Theory and Method in Higher Education Research

Jeroen Huisman, Malcolm Tight, Jeroen Huisman, Malcolm Tight

• Publisher: Emerald Publishing Limited
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781787432390
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Research in Education

Theory and Method in Higher Education Research provides a forum specifically for higher education researchers to discuss issues of theory and method. This latest collection includes discussion of a variety of theories, including; complex systems theory, organisational identity, curriculum theory, knowledge management framework, evaluation-based decision-making, and the market-university. It also includes a number of chapters focused on methods, including mixed methods and virtual ethnography, as well as a chapter situated between theory and method on the network paradigm.
This latest volume presents a truly international approach with contributions from Argentina, Belgium, Canada, the Czech Republic, Finland, Germany, Norway, Portugal, the U.K. and the U.S. to provide an important contribution to international debates regarding the application and development of theory and methodology in researching higher education that will be relevant to researchers globally.

A DEVELOPMENTAL PERSPECTIVE ON ORGANIZING FOR SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY: A FRAMEWORK OF WISE ACTION FOR HIGHER EDUCATION ORGANIZATIONS

Cassie L. Barnhardt and Carson W. Phillips

ABSTRACT

This chapter presents the major components in framing a developmental model of wise organizing in the field of higher education that proceeds along an increasingly more just and responsible path. Our argument considers individual student development theories that lead one to greater competence for wise and socially responsible interactions and engagement in society, and aligns these individual processes with the organizational scholarship emphasizing how organizations enhance their capacities for wise and socially responsible conduct. After reviewing these arguments, we frame a set of research topics required for empirically identifying how universities can cultivate wisdom.

Keywords: Meaning-making; social responsibility; organizational wisdom; organizational research methods

INTRODUCTION

Organizational theories serve multiple functions; they explain and rationalize existing organizational norms, but they also provide frameworks for shaping the future and offering “new possibilities for organizational behavior and managerial action” (Suddaby, 2014, p. 408). Walsh, Meyer, and Schoonhoven (2006) argue that many of the enduring organization theories (resource dependence, contingency theory, transaction cost theory, population ecology, open-systems frame, agency theory, institutional theory, organizational learning) have had close ties to the unique historical context in which each of them was developed. With today’s organizational problems largely reflecting issues of global human welfare (George, 2014; King, 2017; Walsh et al., 2006; Walsh, Weber, & Margolis, 2003), organizational scholars suggest that society could benefit from a renewed emphasis on elaborating theories that help scholars and practitioners understand how organizations make sense of “what types of decisions are good for society” and “how organizations’ values affect public goods and resolve social problems” (King, 2017, p. 137). The time for a theoretical focus on social welfare is pressing since today’s organizations (and their corresponding organizing processes) are increasingly being tasked with the responsibility to respond to, alleviate or solve issues of structural inequity, systematic exploitation, social justice, and institutionalized oppression. Nowhere are these dynamics more relevant than in the case of higher education.

The purpose of this chapter is to stimulate convergence of the theories associated with the development of wisdom in college students and organizations to enhance our theoretical conceptions of how we might live in and live with higher education organizations. Wisdom, and the actions that flow from it, are imbued with social responsibility to the extent that one (an individual student or a campus) forms and applies knowledge and attributes meaning in increasingly contextual, ethical, balanced and adaptive ways that account for the short- and long-term needs of one’s self and others, reflecting broad integration of complex topics, while demonstrating respect and sensitivity to matters of equity (Baxter Magolda, 2004; Limas & Hansson, 2004; Sternberg, 2004).

Across the many fields of study that constitute organizational studies, higher education is an area of organizational life that is an appealing context for examining theories associated with the development of socially responsible and wise action. Foundationally, higher education is a social institution comprised of organizations that explicitly aspire to improve society through the core activities of research, teaching, and service (Gumport, 2001). In carrying out these functions, higher education contributes to addressing society’s vexing social, cultural, technological, and scientific challenges. Simultaneously, higher education is the social institution called to prepare and socialize citizens to provide professional and civic leadership for collective challenges (Kanter & Geary Schneider, 2013) – challenges which typically arise in the form of cultural contestations, competition over sustainability of actions, disparities in natural and economic resources, human rights concerns, and deficiencies in legal or political processes (Barnhardt, 2017).

In 2006, the Association of American Colleges & Universities and the Council of Europe’s Steering Committee for Higher Education and Research affirmed higher education’s socially responsible aims in the Declaration on Higher Education and Democratic Culture, which stated:

We subscribe to the responsibility of higher education to foster citizen commitment to sustainable public policies and actions that go beyond considerations of individual benefits. We accept our responsibility to safeguard democracy, and promote a democratic culture, by supporting and advancing within higher education as well as society at large, the principles of: Democratic and accountable structures, processes and practice; Active democratic citizenship; Human rights, mutual respect and social justice; Environmental and societal sustainability; Dialogue and the peaceful resolution of conflicts.

In this declaration, the field communicates its commitments both to develop individuals capable of contributing to the greater good, and to engage in organizational conduct that promotes human welfare that is socially responsible and just.

