ABSTRACT

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 in which boards are affected by ambitions of embedding HEOs. The aim of our paper is to explore how such ambitions are expressed through HEO board nominations and compositions. We address this aim by turning to Sweden, whose higher education system has, during the past three decades, undergone recurrent reforms that emphasize the embedding role of boards at public HEOs. Our study builds on a longitudinal dataset of external HEO board members’ positions, employers, and simultaneous board seats, collected for 1998, 2007, and 2016 so as to accompany Swedish reforms. We find that external board members, over time, embedded HEOs in expanding and sprawling networks of ties to organizations from the public, private, and civil society sectors. Our findings push the literature beyond its focus on private sector ties by showing how governmental reforms lead HEOs to embed among public and civil society organizations as well.

摘要

高等教育机构 (HEO) 的董事会扮演多重角色。在他们管理的同时，董事会也被期望将 HEO 嵌入社会。事实上，欧洲最近的高等教育改革更强调 HEO 董事会的嵌入作用，而不是其管理作用。但是，尽管这些改革很普遍，但我们仍然对董事会受到嵌入 HEO 的野心的影响知之甚少。我们论文的目的是探讨如何通过 HEO 董事会提名和组成来表达这种雄心壮志。我们通过转向瑞典来实现这一目标，在过去的三十年里，瑞典的高等教育体系经历了反复的改革，强调董事会在公共 HEO 中的嵌入作用。我们的研究建立在外部 HEO 董事会成员职位、雇主和同时董事会席位的纵向数据集上，1998 年、2007 年和 2016 年收集，以配合瑞典的改革。我们发现，随着时间的推移，外部董事会成员将 HEO 嵌入到与公共、私营和民间社会部门组织的不断扩大的联系网络中。我们的研究结果通过展示政府改革如何引导 HEO 融入公共和民间社会组织，从而推动文献超越了对私营部门关系的关注。