Strategic Bureaucracy: The Convergence of Bureaucratic and Strategic Management Logics in the Organizational Restructuring of Universities

Abstract

Over recent decades, one can identify two key narratives associated with changes in university organization and governance. The first narrative focuses on the administrative consequences of an off-loading state relinquishing direct control over some of universities’ internal operations while at the same time driving bureaucratization at the institutional level. The second narrative focuses on the emergence of an increasingly competitive and uncertain environment driving universities to transform into strategically managed organizations. In this paper, we argue that while the organizational logics associated with these two narratives imply differently accentuated forms of legitimation, they converge and combine with respect to key dimensions of universities’ internal organizing, ultimately giving rise to a hybrid form of organizational governance we label ‘strategic bureaucracy’. Such strategic bureaucracy, we illustrate, is characterized by a strong focus on strategic leadership and the associated management techniques while also intensifying organizational features traditionally associated with bureaucratic governance such as formalization and hierarchical authority.