Abstract
The knowledge of local culture is essential to establish competitive strategies in higher education. The objective of this research was to identify the organizational differences among three universities with different international contexts and satisfaction level. An approach was made regarding Relational Coordination (RC) attributes: accurate, frequent and problem-solving communication, shared knowledge, mutual respect and shared goals, by discriminant analysis method. A random sample of 300 students, 100 belonging to each university, was surveyed on the 23 RC variables in 2017–2018. First, the RC variables were evaluated by general linear model (GLM). The three universities—Arcada University of Applied Science (ARCADA) in Finland, University of Cordoba (UCO) in Spain and Agricultural Polytechnic of Manabi “MFL” (ESPAM) in Ecuador—and the two levels of student satisfaction—Low and High—were used as fixed factors. Second, a discriminant model was built with RC variables. A higher level of RC practices concerning to accurate, frequent and problem-solving communication achieved higher levels of satisfaction, regardless of the universities’ socioeconomic context. RC differentiation among three universities showed that shared goals with lecturers and administrative officers and problem-solving communication among classmates were the variables with the highest discriminant power. Two clusters were obtained, where UCO was the most differentiated university. In conclusion, organizational practices made a difference among the three universities. Discriminant analysis can be adapted and extended to different universities to improve quality.
Highlights
The distribution was uniform in Arcada University of Applied Science (ARCADA)
In ARCADA 100% of the data corresponded to the Social Sciences (p-value < 0.001), in University of Cordoba (UCO) the Health Sciences predominated (90%; p-value < 0.001) and in ESPAM the Engineering Areas obtained the highest percentage (72%; p-value < 0.05)
In the case of higher education, is important to identify best organizational practices to apply at universities, as well as it is important to identify best organizational practices to apply at universities, as well the differences among universities, which contribute to the global knowledge of the imas the differences among universities, which contribute to the global knowledge of the portance of Relational Coordination (RC) on the results of the organization [16,20]
Summary
As a key to value creation in modern societies, improvement in higher education has received considerable attention from policy makers [1,2]. Organizational learning is interpersonal and relational, and it has often involved learning to coordinate work in new ways [4]. Coordination has been explained by organization design and contingency theorists such a Kundu et al [5], as an information-processing problem. Some authors such a Faraj and Sproull [6] and Margalina et al [7] have perceived coordination as shared understanding of work, and the context in which the activity is carried out has been defined as a relational process. According to Fu et al [8], coordination is an important management strategy which helps organizations to improve efficiency and effectiveness
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