Kerstin Sahlin

Uppsala University | UU · Det of business studies

Since the first universities were established more than a millennium ago, we have seen a remarkable rise of universities worldwide. Yet, over time widespread concerns have repeatedly been raised about the crisis of the university and research on universities is largely occupied with contemporary changes. Research also tends to focus on cross-nation...

Boards in higher education organizations (HEOs) play multiple roles. While they govern, boards are also expected to embed HEOs in society. Indeed, recent higher education reforms in Europe have emphasized the embedding role of HEO boards more than their governing role. But, although these reforms are widespread, we still know little about the ways...

Introduction Corporate governance has become a widely discussed and researched area in the recent decades (cf., e.g., Shleifer and Vishny 1997; Fligstein and Choo 2005; Wright et al. 2013; McGahan 2014). Often these discussions and research have been, and still are, concentrated on a few well-established mechanisms (e.g., incentive systems), on reg...

This article focuses on transnational intermediary organizations in the field of higher education and research. We conceive of intermediaries as organizations that are actively involved in transnational university governance without having formal access to or control over policy or governmental funding. Such intermediary organizations have in previ...

This chapter focuses on transnational intermediary organizations in higher education and research. We conceive of intermediaries as organizations that are actively involved in transnational university governance without having formal access to or control over policy or governmental funding. Such intermediary organizations have in previous research...

A transnational network of university governance In recent decades, we have witnessed a profound transformation of what is now commonly perceived to be a global university field (for example, Drori et al, 2012; Frank and Meyer, 2007). Universities are typically governed and financed within national systems of higher education and they differ widely...

Unlike university systems in many other countries, Swedish universities do not have academic decision-making bodies on a university level, such as senates. The historical structure with a konsistorium (consisting of a body of full professors) as the highest decision-making body of the university, has been reshaped through a number of reforms into c...

This article focuses on transnational intermediary organizations in higher education and research. We conceive of intermediaries as organizations that are actively involved in transnational university governance without having formal access to or control over policy or governmental funding. Such intermediary organizations have in previous research...

This article discusses the concept and challenges to transnational regulatory governance in the context of the global financial crisis in 2008, and characterises the dynamics of transnational regulatory governance by analysing the nature of the actors involved and of the nature and dynamics of the rules produced. It suggests that increasing calls f...

Many universities and university systems around the globe have recently been subject to extensive organizational and regulatory reforms. A dominating discourse and a trend behind those reform efforts circles around the notions of 'autonomy and accountability' (e.g. see Estermann & Nokkala, 2009; Stensaker & Harvey, 2010). Many national university s...

Taking transnational regulatory governance seriously, we treat it in this chapter as a dependent variable. Processes of emergence and stabilization are of particular interest. We emphasize the complex, step-by-step, sometimes bumpy and highly historical dimension of these processes. Regulatory change, as it characterizes our contemporary transnatio...

Management education has expanded dramatically in Europe during the last few decades. In conjunction with this development, a growing number of new forms of regulation have become widespread, such as accrediting procedures, standards and guidelines, and more or less formalized rankings, comparisons and evaluations. The examples display the expansio...

The transnationalization of our world is characterized by powerful dynamics of reordering. Our reordering world is marked by more - not less - rule-making activity. This chapter provides an analytical reading of this contemporary trend. It emphasizes the complex, step-by-step, and historical nature of this reordering process, but it also suggests t...

The transnationalization of our world, sometimes hastily labelled 'globalization', is not only - and far from it - about flows of goods, capital, or people. Nor is transnationalization simply a discourse even though it does have important discursive dimensions. Together with others, we suggest that our transnationalizing world is also defined by po...

Globalization involves a profound re-ordering of our world with the proliferation everywhere of rules and transnational modes of governance. This book examines how this governance is formed, changes and stabilizes. Building on a rich and varied set of empirical cases, it explores transnational rules and regulations and the organizing, discursive an...

This paper argues that it is useful to regard `reputational risk' as a pervasive logic of organizing and organizational attention. First, we suggest that the risk management agenda has expanded from its roots in technical analysis to become a cornerstone of good governance and responsible actorhood. We illustrate this claim in the context of Englis...

In this brief review, we do not attempt to provide a comprehensive overview of how the concept of ideology has developed in the different perspectives; this has been done in several publications that classify and discuss ideology in great detail (see Chiapello, 2003; Thompson, 1996; Eagleton, 1991; Lenk, 1984; Therborn, 1980; Larrain, 1979, among m...

Introduction The motivation for this Handbook arose from a conversation with Don Palmer, who raised the question of whether organization theories in general have life cycles. Given the proliferation of theoretical paradigms, do organization theories build into coherent conceptual frameworks supported by diligently conducted empirical work, or do th...

