BLEIKLIE_justifying Evaluative State

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European Journa l of Education, Vol. 33, No. 3, 1998 299

Justifying the Evaluative State: New PublicManagement ideals in higher education

IVAR BLEIKLIE

IntroductionIn recent years, the higher education systems in a number of countries in WesternEurope have undergone a process of global change. In Norway, it has two maincharacteristics: a strong rise in student numbers and a comprehensive reformeffort. The reforms were conceived before, and partially in parallel with, anincrease in student numbers unanticipated by politicians. In the debate that wastriggered by the reforms, both the questions of what the universities are supposedto do and how they ought to be governed have been central. In relation to higherresearch-based education the development demonstrates that higher educationalinstitutions are not only in the process of having their main function redefined.The State is also redefining its function in relation to higher education. Thechanges referred to here took place at several levels. Considering the scope ofuniversity tasks, the key word is growth. If we consider the relations with theenvironment and its intemal organisation, the keywords are integration, formalisa-tion and standardisation. These fundamental changes are seen here in the contextof the rise of theEvaluative State (Neave, 1988, p. 7).

The implications of New Public Management ideas in public administrationhave been contested. Introducing these ideas in a public university system shouldmake an apt case for the exploration of the potential and limitations of New PublicManagement as a universal approach to management reform. In higher education,where institutional autonomy and academic freedom are fundamental values, thecompatibility between the rationale of the reform policies and the substantive fieldin which they are supposed to operate is posed more acutely than in most otherpolicy fields. In this article, I shall discuss the introduction of New PublicManagement as the ideological foundation of the Evaluative State within theNorwegian university in an historical perspective. I shall position those ideas inthree different contexts: the normative ideals surrounding university activity, theorganisational ideals related to university governance and, finally, the recentreform in Norway.


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300 European Journal of Educationcontribute to national economic grow th. It is widely held that university policy hasbeen moving from the cultural argument towards the utilitarian argument (Neave,1992; Readings, 1996; Slaughter & Leslie, 1997).Our analysis is based on the view that changes taking place at the level ofnadonal educational policy are unavoidable, fundamental and ambiguous. Theunavoidable is a consequence of growth in student numbers and demand forresearch. It suggests that, even without conscious attempts at changing theuniversides as organisations, the sheer magnitude of their tasks would leadto sweeping changes in the ways they solve them. The fundamental character ofthe changes lies in the relationship between universities and their environmentto State and society, which has changed through processes of integradon. On theone hand, this has resulted in new organisational forms specifically designed forapplied research, educational services and cooperation with private industry and,on the other, in national political reforms such as new university legislation,integration into management by objective style planning systems and the reorgan-isation of research councils. The ambiguity of the changes stems from the fact thatboth the universities and the political objectives formulated for their future roleand activity are complex, diverse and (apparendy) inconsistent. One cannot safelyassume that greater emphasis on the utilitarian argument will necessarily lead tofactory-like universities adapted to the mass production of candidates or to anincrease in 'applied' research at the expense of 'basic' research. How currentreforms affect such basic questions as the freedom, quality and productivity ofuniversity research and education is subject to a range of diverse, partly contradic-tory ideas.I shall now ask how public reform policies in the field of higher education maybe understood in the light of changes in the normative conceptions of publicpolicies in the field, as epitomised by New Public Management ideas. First, sometheories about the modem university's tasks and organisational structure and thepart public authorities are supposed to play in relation to the university as aknowledge producing and knowledge transferring institution are discussed. Thediscussion is based on the notion that the 'normative space' of university policymay be defined along two d imensions. T he first is delimited by the ex tremes of theuniversity as a cultural value or a utilitarian value. The second is defined by theextremes of institutional autonomy and heteronomy. The three theoretical posi-tions of idealism, functionalism and rationalism combine those ideals in differways. They form the basis of different organisational ideals. Second, a typology ofsuch organisational ideals underpinning the discussion about the contemporaryuniversities is presented. The implications arising from the 'space of social action'defined by these ideals have for the functions of the university and its relationshipto public authorities are explored. I make a distinction between three differentmodels of action for university policy. They are dependent on how far universitiesare defined as government agencies, cultural institutions or corporate enterprises. F r o mthis point of departure, I shall look briefly at the specific development of Norwe-gian university policy. The thesis is that the corporate enterprise definidon of the


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Ivar Bleiklie 301The Normative Space of University PolicySocial science literature about universities has been dominated by two theoreticaltraditions: by Germ an idealist philosophy and American functionalism (Trow &Nybom , 1991 ; Rothblatt & W ittrock, 1993) [1]. A third trad ition, that I shall callrationalism, has a somewhat more peripheral role, but no less important to highereducational policy making. These traditions provide clearly distinguishable andaltemative perspectives on what should be the object and scope of public policiesand on how they should be implemented.

