Institutions and Organizations - the Change of Doctoral Studies?

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Nicole Thaller, IAAEG, University of Trier
While hierarchically structured organizations such as companies are able to enforce change by
instruction, organizations that are characterized by weak hierarchies, a high degree of autonomy, the members' expertise and loose coupling (Weick 1976) are not generally amenable to
dictated change. How can such organizations, which include cooperatives, partnerships as well
as university departments, transform themselves? This issue is discussed with respect to one of
the key tasks of university departments, the training and fostering of new researchers through
doctoral studies (Allmendinger 2001: 33). Economic theory, such as the principal-agentapproach, predicts that actors will react on external incentives and adjust their behaviour
(Meyer 2004). Therefore a change in doctoral education would have been expected as a result
of the implementation of New Public Management techniques. With the recent reforms in the
higher education sector in Germany New Public Management instruments are introduced.
However, neither a rapid nor a complete adaptation of structured forms of doctoral education
has been observed in Germany (Berning/Falk 2005: 54-55).
Therefore a theory more capable for a closer look inside the university departments is needed.
Here we introduce an enhanced micro-foundation neo-institutional perspective which addresses
the question of endogenous change (Meyer/Hammerschmid 2006). The macro-perspective is
criticized for its analysis of organizations: the focus is the whole organization; therefore the
organization remains a black box (Mense-Petermann 2006: 72). Meyer and Hammerschmid
(2006: 171) point out that the analysis of change and its implementation in local contexts necessitates a micro-foundational neo-institutional perspective.
This theoretical approach focuses on the effects on institutions of particular practices. Accordingly, structure and agency will be regarded, i.e. the relation between institution, agency and
actor (DiMaggio 1988). The actor is defined but not determined by the institution. The structures of universities, here the institution of doctoral education define expectations for professors and provide a social identity, but it does not determine the interpretation of those expectations and the transformation of those expectations to action. The actors are assumed to be endowed with interests bound to a specific historical and social context. Change can occur if organized actors with sufficient resources perceive a new structure as the opportunity to realize
their high-valued interests (DiMaggio 1988) and appreciate their own options for action. Such
actors are named change agents (e.g. Boxenbaum/Battilana 2005) or institutional entrepreneurs
(e.g. DiMaggio 1988). They are dominating members with power, legitimacy and critical resources (Dahan/Mangematin 2007). Nevertheless, the motivation to actions has to be distinguished from the power to enforce them (Meyer/Zucker 1989). This power is induced by the
institutional field and is not owing to individual charisma as even institutional entrepreneurs
are embedded in their institutional field (Leca/Naccache 2006). Their social identity, resources,
interests, and particular definitions of the situation are institutionally positioned. Rather institutional logics have to be activated, for example by convincing other group members to participate or support change. In Fligsteins (2001: 6) words: These actors not only have an idea, but
they must use that idea to induce cooperation amongst others. Therefore a change agent will
be defined as an actively innovating actor who plays an essential role for the change of doctoral
studies, imports experiences from similar fields, and who can afford to spend resources for the
common good without loosing status, reputation, and power.
Organizations for training and education are considered as important places for the development of organizational norms (Walgenbach 2001: 335-336). Therefore the view of professors
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Data collection was done within the DFG-project (SA 268/12-1) Organizational determinants for successfully promoting
new generations of researchers with graduate programs supervised by Prof. Dr. Dr. h. c. Dieter Sadowski, IAAEG and University of Trier.

and departments on doctoral education will be influenced by former experiences, e.g. own PhDexperiences. Professors who get in touch with different forms of doctoral education for example master-apprentice models or structured PhD-programs will not consider their form as the
only possible one. The underlying reference model or reference group for example national or
international can be decisive in determining which type of doctoral education will be regarded
as the legitimate one. The interaction of change agents, interests and the institutional context
influenced by former experiences will be analyzed to explain the mixed picture of the change of
doctoral education.
As research design we use an explorative case study of European departments. It enables a
rather conscious sampling and, because of the extraordinary deep analysis (cf. Ebbinghaus
2005), it facilitates an extremely detailed and comprehensive examination of the differences.
Additionally we do a comparative analysis of the organizational preconditions, the types of
action as well as the types and objectives of the different variants of Ph.D. education. Since
there are no comparable investigations in this area, this method seems to be most suitable to
approach the topic. Data are acquired from different sources: semi-structured interviews with
professors of the departments sample, document analysis, and bibliometric analysis with Scopus database. Since there are certain research traditions with regard to the particular subjects
and the social influences among researchers mainly take place within the particular institute or
department (Wolf/Rohn/Macharzina 2005: 64), we focus on one subject. We chose Economics because its design is quite similar on the international level.
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