Christine Musselin

Sciences Po Paris | IEP

Collegiality is the modus operandi of universities. Collegiality is central to academic freedom and scientific quality. In this way, collegiality also contributes to the good functioning of universities’ contribution to society and democracy. In this concluding paper of the special issue on collegiality, we summarize the main findings and takeaways...

Les cinq établissements (quatre universités et une grande école de commerce) ont été choisis pour leur diversité en termes de localisation géographique (zones plus ou moins touchées par la pandémie), de composition disciplinaire (trois universités pluridisciplinaires ayant une faculté de médecine, et une université à dominante SHS), et de positionn...

The extent to which collegiality conflicts or merges with managerial ideas and practices has recently given rise to a lively scholarly debate: have universities surrendered to managerialization or, on the contrary, do they continue to exhibit collegial traits? Part of this debate arises from the lack of a clear definition of “collegiality” in prior...

Individuals’ values in the context of NPM-based reforms are a central theme in studies of public professional organizations. While organization studies mainly focus on “professional” values, research on public administration primarily addresses the issue of “public” values. This article brings these two research streams together in order to investi...

Soyez en tête de la compétition mondiale mais coordonnez-vous à l'échelon territorial ! Telle est l'injonction contradictoire adressée aux universités françaises depuis les deux grandes réformes du système d’enseignement supérieur et de recherche initiées en 2000.D’un côté, l’État organise une compétition généralisée entre enseignants- chercheurs e...

This paper, based on a quantitative study of the governance of universities in France, analyses the extent to which the use of performance metrics within our contemporary universities are transforming the collegial nature of the latter.

This paper, based on a quantitative study of the governance of universities in France, analyses the extent to which the use of performance metrics within our contemporary universities are transforming the collegial nature of the latter.

Ce travail s’intéresse aux conséquences des réformes portées par le nouveau management public et plus particulièrement aux tensions que ces réformes peuvent faire naître entre volonté de managérialisation et valeurs publiques. Une enquête par questionnaires menée auprès d’acteurs universitaires impliqués dans la gouvernance de leur établissement et...

Facing intense global competition and pressure from public authorities, several universities in Europe have engaged in merger and concentration processes. Drawing on two in-depth case studies, this paper considers university mergers as an opportunity to explore the processes involved in the creation of a new organizational structure. In line with r...

Embracing reform as a professional opportunity Institutional autonomy and the rise of administrators in French universities Following an extensive reform of university governance in 2007, this article analyzes the changing role of professional administrators in French universities, such as heads of administrative services, functional experts and s...

Organizations and labour markets A comparison of the academic and musical worlds Building on a comparison of the academic and musical worlds, this paper explores a classical issue in the sociology of organizations, i.e. the relationships between an organization and its environment, by focusing on the labor markets on which organizations intervene....

The aim of this paper is to identify control devices, organizational and instrumental structures of the new public management implemented in universities, in order to analyze the consistency and the limits and to highlight challenges universities are facing to ensure effective management control. We seek to answer the following research question: T...

Successful universities and academic systems require career structures for the academic profession that permit a stable academic career, encourage the “best and brightest” to join the profession, reward the most productive for their work, and weed out those who are unsuited for academic work. We have been struck by the dysfunctional nature of caree...

Résumé Ce chapitre propose d’analyser le new public management (NPM) avec une interprétation complémentaire de celles qui l’assimilent à une déclinaison du référentiel de marché. En s’appuyant sur les apports du néo-institutionnalisme sociologique, les auteurs suggèrent que le développement du NPM peut être lu comme une entreprise de rationalisatio...

Becoming full professor in french universities : a comparison of three disciplines over the period 1976-2007 The main purpose of this paper is to analyse the determinants of promotions to professorship in the French academia in three disciplines : Management, History and Physics. Among these determinants, we focus on the impact of personal attribut...

En référence aux travaux qui éclairent la constitution des trajectoires des universitaires aux États-Unis, nous analysons les déterminants de l’accès au professorat des universités en France dans trois disciplines (histoire, physique, gestion). Parmi ces déterminants, nous cherchons à mesurer l’impact de caractéristiques individuelles (âge, genre),...

