Governance Transformation: Series of Reforms have Shaped Universities into Managed Actors

Organization theory used to portray universities as loosely coupled systems (Weick Reference Weick1976), organized anarchies and garbage cans (Cohen et al. Reference Cohen, March and Olsen1972) driven by a technology of foolishness (March Reference March, March and Olsen1976), where collegial governance dominated (Clark Reference Clark1972) or was at least the clear ideal (Musselin Reference Musselin2021; Sahlin and Eriksson-Zetterquist Reference Sahlin and Eriksson-Zetterquist2023). University organizations were seen as platforms for professionals – for individual academics and academic communities (Brunsson and Sahlin-Andersson Reference Brunsson and Sahlin-Andersson2000). This conceptualization suggests that universities were a specific kind of organization (Musselin Reference Musselin2021; Ferlie et al. Reference Ferlie, Musselin and Andresani2008). The main task of academic leaders and administrators was to support and coordinate. As Hwang (Reference Hwang2023) notes, there were repeated observations that little held universities together as units; the name and location, certainly; but in terms of control, the ideal was that universities should be built and governed from ‘below’.

Over time, and with the governance reforms exemplified below, universities have been subject to organizing efforts that follow broader fads and trends in the organizational world (Czarniawska Reference Czarniawska1988; Brunsson and Sahlin-Andersson Reference Brunsson and Sahlin-Andersson2000; Ferlie et al. Reference Ferlie, Musselin and Andresani2008). Even though universities are still often described as loosely coupled, with few incentives for scholars to engage in strengthening and integrating the university as an organization (Jacobsson and Söderholm, Reference Jacobsson, Söderholm, Cinque and Ericsson2024), managerial reforms have led universities – and many other types of organizations – to be seen and formed as actors (Brunsson and Sahlin-Andersson Reference Brunsson and Sahlin-Andersson2000; Krücken and Meier Reference Krücken, Meier, Drori, Meyer and Hwang2006; Ramirez Reference Ramirez, Rust, Portnoi and Bagely2010; Bromley and Meyer Reference Bromley and Meyer2015; Hwang Reference Hwang2023; Krücken Reference Krücken, Arora-Jonsson, Blomgren, Pallas and Wedlin2024), and as ‘enterprise universities’ (Marginson and Considine, Reference Marginson and Considine2000). Universities have increasingly been viewed as decision-making bodies with agency.

Below, after introducing scholarly definitions of organizational actors, I illustrate this development with a review of Swedish reforms over the past few decades in university organization and governance. I identify three important drivers of this development, as found in previous research: hyper-organization, organizing as an institutional force, and the evolving audit society. I conclude this section with a discussion of how these changes have altered the role of university administration and the relationship between administration and faculty.

Meyer and Jepperson (Reference Meyer and Jepperson2000) identified three central actors in modern society: individuals, organizations and states. As actors, these entities are decision-making bodies with agency and identity. In Meyer’s (Reference Meyer, Krücken and Drori2009, p. 38) words, they are constructed as ‘goal-oriented, bounded, integrated, technically effective entit[ies]’. Furthermore, Bromley and Meyer emphasize, ‘Actorhood is a constructed role, and carries the posture of voluntarism, activity, and agency’ (Bromley and Meyer Reference Bromley and Meyer2015: 127). As noted above, universities have come to be formed as organized actors; the university as an organized unit is assumed to make decisions, act, and be held responsible. This requires organizing efforts: to integrate the university as a unit, and for the management to know and control what happens in the name of the university. With this development, academic faculty are increasingly managed by university leadership, coordinated and controlled by numerous policies and strategies, and described as co-workers of the organization (Cloete et al. Reference Cloete, Maassen, Moja, Perold and Bailey2023).

This development can be illustrated by examining a series of reforms of Swedish universities. Over the past half-century, Swedish universities have been shaped as public agencies under the government. As a result, universities have increasingly been organized and governed in ways similar to other public agencies. Vice chancellors became the ‘directors general’ of universities. The appointment of professors shifted from the government to the universities, and professors became ‘ordinary employees’. Accrual accounting was introduced throughout the public sector, including universities. University boards were reformed in several stages, introducing a majority of external members and external chairs. University funding changed from direct faculty allocations to block grants (divided into research and education) to the university as a whole, and – with some restrictions set at the national level – resource allocation within the university became the responsibility of university leaders. With the so-called ‘Autonomy Reform’ in 2011, universities were granted the right to decide on their ‘internal organization’. Previously, universities were required by national law to have faculty boards with a majority of faculty members responsible for education and research. The law also mandated the use of external peers in appointing lecturers and professors, and prescribed procedures for academic influence over the appointment of academic leaders. These requirements were deregulated and delegated to university boards.

