ABSTRACT

This paper examines Korean universities’ responses to coercive pressures from the government towards neoliberal reforms. Unlike the general perception that coercive pressures from the government have a sweeping effect for all the organizations of the field, this paper shows variations among organizations in the adoption of a new practice promoted by the government. To explain this unexpected variation, we propose a theoretical framework of multi-level and multi-faceted institutional dynamics. Our empirical analysis shows that Korean universities’ adoption of admission officer system as a representative neoliberal global-standard practice varies depending on societal-level normative neoliberal discourses, field-level mimetic isomorphism among adjacent universities, and organization-level functional necessity.

摘要

本文考察了韩国大学对政府向新自由主义改革施加强制压力的反应。与普遍认为政府的强制性压力对该领域的所有组织产生广泛影响的一般看法不同，本文显示了组织在采用政府推动的新实践中的差异。为了解释这种意料之外的变化，我们提出了一个多层次，多层面的制度动力学的理论框架。我们的经验分析表明，韩国大学采用招生官制度作为代表性的新自由主义全球标准实践的做法因社会水平的规范性新自由主义话语，相邻大学之间的领域水平的模拟同构以及组织水平的功能必要性而异。