Cet article analyse le rôle joué par les cadres administratifs des universités françaises dans la mise en œuvre de la loi Libertés et responsabilités des universités de 2007. Il vise à combler un point aveugle de la littérature sur les transformations des bureaucraties professionnelles, qui a largement négligé l’analyse des fonctions de support adm...

This study analyzes academics’ values in relation with the reforms led in the public sector of higher education. We claim that studying values/attitudes in a given field is critical to anticipate future institutional changes (Greenwood and Hinnings, 1996), since they are often precursors of concrete practices and behaviors (Campbell, 1963; Summers,...

This paper explores two new perspectives for the research on higher education. Building on the case of Europe with a special focus on France, it first addresses the trend toward more competition and more differentiation that can be observed in countries that traditionally were more egalitarian and the strong implication of European states in reshap...

This article questions how institutional change influences actors' behavior within organizations affected by the evolution of their institutional environment. This issue is addressed by looking at how university leaders are empowered by the external reviews led by evaluation agencies and research councils and how they use these reviews as manageria...

When merging is clearly the best way forward : the (re) birth of the University of Strasbourg The article analyzes the merging of three Strasbourg universities, focusing in particular on the actors who carried it out and the arguments used to justify it. The merge and the movement it gave rise to in the French higher education system overall amount...

L'objectif de ce papier est de repérer les dispositifs de pilotage, les structures organisationnelles et instrumentales du nouveau management public mis en œuvre dans les universités, afin d'en analyser la cohérence, d'en souligner les limites et de mettre en évidence les difficultés auxquelles les universités ont à faire face pour assurer un réel...

The article analyzes the merging of three Strasbourg universities, focusing in particular on the actors who carried it out and the arguments used to justify it. The merge and the movement it gave rise to in the French higher education system overall amount to an institutional change aimed at making French universities conform to organizational stan...

One of the most significant European higher education reform initiatives of the last decade is the introduction of a European Qualification Framework (EQF) emphasising Learning Outcomes (LOs) in higher education. The EQF is offered as a reform to contribute to increased transparency and mobility, and also implies a certain degree of standardization...

The use of indicators in the management of French universities is becoming more and more prevalent and advanced, at least as far as HSS (humanities and social sciences) are concerned. In the present chapter, we will provide evidence of the general use of indicators and of differences between disciplinary fields. In order to put these results in con...

Les universités sont en général considérées comme des organisations publiques collégiales. Elles se caractérisent par une action collective entre pairs et par des processus de décision ne pouvant se résumer à un processus hiérarchique. Le présent chapitre examine les différents modèles théoriques de prise de décision dans les organisations collégia...

It is usual to identify France as a latecomer in New Public Management (NPM). As stressed by P. Bezes (2003 and 2009 ), while the souci de soi of the French state has always been present and the reform of the management of French public administration has been a recurrent objective during the Fifth Republic, it is only in the late 1990s and the beg...

Ce livre analyse les réformes des politiques d'enseignement supérieur et de recherche en confrontant celles d'hier et celles d'aujourd'hui. Chacune des perspectives permet de mieux comprendre comment les réformes universitaires sont perçues, les comportements de résistance ou d'adhésion qu'elles suscitent et les recompositions auxquelles elles cond...

This book analyzes the reforms that led to a differentiated landscape of higher education systems after university practices and governance were considered poorly adapted to contemporary settings and to their new missions. This has led to a growing institutional differentiation in many higher education systems. This differentiation has certainly co...

Les universités sont en général considérées comme des organisations publiques collégiales. Elles se caractérisent par une action collective entre pairs et par des processus de décision ne pouvant se résumer à un processus hiérarchique. Le présent chapitre examine les différents modèles théoriques de prise de décisions dans les organisations collégi...

