https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.2307%2F3343168.pdf

Development as Freedom

One dimensional man

What makes organizations so similar? We contend that the engine of rationalization and bureaucratization has moved from the competitive marketplace to the state and the professions. Once a set of organizations emerges as a field, a paradox arises: rational actors make their organizations increasingly similar as they try to change them. We describe three isomorphic processes-coercive, mimetic, and normative—leading to this outcome. We then specify hypotheses about the impact of resource centralization and dependency, goal ambiguity and technical uncertainty, and professionalization and structuration on isomorphic change. Finally, we suggest implications for theories of organizations and social change.

The iron cage revisited: Institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields (Chinese Translation)

Public Management Reform. A Comparative Analysis

One in a while, every twenty years perhaps, a book appears that makes one see a whole area of human experience in a new light. Once pointed out, the new insights are sp obvious that one cannot understand how one could have missed them before. In the broad area of the political economy of western society, J.A. Schumpeter's Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (1943) was one such book. So, with all its faults, was J.K. Galbraith's The Affluent Society (1957). Fred Hirsch's Social Limits to Growth (Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1977) is another.

Social limits to growth

A critical analysis is developed of the dominant meanings of value in marketised higher education. In policy terms, this has become informed by the logics of the measured market whereby value has become synonymous with economic return and institutional accountability. The notion of value is one which permeates many discussions on the purpose of higher education and the perceived benefits it confers onto individuals and society as a whole. This, however, remains largely implicit and unearthing the specific meaning of value (and values) clearly presents challenges. This article critically examines a variety of concepts relevant to discussion of the value of higher education, including the relationship between value and quality, consumerism, goods and performativity. In each case, it unpacks their meanings and implications for the relationship between students and institutions, particularly at a time when this is seen to be increasingly transactional. It then outlines an alternative value framing to the utilitarian ‘value for money’ so prevalent in much market-driven policy.

/pdf/conceptions-of-the-value-of-higher-education-in-a-measured-4etud3rtzn.pdf

Conceptions of the value of higher education in a measured market

This article presents an alternative approach to the dominant analysis of graduate employability, through a consideration of the dynamic and socially mediated interaction that graduates have with labour market. This interaction is largely constitutive of their dispositions and identities as graduates, and entails a dynamic interplay between graduates' agency and the wider structural context of the labour market. Informed by structuration theory, this perspective offers a richer, more socially nuanced account into employability than that presented by dominant policy-based approaches, namely the human capital and ‘skills’ agenda. Such approaches present a largely de-contextualised account of employability and a somewhat simplistic notion of the link between education and the labour market more generally. In this article, we argue that employability must be seen as an active social process, and that this process is mediated significantly by the way graduates position themselves, and are positioned, within a ...

Investing in the self: structure, agency and identity in graduates' employability

Very few issues have gained such attention and caught the imagination of those who have an interest in higher education as graduate employability The debates over how ‘work-ready’ graduates are and what economic contribution they can make have been around for many decades, yet since the start of this century interest in this area has exploded The very term ‘graduate employability’ has become synonymous with the ways in which the relationship between higher education and the economy is now understood Across all counties there is a widespread concern that their higher education systems are attuned to the changing economic environment, shaped profoundly by the challenges of economic globalisation In all cases, higher-education systems have evolved from a relatively loosely coupled relationship with both state and economy to one where their role is cast as highly integral to economic prosperity Graduates have invariably been positioned as key players on the economic stage whose role and input in the labour market is of huge significance

Introduction: Graduate Employability in Context: Charting a Complex, Contested and Multi-Faceted Policy and Research Field

https://research-information.bris.ac.uk/files/138454933/Macfarlane_Tomlinson.pdf

Critiques of Student Engagement

This paper addresses the limited empirical analysis of higher education students’ perceptions of contemporary labour market demands. It explores their perspectives on the health of the graduate labour market, what factors determine these and how their perceptions relate to self-perceived employability, career proactivity, career control and efforts to develop positional advantage. Further, the study examines determinants of students’ career planning, all in the context of a challenging graduate labour market and higher education systems that have become more market-driven. The paper draws on evidence from a survey among Australian and UK students (N = 433), from two institutions and across a range of disciplines. Data revealed a number of significant findings. Overall, students who reported more positive perceptions of the current labour market were more likely to develop higher self-perceptions of employability, believe they had a greater sense of control over their career yet were less engaged with proactive career behaviours. Students perceived employability, their sense of career control and their reported career proactivity positively determined their engagement in career planning. The study enhances our understanding of the impact of labour market demand-side factors on student approaches to careers. It raises significant implications for universities and their career practitioners in identifying ways of enhancing students’ career planning strategies within a more challenging labour market context.

/pdf/investigating-the-relationship-between-career-planning-2ezwqj2u47.pdf

Investigating the relationship between career planning, proactivity and employability perceptions among higher education students in uncertain labour market conditions

Michael Tomlinson

Papers

Conceptions of the value of higher education in a measured market

Investing in the self: structure, agency and identity in graduates' employability

Introduction: Graduate Employability in Context: Charting a Complex, Contested and Multi-Faceted Policy and Research Field

Critiques of Student Engagement

Investigating the relationship between career planning, proactivity and employability perceptions among higher education students in uncertain labour market conditions