Markets, Management, and “Reengineering” Higher Education

Abstract

Recent years have witnessed a variety of efforts to reengineer higher education into closer alignment with market principles and management approaches drawn from business. However, critical debates on these efforts typically fail to discern a number of significant issues. Many such reengineering efforts involve an intermingling of three distinctively different organizational paradigms: a professional paradigm characteristic of traditional higher education organization, a bureaucratic machine paradigm representative of traditional business organization, and an innovative or “adhocratic” paradigm defended by its proponents as a timely alternative to traditional bureaucratic organization. This intermingling typically is carried out in a fashion oblivious to the nuances of organizational design and with little or no attention to the conflicts likely to result. Continued neglect of these issues, however, will condemn proponents of higher education adhocracy to problems in the future.