Barriers to Differentiation: Applying Organizational Studies to Ontario Higher Education

Roger Pizarro Milian
, Scott Davies
, David Zarifa

Abstract

Ontario’s Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities is currently attempting to increase institutional differentiation within that province’s post-secondary education system. We contend that such policies aimed to trigger organizational change are likely to generate unanticipated responses. Using insights from the field of organizational studies, we anticipate four plausible responses from universities to the ministry’s directives: remaining sensitive to their market demand, ceremonial compliance, continued status seeking, and isomorphism. We provide several policy recommendations that might help the ministry overcome these possible barriers to further differentiation.

 

Metrics

Metrics Loading ...

Published

2016-04-13



Section

Articles



License

Copyright in the article is vested with the Author under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Canada license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/ca/. Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:

  1. Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
  2. Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.

Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).


How to Cite

Pizarro Milian, R., Davies, S., & Zarifa, D. (2016). Barriers to Differentiation: Applying Organizational Studies to Ontario Higher Education. Canadian Journal of Higher Education, 46(1), 19–37. https://doi.org/10.47678/cjhe.v46i1.186019