Purpose: This article's purpose is to examine how the balance between autonomy (stewardship) and control (principal-agent) has evolved over 2 decades through a comparative longitudinal study of university governance reforms in Denmark and Sweden. Design/methodology/approach: Employing a longitudinal comparative case study design, the study draws…

Although the role of international organizations in the diffusion of education policy is widely acknowledged, their role in the articulation of policy ideas remains comparatively underresearched. This article addresses this gap through a case study on the role of the OECD in the construction of the School Autonomy with Accountability policy…

Many arguments for education's autonomy put forward a repeated yet undefined claim that there is an identifiable, dividing line between education and its outside, and that it is within the distinct contours of "the educational" where the nomos of its autonomy lies. Approaching this claim from a literary perspective, I conduct a critical…

Academic freedom is understood as a set of individual protections and community practices for faculty to assess quality, promote truth-seeking, and advance the common good through research, teaching, and other expression. It is also understood as a set of institutional principles for universities when it comes to decision-making about academic…

This paper offers a historical analysis of organizational identity development at a particular Dutch university, the Vrije Universiteit (VU) Amsterdam. Our analysis contributes to the discussion on what factors contribute to organizational identity maintenance and evolution. Whereas the literature suggests a rather straightforward development,…

Despite extensive research into English as a Medium of Instruction (EMI) in higher education, few if any studies have explored the role of higher education autonomy in driving EMI. This paper tests the novel hypothesis that university autonomy--spearheaded across European higher education through neoliberally predicated 'steering at a distance'…

Federal and highly decentralized political systems open different spaces to interpret, adapt, and enact international policy trends and ideas within the same territory. Spain, a country with a highly decentralized educational system and contentious territorial politics, is a very suitable case to analyze these dynamics. Spain and its different…

This paper explores the evolution of autonomy in Hungarian model-changing institutions, focusing on how reforms have altered governance dynamics. By examining both the university's distance from the state and the degree of self-governance of the academic community, the study employs property rights theory to analyse how governance rights are…

This study focuses on the interpretation and implementation of artificial intelligence policies in higher education for mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau. The researchers applied a conceptual comparative review of regulatory frameworks and institutional discretion by utilising Policy Implementation Theory and Multi-Level Governance. From the…

This study empirically examines the predictive relationship between Institutional Autonomy (IA) and Academic Freedom (AF) whilst controlling for the mediating effect of corporate governance (CG) amongst selected higher education institutions in Ghana. It also looks at the difference between females and males and their perceptions of the predictive…

As part of the broader political assault on college and university autonomy, shared governance, and academic freedom, some state legislatures recently have restricted or eliminated the authority and independence of faculty senates and other similar representative bodies. Such actions go against long­standing principles of academic governance and,…

Editorial endogamy, the over-representation of scholars affiliated with a journal's host institution on its editorial board, is a widespread phenomenon in university journals (UJs). This practice is often shaped by institutional traditions, resource limitations, internal loyalty, promotion incentives, and opaque selection practices. While some…

Recent studies reveal that developing countries cannot achieve good governance in higher education by merely borrowing structures from advanced systems because the globally advocated "one-best-way" approach often ignores levels of institutional capacity in developing countries. This study suggests institutional capacity as a core…

This study applies resource dependence theory to address the question of how the critical resource dependence relationship emerges in the context of a university's performance agreement. This study focuses on two Nordic universities that have adopted performance agreements while simultaneously using strong performance-based state funding. Resource…

This article focuses on the question of how universities respond to authoritarian attacks on their autonomy through a close reading of faculty protests over rector appointments at Bogaziçi University (BU) in Turkey. I draw on digital and social media accounts of the protests and expert opinion interviews with displaced Turkish academics to refine…