Modell, Sven (2005). Students as consumers? An institutional field‐level analysis of the construction of performance measurement practices

Question 1

What is the paper investigating?

Answer 1

Recent changes in universities draw attention to students role as consumers. Prior literature has discussed whether this is a threat to academic values. The author wants to bring another perspective into the debate with help of the institutional theory.

Question 2

What is the aim?

Answer 2

It examines the political and institutional processes surrounding the construction of consumer-oriented performance measurements practices in the Swedish university sector.

Question 3

What is the theoretical perspetive?

Answer 3

Institutional theory - To answer - Why do some things (such as organizations, ideas etc) survive while other things disappear in organizations and society?

For example, a school, because it has norms, a social structure, rules of governance, policies, etc., that can shape action and thinking in local school organizations.

To understand behaviour in organizations it is to understand how organizations cope with institutional pressures. The strength of the pressure depends on the level of institutionalization.

Question 4

What are the empirical findings?

Answer 4

1. Describes the emerging ambition to increase the efficiency and quality in the Swedish university sector
2. Used an incentive => Resources allocation to universities would be based on “throughput”(genomströmning), rather than the number of students.
3. The reason was to minimize the number of drop-outs.

Question 5

What was the problems in the implementation “throughput”?

Answer 5

• There was a need for quality measurement, which was difficult to establish and to make comparable.
• Result: Throughput measures were implemented, quality measurements were not.