IdealismThe idealist tradition focuses on Berlin University in the early 19th century. Itemphasises academic fi'eedom, i.e. institutional autonomy supposed to guaranteeLehrfreiheit, Lemfreiheit und Freiheit der Wissenschaft and the unity of science andteaching as the key elements of the 'idea of the university'. These were consideredthe fundamental ideal characteristics of the modem university (Ben-David &Zloczower, 1991 ; von Hum bold t, 1991; Pelikan, 1992) [2]. Here , it is com mon-place to take the historic ideal as a point of departure and then show howuniversities have developed up to the present as measured against these character-istics. The Nation-State played an important, but relatively clearly circumscribedpart in university affairs, as outlined by the reforms introduced by Wilhelm vonHumboldt at Berlin University. Their main purpose was to safeguard and guaran-tee institutional autonomy and the search for knowledge 'for the sake of knowledgeitself. These values were not only threatened by forces from outside the university.The Nation-State was also supposed to protect against threats from within. Thisprotective function was primarily exercised through state control over professorialappointments as a means of containing intemal power struggles between profes-sors. The fundamental message in this literature is pessimistic. Universities arethreatened by ominous forces or already in decline as a consequence of their effects(Bloom, 1987; London, 1993).

Literature in this tradition is often criticised for failing to deal analytically withthe relationship between the university as an idea and as an actual institution in aspecific state and phase of its development. The assumption of steady declinetends therefore to be a foregone conclusion. Analyses of how universities func-tioned at the time of von Humboldt or how widespread the principles herepresented really were in early 19th century Germany are rare. Analyses that dealcritically with the relationship between such organisational principles as institu-tional autonomy, individual freedom and scientific activity are also scarce. VonHumboldt's ideas were far from commonly accepted, either in Germany, or atBerlin University. Fichte, Rector of Berlin University, often mentioned togetherwith von Humboldt as its creator, held a view quite different from, and far lessliberal than von Humboldt (Forland, 1994). Joseph Ben-David (1991, p. 131)argued on the other hand that many older, smaller German universities which


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302 European Journal of EducationHumboldtian reforms per se. Ben-David also noted that the position of BerlinUniversity vis-d-vis the State was far more precarious, tense and ambiguous thanlater idolising accounts may indicate. Precisely because of these problems, itbecame a political strategy of the university to preserve institutional autonomy bycreating a sacred and esoteric image of itself (Ben-David, 1991 , pp . 131-137 ).FunctionalismThe funcdonalist tradition is a product of American mid-20th century sociology,with Talcott Parson's attempt to position the American university as a socialinstitution within his structural-functional conceptual framework and JosephBen-David's many comparative studies of higher educational and research systemsas the most prom inent examples (Ben-David, 1968; 197 1; 1991 ; Parsons & Platt,1973). Within this perspecdve, the university is regarded as part of the culturalsubsystem of society, catering to certain cultural needs. The specific organisationalforms of universities depend on how society's need for cultural functions areexpressed. This opens up the possibility that universities in societies characterisedby different degrees of social differentiation may be organised in different ways.Hence, there is no one ideal way to organise a university [3]. Yet the works ofprominent contributors to this tradition, like Ben-David, carry a clear normativemessage: The openness and competitiveness of the American university systemmade its research universities the leading ones in the world in the second half ofthe 20th century. These two characteristics became elevated to necessary condi-tions for a good university system. The shortcomings of systems in countries likeGermany, the UK, France and the Soviet Union were explained in terms of theabsence of one or both of these characteristics (Ben-David, 1991).

Functionalism contributed to the legitimacy enjoyed by the American univer-sity system after the Second World War, particularly compared to Germanuniversides, which it had not previously enjoyed (Wittrock, 1993) [4]. Ideally, theState should serve as a guarantee and a protector according to the functionalistperspective too. But its role is less clearly defined, less explicitly related to specificorganisational principles envisaged by idealist philosophy and more attuned tofacilitate and support the fulfilment of specific functions (Ben-David, 1968; 1971).Public authorities may formulate goals, provide the resources and prepare theground for an entrepreneurial system. Beyond these basic activides, however, it ismore convenient, also from a utilitarian point of view, to leave disciplinarydevelopment to itself [5]. The basic message of this perspective is optimistic.Changes in the universities' organisation are regarded as natural and desirablebecause the increasing degree of structural differentiation in society indicates theappropriateness of a continuous adaptation to changing and more complex socialneeds. Burton Clark's studies of the American university system provide a classicexample. His concepts of 'the master-matrix organization' and 'the research-teaching nexus' focus on the need to organise certain vital functions, primarilythe linking of research with teaching within graduate education, in different