During this period, we have also seen changes in the higher-education and research landscape that concern the core matters of what universities do and how. New tasks were added, leading to a significant expansion of the university system – both in terms of the number of students, schools, and programmes, and through the inclusion of most post-secondary education in universities and university colleges. The roles of universities have also changed, with increased emphasis on societal impact, among other things. However, the reforms described above were typically not linked to unique university characteristics. As described, the transformation of universities into organized actors has been clearly demonstrated worldwide. These developments are not unique to Sweden and cannot be explained solely by national interests or developments, but rather reflect interrelated global organizing trends of this period.

This general trend is aptly captured by the concept of hyper-organization (Bromley and Meyer Reference Bromley and Meyer2015). The concept summarizes three global developments in organizing: a worldwide expansion of formal organizations, increasingly elaborate formal organizational structures, and organizing according to a global blueprint. This global blueprint is modelled as an abstracted version of corporate form and shareholder value. Universities have followed these general organizing trends, both as a consequence of deregulation and through their own initiatives, and they have elaborated their formal organization and administration in the process (Meyer and Bromley Reference Meyer, Bromley, Arora-Jonsson, Blomgren, Pallas and Wedlin2023). These trends target leadership, management and administration, as these aspects are common to all organizations regardless of their work or aims. In evaluations, reports and media, the organization is increasingly described as the one who acts.

A second, related trend, described by Djelic and Sahlin-Andersson (Reference Djelic, Sahlin-Andersson, Djelic and Sahlin-Andersson2006) in their studies of transnational governance, is that organizing itself has become an institutional force. They note that organizing has become a taken-for-granted means of approaching new situations and problems: to coordinate and create order. This drives the development of more elaborate and expanded organizations. With this driver, the competence to organize also becomes an area of expertise in its own right, regardless of what is being organized.

A third general trend of these decades is the emergence of the audit society (Power Reference Power1997, Reference Power2021). Power has described and explained the expansion of audits across the organizational world, driven by ambitions to create transparency, traceability and control. During the period of reforms described above, we have also witnessed an almost exponential growth in audits, metrics, evaluations and control measures. In part, these audits and metrics have followed scientific models for assessing scholarly work and outputs, but they have also been blended with general trends in audit and evaluation that cut across organizations globally (Wedlin Reference Wedlin2006).

The construction of universities as actors is also driven by competition. As Krücken (Reference Krücken, Arora-Jonsson, Blomgren, Pallas and Wedlin2024) showed, the higher-education system is increasingly being shaped into a market where universities compete for resources and prestige. Kosmützky and Krücken (Reference Kosmützky and Krücken2023) have demonstrated how, in particular, the multilevel, co-evolving competition – between individuals, between universities, and between states, which emerged with the contractualization of large-scale cooperative research and especially with the excellence funding initiatives in Germany – has strengthened the formation of universities as actors.

With the aforementioned reforms, universities have come to be organized and governed much in line with general organizational trends. This has also meant that the legal requirements – or perhaps more accurately, the legal support – for collegial forms of organizing (such as requirements for universities to have faculty boards with control over quality and resource allocation for education and research, prescribed processes for scientific review in recruitment and requirements for the election of academic leaders) have been removed. With this deregulation, universities have chosen to reorganize – to a greater or lesser extent – according to widely adopted enterprise ideals. However, the erosion of collegial forms of governance and organization has not only resulted from these external reforms. Our previous studies show that a lack of maintenance, motivation and modernization of collegial organizing and governance has also contributed to this development (Sahlin and Eriksson-Zetterquist Reference Sahlin and Eriksson-Zetterquist2023; Cloete et al. Reference Cloete, Maassen, Moja, Perold and Bailey2023).

With management-focused reforms and the transformation of universities into managed actors, the role of administration has become largely more strategic. Administrative resources are key in formulating policies, maintaining and developing organizational identities, and integrating the university into a single, unified entity. In short, the introduced forms of governance emphasize the need for administration; thus, these organizational trends explain much of the expansion and centralization of administration. This has also meant that administration has been strengthened at the expense of faculty governance. The general trends in governance and organization are not specific to the university sector or to higher education and research, but have come to permeate and shape the organized world more broadly.

