“Despite the Lockdown, the University Has a Lot to Offer”: Exploring University Identity During Crisis

Abstract

Universities are some of the most stable institutions, surviving over centuries and maintaining a lot of their structure and functions while numerous other organisations ceased to exist. The global Covid-19 pandemic, however, has presented universities with a major crisis, rapidly shifting the mode of operation and serving as a critical juncture to consider not only short-term survival, but also long-term development and societal role. Our paper examines universities’ adaptation to crisis through the lens of organisational identity, seeking to understand to what extent and how did universities deviate from, or accentuate, their espoused identity in the early stages of the pandemic. We analysed 130 publicly available communications from 8 Vice-Chancellors of UK’s Russell Group universities and from the Russell Group, uncovering the diverging priorities of elite universities in adapting to the crisis. Presented in a typology of identity archetypes, our findings extend the understanding of organisational identity endurance and distinctiveness.