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Ivar Bleiklie 303and its scholarly basis in humanist disciplines. This does not preclude, of course,the possibility that an idealist perspective may be linked with other forms andsystems of higher education sharing certain fundamental values such as the searchfor knowledge for its own sake, institutional autonomy and freedom of leaming,teaching and research. Pelikan (1992) represents this perspective within theAmerican tradidon and underlines its indebtedness both to English and Germanancestors Qohn Henry Newman and Wilhelm von Humboldt, respectively). Thefunctionalist tradition may make differences between university systems intelligibleand reasonable in the light of the function they perform in different societies. Yetit is often presumed that the openness and competitiveness of the American systemand its egalitarian departments, collective style of work and scholarly emphasis onsciences together form the real conditions of its success. These two differentnational traditionsthe British and the Germanhave formed the basis of differ-ent concepts of the role public authorities should play in university affairs. In thefirst, the role of the State is to guarantee the freedom and institutional autonomyof scholarly activities. This opens the possibility for the State to interfere directly,regulating university acdvities, provided the purpose is to safeguard the freedom ofresearch. In the second, the role of the State is primarily to stimulate researchwithin a diversified system of institutions that varies considerably both with respectto formal ownership a rrangements and disciplinary profiles. Within this system, thetolerance for direct interference is very low [6]. Still, the State's financial influencethrough research funding may be significant [7]. Finally, both perspectives giveradically different justifications for the maintenance of a university system whichprovides a sanctuary for free research within autonomous institutions. The idealisttradition emphasises that the search for knowledge through free research andteaching has an independent cultural value which cannot be reduced to anythingbeyond itself. The functionalist tradition as presented by Ben-David (1991) has amore utilitarian strain. Accordingly, the justification for the pursuit of knowledgefor its own sake is that it gives rise to a higher quality of research which, in turn,will yield more applicable results than problem-oriented applied research.

RationalismA third perspective, often commented upon, but seldom used for analyticalpurposes in academic analyses of higher educational policy. Given the interest ofpublic authorities in controlling and exploiting research for applied purposes andalso the large-scale experiments that took place in certain areas (e.g. militarytechnology and space technology in the US) or through comprehensive reforms ofentire educational systems (e.g. the comprehensive Swedish higher educationreform known as 'U68' introduced in the 1970s), surprisingly few attempts havebeen made to provide a fundamental, theoretical justification of centralised man-agement aiming at the systematic exploitation of society's resources in order tomeet social and economic needs. John D. Bemal (1969) is regarded as the personwho furnished the classical justification for planned management of research and


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304 European Journal of Educationutilitarian and rationalist argument. The aim is to put research at the service ofsociety and people. Unplanned research is a waste of resources. In this perspective,research and research-based education play a dual role as production factor andwelfare benefit. It represents a set of ideas frequently found in public documentson higher educadon. In Norwegian higher education policy, the recommendationsof the 'Ottosen' and 'Hemes' commissions are telling examples [8]. Similar ideasabou t research prevailed in Swedish higher education policy during the 1950s and1960s [9]. Radonalism represents the normadve perspective underpinning currentideas about university governance as they manifest themselves in the organisationalideal of the corporate enterprise which is promoted by the Evaluative State as ageneral model for all its subordinate agencies.

The three perspectives represent different concepts of the university and its roleas an institution of research and its relationship with public authorities. Theidealist and rationalist positions are polar opposites as justifications for publicuniversity policy in their emphasis on cultural and utilitarian values respectively.The functionalist perspective also stresses utilitarian values. The positions not onlydiffer in the extent to which they espouse different values of culture and udlity.Their position on the question of institutional autonomy is the second criticalcriterion which disdnguish them. Whereas the idealist and functionalist positionslend support to institutional autonomy, the rationalist position, with its emphasison societal control over vital socio-economic resources, may legitimise institutionalheteronomy.Th e normative space, as it has been defined hithe rto, provides a set of different

justifications for public university policy and the normative basis for that policy.But few, if any, direct practical recommendations are made as to how universitiesand higher educational institutions in general ought to be designed and managed.I shall now present three different organisational ideals that have formed andstill form the basis of specific political programmes and strategies for universitypolicy making. We move from normative principles to specific historical andpolitical organisational models which comprise more complex ideas about univer-sity affairs.

Organisational IdealsThe historical transformations experienced by modem universities entailed theirbeing faced with changing expectations of the tasks they ought to concentrate onand how they ought to be organised. However, such transformations do notnecessarily imply that existing expectations are replaced by new ones, e.g. thatexpectations of culture-supporting scholarly and scientific work are replaced byexpectations of applied, useful and marketable research. Just as often, newexpectations are added to existing ones. Both cultural and useful activities areexpected. It is far from clear, in each case, which kind of academic activity is calledfor. Ideological changes, which come with the Evaluative State and its New PublicManagement ideals, can, accordingly, be interpreted in a number of ways. From