As a result of these developments, universities have become less unique, while organizing and administration have taken on a life of their own, not clearly connected to the university’s core activities – higher education and research. Strategies, policies, new administrative positions and elaborate administrative structures within universities and surrounding agencies are inspired by broader organizational trends. Not only do these reformed organizational structures stress the need for administration – of a strategic kind – but the introduction of such generic modes of organizing into universities also means that these new aspects of administration must be translated into the university context. Administrators, leaders and faculty are all involved in this translation work – they are all affected by the new administration and must learn to position their own work in relation to it.

Remixed Governance: A Challenged – But Not Absent – Collegiality

Much research on university organizational and governance reforms has focused on new models and the evolving roles of universities, while previous modes of governance and organization are often taken for granted – both in practice and in reform studies. However, any analysis of organizational transformation is enriched by examining not only what is new, but also what used to be – especially since reformed settings tend to be blends of the new and sediments of the old (Røvik Reference Røvik, Czarniawska and Sevón1996).

These observations have led us to recognize the importance of specifically identifying what remains of the previously dominant, now challenged, modes of governance. Collegiality as a mode of governance in universities has been challenged and partially replaced by more enterprise-like and bureaucratic forms (e.g., Marginson and Considine Reference Marginson and Considine2000; Hüther and Krücken Reference Hüther and Krücken2018; Musselin Reference Musselin2021), but is not entirely absent anywhere (Cloete et al. Reference Cloete, Maassen, Moja, Perold and Bailey2023). It is also important to remember that universities have always operated under mixed governance. Even if, as Cloete et al. (Reference Cloete, Maassen, Moja, Perold and Bailey2023) argue, collegiality is the modus operandi of universities, there was never a true ‘golden age’ of collegiality (Eriksson-Zetterquist and Sahlin Reference Eriksson-Zetterquist and Sahlin2023; see also Frank and Meyer Reference Frank and Meyer2020). Rather than viewing reforms as resulting in a shift from one governance model to another, this development can be analysed as remixed governance (Sahlin and Eriksson-Zetterquist Reference Sahlin and Eriksson-Zetterquist2023). This also implies that the role of administration is shaped by the mix of governance modes – including collegiality.

What, then, is left behind, challenged, and partially maintained? What is collegiality? Waters (Reference Waters1989) described collegiality as a mode of self-governance and self-policing. A collegial organization is built upon and utilizes scientific knowledge and expertise. Collegial governance rests on the conviction that scientists are the ones best equipped to build and evaluate science.

Thus, we have described collegiality as an institution of self-governance (Sahlin and Eriksson-Zetterquist Reference Sahlin and Eriksson-Zetterquist2023; see also Olsen Reference Olsen, Maassen and Olsen2007). As shown in studies of institutional maintenance and change (Jepperson Reference Jepperson, Powell and DiMaggio1991; Hallett and Ventresca Reference Hallett and Ventresca2006), this institution is upheld and developed not only through formal rules and regulations, but also through shared norms (e.g. what constitutes good science and how it should be assessed) and practices. Thus, efforts to change, maintain or update collegiality must address both formal regulations and informal norms and practices. Collegiality can be eroded as much by shifts in norms and practices as by changes in formal rules and structures.

To further specify collegiality, we have distinguished between vertical and horizontal collegiality (Sahlin and Eriksson-Zetterquist Reference Sahlin and Eriksson-Zetterquist2023). Vertical collegiality concerns the organization, management and decision-making structures of universities. Along this dimension, collegial decision-making is centred on faculty authority. In a collegial mode of governing, faculty members initiate and influence decisions in university boards, senates, faculty boards and committees; in the recruitment, appointment and promotion of academic leaders; and in the establishment and development of educational programmes.

Horizontal collegiality encompasses peer communities within departments and universities, academic reviewers, conference participants and scholarly networks. It is mobilized in the development of new research areas and infrastructures, decisions about publication, research funding, promotion and rewards. Vertical and horizontal collegiality are interdependent. Formal collegial decision-making in universities draws on the broader scientific community. Peers provide reviews, critiques and advice that inform decisions about recruitment, promotion and more. Moreover, peers are mobilized to nominate and elect individuals for formal positions in universities, research councils and other academic bodies. The legitimacy of vertical collegial structures is grounded in the horizontal collegium.