It is usual to identify France as a latecomer in New Public Management (NPM). As stressed by P. Bezes (2003 and 2009 ), while the souci de soi of the French state has always been present and the reform of the management of French public administration has been a recurrent objective during the Fifth Republic, it is only in the late 1990s and the beg...

The use of indicators in the management of French universities is becoming more and more prevalent and advanced, at least as far as HSS (humanities and social sciences) are concerned. In the present chapter, we will provide evidence of the general use of indicators and of differences between disciplinary fields. In order to put these results in con...

The opposition between administrative and academic staff and the cleavage between “central” organizational level and university sub-units: differences in perception of measurement tools in universities. Measurement tools are central to the debate of the management and control of universities. Yet, little is known about how they are used and underst...

This paper primarily deals with the relationships between academics and their university in European countries. The aim of this paper is therefore not to produce new results but provide a synthesis of the main trends that can be identified from the literature and then suggest what can be borrowed from sociological theories to highlight the on-going...

NPM reforms that have been led recently in the public sector in many countries strongly emphasize the notion of performance. If the effects of these reforms on the core micro-processes of organizations retained a great deal of attention, few studies examined how these changes transformed the identities of civil servants. By contrast a growing body...

NPM reforms that have been led recently in the public sector in many countries strongly emphasize the notion of performance. If the effects of these reforms on the core micro-processes of organizations retained a great deal of attention, few studies examined how these changes transformed the identities of civil servants. By contrast a growing body...

Universities are expected to be important players in the development of knowledge economies; therefore, they are a priority on the policy agenda of the European commission and of member states. To understand the new institutional settings where knowledge production is achieved, we must turn our attention to analyzing the reforms underway.Building o...

How can we engage in a market relationship when the quality of the goods we want to acquire is unknown, invisible, or uncertain? For market exchange to be possible, purchasers and suppliers of goods must be able to assess the quality of a product in relation to other products. Only by recognizing qualities and perceiving quality differences can pur...

The main point of this book is to argue that French universities experienced a quiet but important change during the last decade, which allowed them to become pertinent and more autonomous actors within the French university system.

Though the book is a contribution to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Consortium of Higher Education Researchers (CHER), it is not just about the history of the organisation as such. The contributions provide an account of the emergence of higher education as a field of study and research in Europe, its institutionalisation, and its relationsh...

La massification de l'enseignement, la multiplication des classements, la transformation des modes de financement et, plus généralement, l'internationalisation constituent quelques-uns des bouleversements profonds auxquels est confronté l'enseignement supérieur dans la plupart des pays de l'OCDE. Ces bouleversements se sont traduits par des réforme...

Frank Dobbin's Inventing equal opportunities, published by Princeton University Press in 2009, has arrived at just the right time in a France where the theme of “diversity” has permeated big firms and where equal opportunity policies are being debated in the educational system, which, from kindergarten to university, is being accused of fostering i...

Implementation of higher education reforms in four countries and how they are infused or not by NPM

Inequalities in the recruitment of academics

It is more and more frequent to read that higher education is being transformed into an industry (or should be turned into an industry, European Commission 2005) and that market forces are driving the development of higher education systems.

This book addresses academic labor markets in three countries: France, Germany, and the United States. The management of faculty careers is a critical issue in university autonomy, and in many countries recent reforms have increasingly addressed this area. Musselin's exhaustive empirical research on academic job hiring practices and faculty career...

How may procedures in effect for hiring junior professors in France affect discrimination against women candidates? On the basis of detailed surveys and interviews with members of hiring committees in three disciplines, we explain how the specificities of the academic hiring process affect direct and indirect discrimination. Judgment practices on h...

University reforms in Europe It is surprising to see how convergent are the objectives of the current university reforms led in France with the orientations followed by the higher education and research polices led in other European countries for some decades. The same goals and the same repertories of solutions can be observed from one reform to a...

European higher education is going through an important transformation. While during the first decades after the Second World War the sector experienced a period of relative stability in its basic national and institutional organisation and governance structures, more recently it has undergone far-reaching changes. Overall, the recent change dynami...