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Ivar Bleiklie 305those functions and their relative importance. The three sets of organisationalideals represent then expectations which impart different directions for publicpolicy, depending on which functions are emphasised and what kind of authorityrelationships is recommended.The University as a Public AgencyOne layer of expectations relates to the university as part of the national civilservice and as implementor of public policy. The university is set within ahierarchical bureaucratic order. It makes knowledge available to higher politicaladministrative units. Here, loyalty is the central expectation placed on a university.Its primary task is to implement state policies. The most important responsibilityof the universities towards the State has traditionally been the education ofproperly prepared candidates for top civil service posts and the learned professions.It is primarily the State, as the financ ially and politically responsible autho rity,which expects universities to serve as public agencies. How far the State as an actoron the university policy-making arena attempts to manage universities as publicagencies is likely to emerge through legislation and budgetary policy. Trad itionally,political authorities have been reluctant to manage the universities in ways whichmay be interpreted as an infringement against the freedom of teaching andresearch, mainly because it would go against deeply entrenched expectations ofuniversities as cultural institutions.The importance of universities as public agencies is evident in the Scandinavianuniversity systems, based as they are on the traditional German university ideal.The character of Norwegian universities as degree providing institutions in whichemphasis is put on certification rather than teaching of students is one manifesta-tion of this heritage [10]. This clearly differs from teaching-oriented Americanuniversities which, in comparison, heavily emphasise the teaching process andcertification somewhat lightly (Overland, 1988) [11]. Today, the public agencyrole is reinforced by the integration of universities into a unified system ofmanagement by objectives into a national programme system and in nationalenactment for higher education institutions. Its purpose is to standardise andintegrate universities as part of a national higher educational system. Both mea-sures were triggered by the Government's 1987 programme for renewal of thenational civil service, based on New Public M anagement ideas (Fo rland, 1993). Inthis setting, rapidly increasing student numbers, as the propellant behind growthin the university sector, provided a further powerful argument for a more resoluteformal structuring to handle the quantitative expansion of university activities. Th econtroversy about fixed hours for academics, which broke out in Norwegiannewspapers following the report of the Hemes commission, is symptomatic of thiskind of expectation [12]. Another expression of this expectation is the continuingprocess of developing operative goals for higher educational institutionsone ofthe current main objectives of Norwegian policy makers in the area (St.prp.nr.l.1993-94).


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306 European Journal of Educationresearch and teaching. The notion of the university as a cultural institution ishistorically rooted in the Humboldt university where intemal university organis-ation was grounded in autonomous chairs with affiliated apprentice students. Theprofessors as chair-holders represented the university in practice, i.e. 'the chair-faculty system' as described by Guy Neave and Gary Rhoades (1987, p. 283fi).Each small hierarchy, 'the invisible vertical collegium', was held together byinformal ties between chair-holder and apprentice students. The most importantexpectation of the university as a collegium of chair-holders was academic qualityEach of the chair-holders asserted scholarly authority through outstanding re-search, by attracting talented students and by creating good research environmen tsThe core value fostered by these expectations was academic freedom granted toprofessors on the basis of formal qualifications. Only the professors themselveswere entitled to evaluate their own performance as a group of peers. Authorityrested primarily with 'the visible and horizontal collegium' of chair-holders.

Another version of the university as a cultural institution emerges in 'thedisciplinary university' modelled on the modem American research university.Here, disciplines constitute relatively egalitarian communities, organised formallywithin disciplinary departments, with a number of professors in each department.Disciplinary departments, as they appeared in the US, established a more coherentformal framework around academic activities where authority primarily resided inthe disciplinary community, especially in the field of teaching. In both cases, therole of public authorities is to secure the freedom of research and teaching by legaland financial means.In post-World War II Western Europe, disciplinary communities graduallyreplaced chair-holders as the main academic actors. An important element ofdemocratisation in Scandinavian as well as British, French and West Germanuniversities during the 1970s focused on extending access of university decisionmaking bodies to broader segments of the academic community below fullprofessor level and students [13].Traditionally, academics have upheld the notion of the university as anindependent cultural institution. The notion has partly been bolstered by arrange-ments to protect universities against outside interference, i.e. institutional auton-omy, and partly by arrangements supposed to secure academic (professorial ordisciplinary) authority in the form of a majority on decision making bodies andrecruitment procedures designed to guarantee that this authority rest on a satisfac-tory level of academic competence.

The University as a Corporate EnterpriseThe last layer of expectations relates to the notion of the university as a producerof educational and research services. Grounded in a set of ideas under such labelsas 'New Public Management', 'Management By Objectives' and 'Managerialism',it served as ideological justification to public administrative reforms internationally.In Norway over the last 10 to 15 years it characterised university policies, especially


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Ivar Bleiklie 307there has been a tendency to emphasise quality as a fundamental objective of thecorporate enterprise, an idea apparently well attuned to m ore traditional notions ofthe cultural mission of the modem university. However, the most importantexpectation which the corporate enterprise confronts is efficiency related to therapidity and cost at which it produces useful services, research and candidates tothe benefit of users, be they the university's own faculty, administrators, employersof university graduates, or buyers of research.