In this mode of governance, the role of administrators is to support and coordinate. This ideal remains visible in the university sector – not least through the use of terminology. Common terms such as ‘administrative support’ or ‘service’ imply that the role of administration – and academic leadership – is to support scientific work.

The challenged – but not absent – collegiality is one aspect of the mixed governance landscape of higher education and research. For the sake of clarity, I have simplified the discussion of the various roles of universities and their associated governance models by focusing on two: collegial governance and managerial governance. This contrast helps highlight the very different roles these models imply for administration. A more nuanced portrayal of the diverse roles and governance modes was offered by Olsen (Reference Olsen, Maassen and Olsen2007), who outlined four visions of the university, each associated with distinct modes of governing. These are summarized in Table 1.

Table 1.

Four visions of university organization and governance (Olsen, Reference Olsen, Maassen and Olsen2007: 30)

The top left corner of Olsen’s typology depicts the university as an institution driven by the internal dynamics of science. This role of the university – and the appropriate form of governance to uphold it – is well-aligned with the basis and principles of collegiality described above. The three remaining boxes, by contrast, present roles in which the university serves as an instrument for achieving predetermined preferences and interests. Olsen further clarified:

In 2007, Olsen noted that this view of the university as an instrument for fulfilling certain goals and interests external to the academic community had come to dominate the reform agenda for universities – and, as described above, this trend has continued (see also Hwang Reference Hwang2023). From an instrumental perspective, the university is to be organized so that it can be governed by external stakeholders as much as by internal governance and control.

Studies of reforms that highlight both shifting roles of universities and shifting modes of governance remind us that governance and organization are not just tools; they are intimately connected to the visions, roles and conditions of university operations. Certain ways of organizing fit certain roles. Reformed governance has partly been driven by struggles for control and by efforts to strengthen new roles for the university. This relationship is reciprocal: visions and roles of universities change as modes of governance change (Sahlin and Eriksson-Zetterquist Reference Sahlin and Eriksson-Zetterquist2023).

The enterprise model emphasizes internal management control, but it is also a way of making the university more controllable by its stakeholders and principals (as is clearly emphasized in principal–agent and stakeholder models). In these instrumental visions, scientific assessments are not necessarily the sole – or even the dominant – criterion for leading and developing the university. This places administration in a much more central role than in the collegial model. As these instrumental visions gain strength within universities, we also see that new administrative tasks are being put on academics (and sometimes even demanded by academics themselves). In a German study of job advertisements for professor positions, Gerhardt et al. (Reference Gerhardt, Goldenstein, Oertel, Poschmann and Walgenbach2023) found that the requirements listed in advertisements have, over time, become increasingly differentiated, measurable and inclusive of administrative as well as scientific tasks.

In organization studies, distinctions between modes of governance and between diverse roles and visions for the university are often depicted and analysed in ideal-typical terms, as I have done above. These analyses may give the impression that differences between modes of governance – and the corresponding roles for administrators and their relationships with academics in higher education and research – are clear-cut. In reality, they are blurred and ambiguous (Sahlin and Eriksson-Zetterquist Reference Sahlin and Eriksson-Zetterquist2023). Academics and administrators assume different roles and relationships in different situations and on different issues, and these are not always easy to distinguish. Different relationships are often assumed even within a single meeting, such as a faculty board, university management or university board meeting. Moreover, with organizational reforms, sediments of previous organizational forms typically remain (Røvik, Reference Røvik, Czarniawska and Sevón1996), meaning that organizations tend to form layers of governance. This also means that overlaps abound in the handling of certain issues and procedures according to different models. Collegial procedures are intertwined with and overlap various managerial procedures. This can result in unclear roles and relationships, as well as in an oversupply of governance.

With remixed governance, boundaries between administrators and faculty have become increasingly blurred, accompanied by ambiguities regarding the university’s core business, and with this it becomes unclear who supports whom, who assumes the most strategic role and so on (Wedlin Reference Wedlin2025). Roles and boundaries are further blurred with the introduction of new higher-education professionals (Schneijderberg and Merkator Reference Schneijderberg, Merkator, Kehm and Teichler2013). The governance mix itself is likely to drive administrative expansion, as administration is needed to manage the governance mix: to coordinate overlapping procedures and to translate between various modes of governance. I would like to see more research on this very driver and consequence of governance mix and reformed governance. Further studies may help us understand how the governance mix can be managed by university administrators, faculty and university leaders.

