Abstract
As universities in Japan gain institutional autonomy in managing internal organizations, independent of governmental control as a result of deregulation and decentralizing reforms, it is becoming increasingly important that the executives and administrators of each institution demonstrate clear and strategic vision and ideas to external stakeholders, in order to maintain financially robust operations and attractiveness of their institutions. This paper considers whether and how the self-image, mission, and vision of universities are perceived and internalized by the management of Japanese universities and empirically examines the determinants of shaping such individual perceptions. The result of our descriptive analysis indicates that the recent government policy to internationalize domestic universities has not shown much progress in the view of university executives in Japan. An increasing emphasis on the roles of serving local needs in research and teaching is rather pursued by these universities. Individual perceptions among Japanese university executives with regard to the missions and functional roles to be played by their institutions are influenced by managerial rank as well as the field of their academic training. A multiple regression analysis reveals that the economy of scale brought out by an expanded undergraduate student enrollment gradually slows down and decelerate executive perceptions, with regard to establishing a globally recognized status in research and teaching. Moreover, Japanese universities with a small proportion of graduate student enrollment, likely opted out from competitions for gaining a greater respect in the global community of higher education between 2005 and 2012. Finally, the management in universities granted with the same amount of external research funds in both studied years responded more passively in 2012 than did in 2005 on the self-assessment of whether having established a status as a global knowledge base.
Highlights
A series of recent efforts by the central government in structurally reforming and reorganizing the country’s public sector has empowered Japanese colleges and universities with autonomous control in internal governance with stronger leadership of the university president and board of trustees.Corporatization of the national universities in Japan, which took place in 2004, expanded the financial and managerial autonomy of individual institutions, in exchange for reduced public subsidies for basic operation and research activities undertaken by these universities [1,2,3]
This paper empirically examined whether and to what extent Japanese university executives affirmatively acknowledge the performance of their institutions in fulfilling multiple functional roles assumed and what traits contribute to shaping such self-identity
The affirmative perceptions among Japanese university management with regard to the current institutional performance, as well as functional roles to be played in the future, increase with the managerial rank which suggests at least perceptually a growing involvement of university presidents in taking institutional leadership, in more recent years, than the period immediately following the corporatization of national universities which took place in 2004
Summary
A series of recent efforts by the central government in structurally reforming and reorganizing the country’s public sector has empowered Japanese colleges and universities with autonomous control in internal governance with stronger leadership of the university president and board of trustees. One hypothetical view suggests that the missions of a university may have been shaped through acquired prestige, e.g., as represented by various university rankings, as well as institution size (e.g., total student enrollment) and scope (e.g., breadth of academic fields represented by the number of undergraduate departments and graduate schools) that each institution has established, and, expects to follow the same trajectory in the future Another view may postulate that academic priorities and missions of a university have been, and continue to be, affected by the attributes of the incumbent president and executive board members, e.g., age, gender, field of academic discipline, career path and previous experiences, and so forth. The result of statistical analysis is discussed in the fifth section, and the last section concludes
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