The ideology behind the university reforms of the 1980s and 1990s emphasisesthe importance of higher education for national economic growth. A major aim isthen to raise the number of students and to produce candidates more efficiently,especially at the graduate level (Bleiklie & Hostaker, 1994). Together with theconviction that greater efficiency can be achieved by means of performanceindicators, these notions imply that the administrative aspect of university gover-nance should be strengthened to ensure a standardised and controllable treatmentof the growing burden of teaching and research. The expectation of greaterefficiency in producing research and candidates means that the tasks of formulat-ing production goals, the mobilising of resources and support by incentive systemsbecome crucial issues.In addition, the way the State has taken on the value of efficiency means thatthe formal apparatus through which it monitors and manages its own activity andthat of its sub-units is changing in a potentially very fundam ental sense. This hasgiven rise to the concept of the Evaluative State. From a traditional ex anteregulation in the shape of established rules, practices and budget decisions, the

State has moved to emphasise ex post facto control. The focus lies on performancein relation to deliberately formulated policy goals. The central idea is that if stateagencies are provided with clearly formulated goals and a set of incentives andsanctions invoked in response to actual behaviour, efficiency will thereby increase.When emphasis shifts from rule production and rule adherence to goal formulationand performance control, evaluation becomes a core activity and thus changes theway the State goes about its business of governance.Reform Policy and New Public ManagementRecent university reform has brought in new ideas and added a new layer ofexpectations and pressures. This will in part lead individual institutions in newdirections. In part, it will create new tensions in institutions in relation toestablished expectations and directions. The organisational arrangements pro-moted by the Evaluative State and the notion of a corporate enterprise both implythat measures are implemented which pull both in the direction of centralisationand decentralisation. Such inconsistent and conflicting tendencies make them-selves felt in the intemal structure of governance as well as in relation to politicalauthorities. On the one hand, delegation of decision making authority is stressed.In relation to state regulations and intervention, as a corporate enterprise theuniversity ought to operate with as few limitations as possible. Internally, decisions


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308 European Journal of EducationImplicationsThis development has three typical implications. First, authority and power oveuniversity affairs are, conceptually at least, separated from disciplinary competence. All 'affected groups' are, in principle, regarded as participants withequally legitimate stakes in university affairs. All functional groups, including theprofessoriate, are regarded as equal interest groups who should be represented bytheir unions rather than by their disciplinary peers. Accordingly, mechanisms fotheir representation have been changed [15].

Second, leadership functions and administrative structures are strengthenedboth in extent and in the formal competence of administrators and their authorityas decision makers. Their role seems to be strengthened as against representativebodies. They assume more and more responsibilities, not only for the day-to-dayroutine, but also for strategic planning, budgeting and the growing engine dedicated to evaluation in its various manifestations, such as performance monitoringmeasurement and reporting.

Finally, the notion of academic performance is redefined from one whichemphasises its 'inherent' quality to one in which measurable quantitative aspectare prominent. Here, qualitative considerations are presumed to be implied by theperformance indicators employed. Thus, academic activity is open to externascrutiny by higher administrative authorities. Disciplinary competence is thus nolonger necessary to evaluate disciplinary performance. Performance indicatorssuch as number of candidates produced, books and articles published in respectedjournals, all provide simple standard information graspable by the meanest intelligence.In Norway, recent higher education legislation and the general planning systemare the m ost important adm inistradve instrum ents in this process. Th is heralds noonly an efficiency drive, but also, in Weberian terms, a demystificadon or entzauberung of academic affairs. Academic work can be adm inistered as any work in anservice-providing agency. We are faced with an ideal that clearly indicates professionalisation and differentiation of the leadership roles and admin istrative fiinctions. It emphasises the separation of previously pervasive and interwovenfunctions of scholar, administrator and leader. It also emphasises a more compre

hensive administrative responsibility and leadership which embraces planningresource management, personnel policy, productivity measures, as well as publicrelations. These are functions performed by techniques which, in a formal senseare similar in all major service-producing enterprises. Simultaneously, it attemptto incorporate both the expectations of the university as a public agency and as anindependent cultural institution within the general framework of the corporateenterprise ideal.

