The University Changes In The Era Of Globalization (1980-2010)

In order to follow the challenges of globalization, informatization, internationalization and marketization, the universities from all around the world began to experience deep institutional and organizational changes since 1980s, and one of the main trends is to establish entrepreneurial universities. However, universities still face more and more change predicament though they have experiencing continuous changes, as many changes are in vain. So, what are university changes? What are the dynamic mechanisms of university changes? And what should universities do to change effectively? This study will explore these problems.University changes refer to the internal structural and institutional changes of universities, and it is at the forefront of research issue on management of higher education, also it is the current most puzzling problem in the development of higher education. In the past thirty years, there are three main analytical paradigms on university changes in the academia:the isomorphism theory, the divergence theory and the allomorphism theory. The isomorphism theory emphasizes that the impetus of changes comes from the external environment, and change is a top-down process; the divergence theory emphasizes that the impetus of changes comes from university itself and its actors, and change is a bottom-up process; the allomorphism theory attempts to combine the former two mentioned theories, emphasizing that change is a combination of top-down process and bottom-up process. In fact, these three theories are evolved from new institutionalism and each has its own advantages. This study suggests that the research on university changes should give priority to allomorphism theory, and draw references from the institutional theory and resource dependence theory fully. The institutional logic of university changes can really be found out on the condition that the positive elements of these three theoretical paradigms are combined. This study constructs its analytical framework from the perspective of the weak methodology individualism based on resource dependence theory and institutional theory, and this framework can explain the growing commonalities and persistent differences of universities well under the background of globalization. On one hand, university changes must be adapted to the ways of environmental changes, which are the so-called isomorphism changes. And this kind of changes should admit the environmental challenges firstly, and then find strategies to comply with this external power. University changes are subject to the macro social structure, and their specific manifestation is they have certain isomorphism with the macro social system, and this process is called legal mandatory isomorphism. Mandatory isomorphism mainly origins from the formal or informal pressures of the organization faces, and these pressures are given by other organizations it relies on (such as the government), or by the cultural expectation of its social environment. According to the logic of isomorphism theory, the higher education institutes both from developed and underdeveloped countries will absorb new orthodox standards and organization base models to deal with the global growing pressure and challenges, and to recombine and change their higher education. University change is a process of organizational isomorphism under the same global environmental pressure, which reflects the convergence trend of university changes. On the other hand, different universities will have different reaction under the common global pressure, as university changes are also affected by their countries, their own genetic and their actors. The policy entrepreneurs are active people, their awareness and understanding can lead to different organizational reactions and results. Although university changes will occur under the isomorphism pressures, these pressures depend heavily on the actors to receive, choose, understand, merge, reconstruct them.In this study, the method of successful research is used to describe and explain changes of three universities from the perspective of institutional diffusion and institutional transformation, they are, Stanford University (SU), Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST) and University of Iceland (UI). Under the background of globalization, the equity and massification of higher education, quality improvement and rebuilding first-class undergraduate education, research university, entrepreneurial university and other global standard university models are diffused in the world, and the changes of these three universities fully reflect the influence of these standard models. It is found that these principles and ideas mark the general models of contemporary elite universities in a constantly homogeneous world, and the American university models are being diffused all over the world as the university examples. We can find the institutional isomorphism from the changes of these three universities; however, their changes are more relevant with the creative institutional transformation. In the academic system and universities, it is difficult to take revolutionary changes, and changes only can be taken in an evolutionary manner. In fact, the global university models have to compromise with various heritages in three countries and regions. When the universal university models are diffused from the United States to Asia, the policy entrepreneurs of SU, HUST and UI implement them in different ways, which reflect the important influences of local society and institutional environment that are the keys of three universities to succeed. This feature of institutional transformation has important policy implications for the university changes in Asia, Africa and Latin America. University innovation more often occurs by recombining some old elements, and rarely begins by abolishing old models. And the global models are often clipped and mixed with local system, not completely replace the local models.In short, the universities in different countries will not take same ways to change when they are facing the same global environmental pressure and challenges, as they have institutional histories, organizational characteristics and different national and social context. And the university changes are often evolutionary, rather than radical. Therefore, China must pay attention to the following aspects when to promote its university changes: firstly, the reformers must combine the western new ideas with local specific practice together, which will help to ensure the implementation of the new ideas and avoid the breakage of new system with old practice; secondly, the university leaders with global vision are necessary, as the more the leaders agree with new principles and practice, the more possibilities these principles and practice will be transformed to universities' practice.