Abstract
Our study of UK higher education institutions (HEIs) offers insights into the role of institutional logics in the adoption of organisational practices – specifically outsourcing. We identify two logics prevalent within HEIs: a public service ‘state logic’ and a ‘market logic’. While adherence to the market logic supports commercial-based practices such as outsourcing, organisations enact competing logics in complex ways. Outsourcing is mainly limited to peripheral activities segmented from the core while a nascent cooperative solution is emerging as HEIs co-opt practices and discourse of outsourcing to justify hybrid relationships that marry competing logics in a process of selective coupling.
Highlights
Recent years have witnessed significant political and economic changes in UK higher education institutions (HEIs) with a 46 percent drop in direct funding, other than research, between 2010 and 2014 (Bolton, 2014)
Facing increasingly competitive markets and ever tightening margins, we argue for congruence between these manifestations of a market logic and efficiency-seeking behaviour to support outsourcing: Hypothesis 2a: HEIs are more likely to participate in outsourcing when they have a higher teaching intensity
Our study indicates differences already exist in HEIs between the symbolic identification of professionals with the state logic and those who identify with the market logic, and this difference could be explored more fully across occupations and levels within HEIs and more broadly across other public service organisations facing neo-liberal policy shifts
Summary
Recent years have witnessed significant political and economic changes in UK higher education institutions (HEIs) with a 46 percent drop in direct funding, other than research, between 2010 and 2014 (Bolton, 2014). Appealing to a more discerning student ‘market,’ HEIs have to make strategic decisions about their identity and the cost and quality of infrastructure and services. Against this backdrop government policy has supported increasing use of outsourcing in search for efficiencies, the implementation of this practice has been markedly limited (Elinder and Jordahl, 2013; Policy Exchange, 2010; UUK, 2011). We contribute to a more general theoretical question across the public sector of understanding the adoption of managerial practices depending on the institution’s dominant logic. A state logic engenders practices consistent with collegial governance structures, communities of practice, public goods and organisational autonomy that privileges internal service provision. A market logic supports a more managerialist approach associated with a focus on commercial objectives, efficiency, effectiveness, and performance measurement supporting outsourcing (Parker, 2012)
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