DilemmasThe changes wrought by reform raise new dilemmas and considerations that wil


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Ivar Bleiklie 309Th e first of these is caused by the blurring of the distinction between corporatebusiness-oriented functions and public agency functions. Because recent publicadministration reform has so clearly been based on New Public Managementideology, corporate leadership and public agency leadership are regarded as birds

of a feather. This development has had an impact on university reforms. Itaccentuates tensions latent in university organisation in two aspects of theiradministration: (a) the comprehensiveness of administrative responsibility and (b)the levels at which adm inistrative functions are executed. In the first, two arche typ-ical administrative ideals are pitted against one another: A 'rule oriented' idealwhich favours concentration on the detailed control of a limited set of formalrequirements versus an 'activist ideal' identified with efficiency and quality im-provement. In the second, we must bear in mind that universities are administeredfrom various organisational levels: from government ministry, from central institu-tional leadership, from faculties and from individual departments. The explicitideological message is one of decentralisation. Leadership responsibilities are takencare of at the operative level. The tensions in both these aspects point unambigu-ously to the fact that the goal of decentralisation is far more confiict-ridden and itself more ambiguous than appears at the ideological level. Thedelegation of authority implied is counteracted by two factors. First, an increasingnumber of tasks, in particular such core functions as teaching and research,become the object of greater political-administrative managerial control. Second,the power to punish and reward remains as centralised as ever. Because today thispower spans a wider array of issues than heretofore, there are good reasons tobelieve that decentralisation has been paralleled by centralisation.Th e second source of tension is caused by the relationship between disciplinaryand administrative authority, itself about to change. It is commonplace inacademia that university administrators have gained influence at the expense ofdisciplinary communities. The contention is often borne out by the allegation thatthe number of university administrators has grown faster than the number ofacademics (G omitzka, Kyvik & Larsen , 1996). The allegation is questionable(Bleiklie, 1996, p. 191). But also, it diverts attention from a far more importantdevelopment, namely the transformation of administrative activity from concen-trating on support functions for disciplinary communities to concentrating onplanning and management. This has changed the character of the administrativeapparatus. The ratio of highly trained administrators has risen sharply, a Master'sdegree now being a requirement for administrative positions above the level ofsecretary. Th e num ber of positions with leadership responsibilities has increased atall organisational levels. A more assertive and active administration may beevidence of the 'bureaucratisation' of the university. However, the administrationalso finds itself becoming more academic. An increasing status equality betweenacademic and administrative staff who move within two different positionalhierarchies, with partly overlapping responsibilities and diffuse authority reladon-ships, suggests the ground is well prepared for conflicts within and betweendifferent categories of leadership.


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310 European Journal of Educationcertain politically defined educational needs were satisfied. Research, on the othehand, was left to the individual as a member of an academic discipline. Such clear-cut division of labour may become more fuzzy if political signals about clearer disciplinary specialisation and division of labour between Norwegian academic institutions are serious. This will enhance the tendency of stronger politicaadministrative steering ambitions applied to the content of research already notein connection with the allocation of basic funds to research programmes which arnow about to be applied more systematically by public authorities.ConclusionThe rise of the Evaluative State and the introduction of corporate managemenideals seem to represent something relatively new and apparently it signals profound changes in the way public authorities understand academic activity. However, few indications suggest we shall see a development in which new sets oexpectations and organisational ideals unequivocally replace their predecessorsRather than clearly distinguishable and separate phases in the development, we arfaced with different layers of expectations that gradually have been piled upon onanother in keeping with the historical transformations the university has undergone. Rather than creating new institutions, we may expect old ones to alter in thsense that new tensions arise in them, while others recede. Different ideals thuassert themselves in different historical periods. And recently the emphasis haclearly shifted. Although the expectations which universities face change, they aralso complex, ambiguous and partly inconsistent. Yet because unavoidable ambguity is a generic feature of complex organisations such as universities, one cannodeduce that they unequivocally move in the direction of ever more compleexpectations and models of action.

If one tries to ascertain the direction contemporary university policy will followthe apparent complexities and inconsistencies of political developments are discouraging. On the one hand, universities should be managed more firmly aneffectively, as implied by the standardisation of legislation, decision making bodieand performance indicators. On the other, in the name of efficiency and flexibilituniversities ought to be less centrally controlled. Each institution should make itown decisions in allocating its budgets (Bleiklie, 1996). The university's characteas a 'knowledge enterprise' or as a collection of departments operating as smalindependent, knowledge enterprises is emphasised. More emphasis should be puon fundamental research, high level competence and quality, with the cleaconviction that strong academic leadership will contribute to achieving the goal ohigh quality performance. Hence, good arguments have been provided in favour ouniversities as public agencies, autonomous cultural institutions and markeoriented corporate enterprises. According to these expectations, they should meethe standards of loyalty, quality and efficiency. It is hard to imagine how all thesexpectations might be achieved simultaneously.Although expectations are diverse, they are not necessarily random. How the


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IvarBleiklie 311they should fulfil is fixed with a relatively clear hierarchical order between thetasks. Periods of transition not only introduce new values. They also change therank orde r of established ones. Such transitions often imply that the political game,the actors' roles and strategic positions are redefined [16]. Today , expectations aremoving away from the classical definition of the university as a cu ltural institution.Rather, the university is a corporate enterprise in the knowledge industry, espous-ing efficiency as a core value, focused on consumer orientation, with personnelmanagement as the central means through which this value is realised. Theuniversities' role as civil service agencies is changing, rather than being weakened.Once defined as having a specific obligation to educate learned professionals,higher secondary school teachers and top bureaucrats, the university is movingtowards integration within a comprehensive public higher education system wherecivil service responsibilities will increasingly permeate the whole range of commit-ments to education and research at university level.NOTES