The present moment, shaped by events such as the passage of Brexit in the United Kingdom, the election of Donald Trump in the United States, global factions of nationalistic sentiments, and the scourges of terror and/or violence, has sharpened the socially responsible and democratic purposes of universities. Following Trump’s election, 200 U.S. university presidents issued a letter declaring their campuses’ commitments to promoting “human decency, equal rights, freedom of expression, and freedom from discrimination” (Bennington College, 2017), accompanied by their request that he uphold these values as well. Similarly, more than 43,000 academics signed a petition against the U.S. Presidential Immigration Executive Order (White House, 2017) travel ban, to solidify higher education’s leadership and social role in advancing the values of humane treatment of racial, religious, and immigrant-minority communities (Academics against Immigration Executive Order, 2017). These recent symbolic gestures reinforce that universities are engaged in a particular set of core activities and processes that speak to fundamental collective matters of social responsibility and democratic functioning.

To pursue a theoretical path poised to match the prevailing social issues of the day, our chapter explores theory and scholarship examining the mechanisms by which universities might grow their organizational capabilities for fulfilling their stated socially responsible aims. More precisely, we ask, upon what basis might it be possible to imagine a reality where universities as organizations can progress, grow, or develop in a parallel manner to the ways that individual students develop into socially responsible and wise beings? We delimit the individual and organizational conceptions of wisdom alongside one another for application to the field of higher education.

Examining this question is a partial response to the state of scholarship on the social institution of higher education. Macfarlane (2015) and Kezar (2000) observe that higher education research has tended to use stark dualisms to make sense of phenomena (research vs. practice; private vs. public good; students vs. organizations). McArthur (2015) similarly contends that theoretical cleavages within a field can stifle innovative thinking and construct barriers. Here, the divisions we seek to bridge correspond to distinctive domains of higher education research (Clark, 1973; Gumport, 2007). One domain focuses on individual-level human capabilities, development and/or learning in postsecondary education, with a separate domain that examines organizational behavior and administrative management of higher education. For practical reasons (e.g., separate journals, sections of scholarly societies), these two bodies of scholarship seldom intersect, and yet their practical intersections may prove fruitful for advancing theory.

McArthur asserts that, in maintaining scholarly separations, a research community itself can reinforce a de facto privileging of ideas and ways of knowing that may be antithetical to locating issues of human welfare, compassion, and social justice in our scholarship. As such, we seek to undo taken-for-granted scholarly habits by contemplating how the study of individual learning and meaning-making within the field of higher education might actually connect to how we study and understand the organizational processes of postsecondary institutions moving toward an ethic of greater socially responsible organizational conduct. In so doing, we seek convergence in these two domains comprised of rich and diverse theoretical influences for the purpose of encouraging universities to not only educate people to be socially just and responsible, but toward operating as mindful organizations whose conduct and operations reinforce organizational expressions of social responsibility and justice as well.

We acknowledge that the examination of theories characterizing the social welfare contributions of organizations can be examined in multiple ways; a focus on the development of wisdom is but one approach, albeit something we think uniquely suited to the institution of higher education. Other means for broaching theories of social welfare in organizational contexts could include examinations of positive organizational scholarship (Caza & Caza, 2008; Luthans, 2002), research on organizational care and compassion (Kanov et al., 2004; Rynes, Bartunek, Dutton, & Margolis, 2012), or emerging applications of corporate social responsibility to university contexts (Tetrevová & Sabolová, 2011), among others. Interestingly, scholars within these domains have also been working to better connect what is known about individual psychological processes with organizational processes (Ahrne, Brunsson, & Seidl, 2016). Finally, it is also notable that our chapter tends to draw from sources that emerged from the American context of higher education (although not exclusively); this pattern is especially apparent in discussing theories associated with individual college student development.

SYSTEMS OF MEANING-MAKING FOR INDIVIDUALS

College student development is an individualized process involving one’s cogni...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• The Guiding Role of Theory in Mixed-Methods Research: Combining Individual and Institutional Perspectives on the Transition to Higher Education
• Higher Education Research: Looking beyond New Public Management
• An Analytical Framework for Evaluation-Based Decision-Making Procedures in Universities
• The Study of the Academic Profession – Contributions from and to the Sociology of Professions
• A Developmental Perspective on Organizing for Social Responsibility: A Framework of Wise Action for Higher Education Organizations
• Organizational Identity of Universities: A Review of the Literature from 1972 to 2014
• The University as an Adaptive Resilient Organization: A Complex Systems Perspective
• The Role of Curriculum Theory in Contemporary Higher Education Research and Practice
• A Knowledge Management Framework for Institutional Research
• The Differentiated Market-University Structural Differences among University’s Commodification Processes
• Virtual Ethnography: The Logistical and Ethical Challenges of Bringing Higher Education Research Online
• The Network Paradigm in Higher Education
• Disability and College Students: A Critical Examination of a Multivalent Identity
• Informal Learning in the Workplace: Approaches to Learning and Perceptions of the Context
• Index