Administration and Mixed Governance: Further Consequences

Recent reforms and developments in universities have led to centralized administration and transformed relationships between academic and administrative staff. Administrative and academic management positions have expanded, with a stronger emphasis on hierarchy, more clearly defined boundaries between universities as organizational actors and their environments, more rigorous performance measurements at the organizational level and changes in political control. As I have argued above, it takes strategic administration to manage and support the university as an organizational actor. Examples include advanced financial control, reporting and other metrics, identity work, strategy formulation and the development and monitoring of university-wide policies. Another driver is the emphasis on instrumental roles and visions of the university. Strategic administration is required to respond to, serve and maintain relationships and contracts with external stakeholders. Third, I have argued that the mix of governance modes itself demands strategic leadership and administration. The governance mix creates demands for relating various roles to each other and for translating across visions and modes of governance. Widespread reforms, often borrowed from other sectors of society, are based on instrumental views and make universities less unique. Together, these transformations erode the controlling roles of faculty. In other words, reformed modes of governance further emphasize the instrumental roles of the university.

A further conclusion to draw from my discussion of the governance mix – and the relationship between modes of governance and visions of the university – relates directly to current debates about threats to universities as distinct and independent bodies for producing, disseminating, storing and controlling knowledge in society. Two of Olsen’s (Reference Olsen, Maassen and Olsen2007) remarks on the various visions of universities are especially relevant here. First, he emphasized that when the university is seen as an instrument for certain interests in society, it is clear that the organization is built so that the university and its operations are set up to achieve tasks and objectives for which they are instruments. Stated differently, the university is organized to meet – or to be controlled by – those interests for which it serves as an instrument. Second, Olsen noted:

Throughout history, universities have been both institutions and instruments, and, as now, these visions have both conflicted and overlapped. However, as I have tried to show above, the instrumental vision has been highly emphasized in recent decades, and modern, widely adopted governance models both emphasize and drive the instrumental vision and the identity of the organization as an actor. We also see a dramatic increase in the number of other organizations in society – such as think tanks, policymaking organizations and consultants – that claim to be knowledge-producing and knowledge-disseminating instrumental organizations (Garsten Reference Garsten, Arora-Jonsson, Blomgren, Pallas and Wedlin2024). A third development to mention in this context is the dramatic expansion of universities – of various kinds – around the world (Frank and Meyer Reference Frank and Meyer2020). All three of these developments contribute to universities facing increased competition (Krücken, Reference Krücken, Arora-Jonsson, Blomgren, Pallas and Wedlin2024). I have already commented on the relationship between administration and competition; in brief: competition drives strategic administration.

I have argued – mainly with reference to Olsen’s (Reference Olsen, Maassen and Olsen2007) informative overview of visions of the university and their associated modes of governance – that the governance mix also means a mix of visions and roles for the university. Furthermore, with the governance mix, both the visions and roles of the university and the relationships between faculty and administration become increasingly blurred and ambiguous. The contemporary university thus tends to develop in a situation of institutional ambiguity, or even institutional unrest. University staff and university leaders have to work along several modes of governance at the same time and the differences between these visions and modes are far from clear-cut. In such a setting, an uncertainty of the roles and visions of universities more generally can spread both among university leaders and university staff, and in society at large.

A Final Remark

As a final remark, I will briefly comment on the possible consequences of this institutional ambiguity and the changing actors, behaviours and environments of contemporary universities. A central argument throughout this article is that reformed governance and organization have turned universities into managed organizational actors. This development has largely followed global management trends and has influenced which actors are in strategic positions to control the university. These reorganizations have also affected views of what universities are and what they are for. Universities have become increasingly instrumentalized, but collegial and institutional visions persist. Faculty authority has eroded both as a direct consequence of governance reforms and as a result of changing visions of what universities are for. Organizational reforms carry indirect consequences. Even as more resources are devoted to identity work, strategizing, and integration in the ‘actor’ university, they increasingly open up to increased control from the environment. This development shows that organizing matters, often in unforeseen ways. Finally, with university expansion and with societal and political changes, universities have come to experience a more complex, more active and sometimes more hostile and controlling environment. Indeed, higher education and research is a contested terrain (Sahlin et al. Reference Sahlin, Eriksson-Zetterquist, Fleming, Ramirez and Walgenbach2026).