[1] Although dominant, these are far from the only theory traditions. The workof Pierre Bourdieu, based on his structural sociological approach, is the basisof one tradition (Bourdieu, 1988; Bourdieu & Passeron, 1990). Othertraditions within political science and organisation theory (Olsen, 1971a,1971b; Premfors, 1984) and anthropology (Becher, 1989) have producedoccasional outstanding contributions, but no sustained research effort.[2] Humboldt and his contemporaries were concerned with the unity betweenthe humanistic concept of Wissenschaft and teaching. The term science,therefore, is somewhat misleading in this context. It is used in the absenceof an English equivalent, but in a wider sense than is usual in the English-speaking world.[3] However, since more and more countries are affected by common universalprocesses of differentiation and m odernisa tion, functionalists are likely toassume tha t different societies and the ir institutions will tend, in the long run,to converge and increasingly acquire structurally common characteristics.[4] In the 1920s, Abraham Flexner, a prominent American university reformer,regarded the introduction of the German university model for research andgraduate education as a key element in the establishment of Americanresearch universities and the very element that made them into institutionsreminiscent of 'real' universities. It was also an element that was still seriouslythreatened by: '. .. overcrowding, vagaries especially in the fields of educationand sociology, and incomprehensible institutes ...', in a higher educationalsystem that: '... catered thoughtlessly and excessively to fleeting, transient,and immediate demands ...' and offered: '... degree courses that belong intechnical and vocational schools, not in a universitynot even a sound

secondary school'. Later, these very same qualities, the fiexibility and thecapacity to meet the many and varied needs of society, while at the same time


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312 European Journal of Educationmental research to economically useful technological innovation. Accordingly, a technologist in search of a solution to a basic problem will more easifind the proper address where to obtain either the answer or the definitivdenial of the answer than the basic scientist in search of a profitabapplication of his ideas (Ben-David, 1991 , p . 261).[6] It may be symptomatic that the issues related to higher education that werdiscussed at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Assocation in 1992 all revolved around the relationship between the protection ominority rights and 'political correctness' on the one hand and academfreedom on the other. On the other hand, this skepticism towards publiinterference does not mean that public authorities ought not to own univesities, as long as their institutional autonom y is preserved Qeffrey, 1992

[7] This is the major source of state influence over American private researcuniversities like Harvard, MIT and Stanford. At MIT, about 80% of thresearch funds are federal grants. During the 1980s, the dominance of publresearch funding caused concern and MIT worked hard to attract privatfunding in order to reduce the share of federal grants which, at the time, wa90%. After the cutbacks in public research grants in recent years, the chieconcern has been how to attract additional federal grants (Professor EugenSkolnikoff, personal communication, 22 February 1994).

[8] This is not the only philosophy that characterises the two govemmencommissions, one of which made the recommendations for the educationareforms of the late 1960s and early 1970s and the o ther for the reforms of thlate 1980s and early 1990s. The report of the Hemes Commission seeks tbalance the different university tasks against one another and emphasisequality and openness in research. Cf. The 'Ottosen Commission's' Recommendation no. 1 about higher education. The Ministry of Church anEducation (Innstilling nr. 1 'Om videreutdanning for artianere m.v.' Kirkog undervisningsdepatementet), Oslo, 1965, p. 5, and the report of thHemes Commission, NOU 1988; 28, p. 7.[9] The philosophy is succinctly outlined in several of the contributions to thanthology 'University and Society' (Trow & Nybom, 1991), in particulThorsten Nybom's interview with the Swedish educational reformer anscholar Eskil Bjorklund (pp . 17 3-192 ). See also Nybom 's interview with NilEric Svensson in Nybom (1989). The massive Swedish govemment reporU68, has a pragmatic, utilitarian and instrumentalist concept of researcemphasising that the high prestige that is usually enjoyed by theoreticresearch should not be the only standard by which higher education shoulbe judged and that anyone who completed education of a certain duratioshould be regarded as a competent researcher (cf. SOU 1973; 2; pp . 59 -64[10] Ben-David and Zloczower (1991) argue tha t, according to the Humboldtia'idea of a university', this aspect was decisive for the 'contract' whicregulated the relationship between the university and the Prussian State. Icore idea was that un iversities were given the right to organise their educatio


