 Diversity: a policy and/or steering problem?

4. Steering organisational diversity
Literature 1960s – 1980s:
 Academic drift (Jenck & Riesman, 1968;
Neave, 1979)
 Political realities (Teichler, 1988, 2007)
Later insights: markets versus governments,
markets AND governments
 Meek et al., (1998), Mockers and mocked
 Special issue HEP (2000)

5. Steering organisational diversity
Markets stimulate diversity, for HEIs will look for market
niches. At the same time, markets may implicitly
invite followers to copy “successful” leaders
Governments inhibit diversity, for they set limits to
creative behavior. At the same time, they may be a
“necessary evil” to prevent HEIs from going where
they should not go …
Hmmm, a bit of both then?

6. What is diversity and how to
measure it?
Birnbaum (1983):
- Systemic diversity
- Structural diversity
- Programmatic diversity
- Procedural diversity
- Reputational diversity
- Constituent diversity
- Value and climates diversity

7. Diversity is elusive ...?
1) A HEI differs from any other HEI, so
a system is as diverse as its number of
HEIs .....
2) There are certain deeply-engrained
core elements of the HE fabric that
allow for measurement and comparison

8. Birnbaum (1983)
Variables:
Control (four values)
Size (three values)
Sex of students (two values)
Programme (four values)
Degree level (four values)
Minority enrolment (two values)
Empirical results
1960: 141 types
1980: 138 types
Despite growth in system, no increase in diversity

9. What is diversity?
 Bearing on biology and ecology
 Diversity: the variety of types and/or
dispersion of entities across those
types
 Intuitive example: 2 As, 2Bs, 1 C, 1
D, 1 E is more diverse than 3 As and
4 Bs

10. Measuring diversity
A relatively simple approach:
- Which features are distinctive and
crucial/meaningful?
- Measure the features
- Use statistical techniques (diversity indices,
Gini index, etc.) to show similarities and
differences

11. Example: cluster analysis
Similarity index
100 80 60 40 20 0
Amsterdam (UVA)
Utrecht
Leiden
Groningen
Nijmegen
Amsterdam (VU)
Limburg
Tilburg
Rotterdam
Twente Techn.
Eindhoven Techn.
Delft Techn.
Wageningen Agric.

12. Classification projects
• The Carnegie Classification in the USA
• European mapping exercise(s), see Van
Vught’s U-MAP
• Huisman et al. (2007), Higher Education
Quarterly

13. Diversity in European HE
 Austria, Denmark, Finland, Flanders, France,
Germany, the Netherlands, Norway,
Sweden, UK
 Which HE system is most diverse?

14. Diversity in European HE
Rank order (based on two diversity indices,
1997/98 data):
1 UK/Norway 7 Austria
3 Flanders 8 Sweden
4 The Netherlands 9 France
6 Finland 10 Denmark
6 Germany

15. Diversity in European HE
Puzzle(s):
Large systems not by definition diverse?
Binary systems more diverse?
Geography: low versus high density?
Governments or markets?

16. The big measurement problem:
 What you want, is what you get …
 Researchers’ decisions decide how different
HEIs are …
 But, helpful for analysis across countries and
for one country over time (Huisman et al.,
2007, Australia and the Netherlands)

17. Theory
The most helpful approaches:
 population ecology (Hannan & Freeman,
1977; 1989)
 “new” institutional theory (DiMaggio &
Powell, 1983; Scott, 2008)
 Positioning and strategy theory (Mintzberg,
Porter) combined with “bringing the agent
back in”

18. Theory
Population ecology
 Concepts: Populations, organisational form,
resources, legitimacy
 Empirical studies: birth and death rates,
population growth
 Problems: actually not touching upon
diversity

19. Theory
“new” institutionalism
 Concepts: legitimacy, isomorphism, myth
and ceremony
 Empirical studies: longitudinal studies
 Problems: weaknesses in measurement (but
see Gioia & Thomas, 1996)

20. Theory
 Strategy and landscape: how individual HEIs
move around in HE landscapes (thus:
markets, governments AND agents)
 Strategy and sensemaking: strategy-as-
practice (Jarzabkowski, Weick).
 Positioning and strategy in HE (Frolich et al.,
Higher Education, in press; Fumasoli &
Huisman, Minerva, in press)

21. Theory
 Empirical work: Swiss higher education
(Lepori et al., Studies in Higher Education,
in press), more “sophisticated”
measurement, blending/segregating
 Future work: European systems of HE,
EUMIDA data, with Lepori, Seeber, Frolich,
and others.

22. Thank you!
j.huisman@bath.ac.uk