The successive declarations which punctuated the Bologna process since 1998 promote large ambitious goals – among them, competitiveness, quality, mobility, etc. – and rely on two main objectives to attain these goals. The first one has already been achieved in almost all signing countries and consists in the generalisation of a two-tier structure (...

European higher education (HE) systems experienced major changes, and many publications have already proposed to assess and analyse this evolution. But looking at the state of the art on this issue, as will be done in the first section of this introduction, it appears that none adopted a public management perspective and considered wider patterns o...

French public institutions are often assumed to be reform adverse. This assumption is confirmed by many events in the history of French higher education (HE) and research systems. Quite recently (2003), the government withdrew a project, aimed at increasing the strategic and operational resources of public universities, from submission to the Parli...

Different factors push for the inscription of the sociology of academic work on the research agenda. A first one stems from the fact it is still a relatively under-covered perspective in the study of the academic profession and thus can renew the existing approaches. But, fundamentally, the need to develop such a perspective is first of all that it...

It is surprising to see how convergent are the objectives of the current university reforms led in France with the orientations followed by the higher education and research polices led in other European countries for some decades.The same goals and the same repertories of solutions can be observed from one reform to another over the last thirty ye...

This chapter discusses the respective influence of market forces, professional regulations and organisational rules on academic labour markets and work. Labour markets are understood in terms of recruitment procedures, processes allocating individuals to positions and devices organising career paths. Academic work refers to the contents and managem...

This book addresses academic labor markets in three countries: France, Germany, and the United States. The management of faculty careers is a critical issue in university autonomy, and in many countries recent reforms have increasingly addressed this area.Musselin’s exhaustive empirical research on academic job hiring practices and faculty career p...

This chapter discusses the respective influence of market forces, professional regulations and organisational rules on academic labour markets and work. Labour markets are understood in terms of recruitment procedures, processes allocating individuals to positions and devices organising career paths. Academic work refers to the contents and managem...

Given the overall ambitions and goals of the Lisbon agenda and the Bologna process, and other relevant supranational and intergovernmental European integration processes, it is obvious that these processes are intended to affect the university in all its basic structural features, including the way it performs its basic activities. However, the Eur...

This chapter addresses the impact of changes in higher education on the academic profession in the past, present and possible future. We start by arguing that the growth of the academic profession implied increased differentiation. We then examine the ongoing transformation of working and employment conditions in the academic workplace, which chall...

Ce chapitre traite de l’impact des changements dans l’enseignement supérieur sur la profession universitaire, dans le passé, le présent et le futur. Nous montrons tout d’abord que la croissance de la profession universitaire s’est traduite par une différenciation accrue. Nous examinons ensuite la mutation en cours des conditions de travail et d’emp...

This article focuses on the steering of higher education systems in the light of political science and public management approaches. It first recalls that an important part of the existing literature on higher education is focused on public policies in terms of reforms and decision-making, while the other part is dedicated to discovering and unders...

Qui sont les universitaires ? Comment se caractérise le travail universitaire et comment en appréhender les différentes facettes : enseignement, recherche, relations avec l’environnement, responsabilités et tâches administratives ? Quelles sont les modalités d’accès et de gestion des carrières académiques ? Comment varient les marchés du travail un...

Do recruitment practices for positions as associate professor in French universities have an impact on any discrimination eventually experienced by women? Surveys and in-depth interviews conducted with members of hiring committees in three disciplines shed light on recruitment practices in relation to direct as well as indirect discrimination. The...

The study of disciplines has a long tradition, but it has often mainly focused on scientific activities. With a few exceptions (Clark 1987; Bertrand 1993; Bertrand et al. 1994; Schimank 1995), the interplay between different tasks is ignored and when it is not, attention has generally focused on the teaching-research divide. In the research present...

On the occasion of Mary Henkel’s seventieth birthday a group of her colleagues have come together to write this volume of articles as a tribute to her work and a token of gratitude for contributions to higher education research. The authors analyse these developments leading up to and possibly beyond the present in a tribute to Mary Henkel’s work u...