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IvarBleiklie 313graded during a course and the system still in use in the humanities andsocial sciences at Norwegian universities. The students usually study onesubject for at least one year and are then tested in a final exam and gradedby a committee of three, including a member from an outside university,none of whom may have been involved in teaching the students they grade.[12] Cf. the debate in the Norwegian newspaper Bergens Tidende, 1 October,1993.[13] The distinction between a 'chair-faculty tradition' and a 'disciplinary tra-dition' lies in a very complex set of relationships that may be used todistinguish features according to partly overlapping dimensions such asnational traditions (German versus American) (Ben-David, 1991), socialfunctions (elite versus mass education) (Ben-David, 1991; Clark, 1987),disciplinary 'cultures' (humanities versus sciences, applied versus fundamen-tal research) (Snow 1964; Becher, 1989) and institutionalisation of thescholarly community (authorship versus discipline) (Larson, 1990).[14] Pollitt distinguishes between two major phases in the history of managerial-ism in public services, where 'neo-Taylorism' characterised the early 1980sand 'New Public Management' with an ideological emphasis on quality andcustomer needs has been more prevalent as from the late 1980s (Pollitt,1990, p. 179fE). Here, as we are dealing with reforms of the late 1980s andearly 1990s, the latter version of managerialism has dominated.[15] Historically, this notion of representation originally arose from democratisa-tion, in which disciplinary communities gradually replaced chair-holders asthe main actors within the university during the 1970s (Clark, 1987; Daalder& Shils, 1982).[16] The argument is strongly infiuenced by Knut Dahl Jacobsen's analysis ofpublic administrative behaviour and the tensions between loyalty, neutralityand professional independence which have made themselves felt in variousconflicts in the Norwegian central govemment administration as from thesecond half of the 19th century (Jacobsen, 1960).

REFERENCESBECHER, T. (1989) Academic Tribes and Territories (Milton Keynes, Open Univer-sity Press).BEN DAVID, J. (1968) Fundamental Research and the Universities (Paris, OECD).BEN-DAVID, J. (1971) The Scientist's Role in Society (Chicago and London, TheUniversity of Chicago Press).BEN-DAVID, J. (1991) Scientific Growth Essays on the Social Organisation and Ethosof Science (Berkeley/Los Angeles/London, University of California Press).BEN-DAVID, J. & ZLOCZOWER, A. (1991) Universities and academic systems inmodem societies, in J. BEN-DAVID, Scientific Growth (Berkeley/Los Angeles/

London, University of California Press).BERNAL, J.D. (1969) Science in History, Vol. IV (London, CA. Watts & Co).


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314 European Journal of EducationB L E I K U E , I . (Ed.) (1996) Kunnskap og makt (Os lo , Tano Aschehoug) .B L E I K L I E , I. & H O S T A K E R , R . (1994) From individual pursuit to organized enteprise, European Journal of Education, 2 9 , p p . 3 2 3 - 3 4 0 .B L O O M , A. (1987) The Closing of the American Mind (New York, S imon &

Schuster ) .B O U R D I E U , P. (1988) Homo Academicus (Cambridge, Pol i ty Press) .B O U R D I E U , P . & P A S S E R O N , J . - C . (1990) Reproduction in Education, Society an

Culture (London, Sage) .B R U N S S O N , N. (1989) The Organization of Hypocrisy (Chichester , John Wiley &

Sons) .C L A R K , B.R. (1984) Higher education systems: organizational condit ions of polic

formation and implementat ion, in: R. P R E M F O R S (Ed.) Higher EducatioOrganisation (Stockholm, Almqvist & Wiksell) .

C L A R K , B.R. (Ed.) (1987) The Academic Profession (Berkeley/Los Angeles/LondoUniversity of California Press).

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D A A L D E R , H . & S H I L S , E . (Eds) (1982) Universities, Politicians and Bureaucra(Cambridge, Cambridge Universi ty Press) .E L Z I N G A I , A. (1985). Research, bureaucracy and the drif t of epistemic cr i ter ia, in

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vitenskapelige anstalter i Berlin, in: E.A. W Y L L E R (Ed.) Universitetets idgjennom tidene og i dag (Oslo, Universi tetsforlaget) .Innsti l l ing nr . 1 (1965) Om videreutdanning for artianere m.v. Oslo, Kirke-oundervisningsdepar tementet .

J A C O B S E N , K.D. (1960) Loyali tet , neytral i tet og faglig uavhengighet , Tidsskrift fosamfunnsforskning, 1 , pp . 231-248 .


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& B.S. TURNER (Eds) Talcott Parsons, Theorist of Modernity (London,Sage).L O N D O N , H.I. (1993) Introduction to J. Barzun, The Am erican University (2ndEdn) (Chicago and London, The University of Chicago Press).NEAVE, G. (1988) On the cultivation of quality, efficiency and enterprise: anoverview of recent trends in higher education in Western Europe, 1986-1988,European Journal of Education, 23, pp. 7-23 .NEAVE, G. (1992) On instantly consumable knowledge and snake oil, EuropeanJournal of Education, 27, pp. 5-27.NEAVE, G. & RHOADES, G . (1987) The academic estate in Western Europe, in:

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BLEIKLIE_justifying Evaluative State