Circulating ideas: Imitation, translation and editing Early institutional theoretical development grew out of the observations that formal organizational structures become increasingly complex as new organizations emerge and as existing organizations incorporate new practices and procedures. Such elaborated formal organizational structures, Meyer a...

Our age has been described as a ‘golden era of regulation’ (Levi-Faur & Jordana 2005), characterised by the ubiquitous of regulatory activities and regulatory actors, of networks and other constellations setting off an explosion of rules. Many of these rules are of a ‘soft’, legally non-binding and voluntary kind (Märth 2004). This proliferating re...

All over the world new ideas and models emerge on how to organize the higher education sector and its institutions. The contributions in this volume identify the most influential transnational models and investigate their origins and mechanisms of dissemination as well as the resulting consequences for national systems. Will global trends in higher...

Purpose – Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has emerged as a global trend involving corporations, states, international organizations and civil society organizations. It is far from clear what CSR stands for, what the trend really is, where it comes from, where it is heading and who the leading actors are. If one views it as a social movement,...

abstract Risk, regulation and practices of organizing are interrelated in a myriad of ways. Natural disasters, technical failures, and also processes of organizing are sources of risk to which organizations must respond and for which new managerial and regulatory practices are demanded. In this introduction we highlight three salient features of ri...

Introduction Management education has expanded dramatically around the world over recent decades. The expansion has been particularly salient in Europe, where existing business schools have flourished, and new ones have proliferated. As business schools have grown, so has the number of programs on offer, particularly Master of Business Administrati...

Introduction The chapters in this volume point to a profound re-definition of structuring frames for action and of normative and cognitive reference sets. In other words, all chapters, individually and as a whole, document significant institutional transformation. The transnationalization of our world, sometimes hastily labeled “globalization,” is...

Introduction In a speech given in Uppsala on 6 September 2001, in memory of the fortieth anniversary of the death of the late UN Secretary-General, Dag Hammarskjöld, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan argued that today, in many respects, the activities of the UN follow an agenda established by Hammarskjöld. However, towards the end of his speech, Anna...

Globalization involves a profound re-ordering of our world with the proliferation everywhere of rules and transnational modes of governance. This book examines how this governance is formed, changes and stabilizes. Building on a rich and varied set of empirical cases, it explores transnational rules and regulations and the organizing, discursive an...

Sector-wide approach, or SWAp, is an increasingly popular approach to development cooperation for many bilateral and multilateral development agencies. While much has been published about the SWAp model itself, there is still limited research conducted on how it is applied in practice. This study aims at showing how the SWAp is translated as it is...

Introduction On an experiential basis, many of us feel the impact of a “transnationalizing” world. French workers strike to prevent the de-localization of their jobs to Slovenia or China and most clothing in American stores is produced outside the United States. A German university professor is increasingly expected to belong to a transnational pee...

Globalization involves a profound re-ordering of our world with the proliferation everywhere of rules and transnational modes of governance. This book examines how this governance is formed, changes and stabilizes. Building on a rich and varied set of empirical cases, it explores transnational rules and regulations and the organizing, discursive an...

The chapters in this volume point to a profound re-definition of structuring frames for action and of normative and cognitive reference sets. All chapters, individually and as a whole, document in other words significant institutional transformation. The transnationalization of our world, sometimes hastily labeled “globalization”, is not only – and...

In this article we study the patterns of proliferation, circulation and transformation of MBA programmes in Europe. The article seeks to address two important questions: First, why is it that the label MBA has travelled from the USA to Europe?, and second, to what extent does this label signify the proliferation of similar programmes across the Atl...

In the modern world, there is no shortage of people who know what is best for others. Self-appointed experts, consultants, and organizations try to convince states, corporations, and individuals that they would be better off if they only followed some specific rules about what to do. These rules are presented as being voluntary and advisory. They a...

Organizations are socially constructed phenomena. A crucial task for organizational research is to analyze how and why people construct organizations rather than other social forms. In this paper, it is argued that recent public-sector reforms can be interpreted as attempts at constructing organizations. Public-sector entities that could formerly b...

This article describes the everyday interactions in an organization composed of groups to which gender identities have been ascribed, namely a hospital ward. The female identity of the nursing profession is reflected in the interaction both within the group and in the interaction between nurses and doctors. The female identity of the nurses repeate...

The modernization of western cities and societies is often pursued in the form of big projects. In this article it is argued that part of the explanation why some projects are realized and not others is to be found in the processes of project organizing. The Stockholm Globe Arena project illustrates two different strategies for pursuing big project...

Whilst there is much air time and media coverage of public-private partnerships (PPPs), the commentary tends to be polarised and limited to either advocacy or criticism. This paper aims to outline the major dimensions of today's PPP research terrain, examine those priority threads running through present concerns and identify some crucial areas nee...