Towards professionalisation? Restructuring of administrative work force in universities

Abstract

This article examines the restructuring of administrative staff in universities through empirically documenting such processes and providing a theoretically founded inter- pretation and analysis of change. The empirical material is drawn from a context of Norwegian universities the last two decades. Two major changes can be observed in this period. First, a period of steep growth in university administration in early 1990s followed by a period of moderate growth and in some cases even decline. The second dominant development pattern in the 1980s and 1990s is the change within administrative staff, which could be interpreted as a professionalisation of administrative staff. The article concludes by presenting possible explanations to the structuring of the administrative work force in universities on the basis of different theoretical approaches to organisational change.