The co-option of the traditional university – what now? A narrative analysis of 20 years research and innovation policy.

Dr Jeannie C. A. HolsteinAssistant Professor, Strategic and Public Sector ManagementNottingham University Business School

22nd May 2015

Strategy as an intertextual narrative • Gap in knowledge : how does strategy maintain thrust and

direction as an intertextual accomplishment (Fenton and Langley,

2011; Seidl and Whittington, 2014) ?

• Higher Education- theoretically relevant setting

• Background

– Is a significant form of organizational ordering, provides a ‘discourse of

direction’ or ‘map’ (Barry and Elmes, 1997)

– Is made in a complex process where emerging narrative is framed to

enable cohesion (Fenton and Langley, 2011)

– Not just called ‘strategy’ e.g. whatever ‘tells how the organisation and its

members should be’ (Law, 1994) = strategy

Method – narrative analysis

• Data

– 2 research intensive universities

– Corporate documents (756 pages)

– 42 interviews (throughout organisation and policy nexus) (48

hours transcribed, 778 pages of text)

– Policy documents ‘research, science and innovation’ and ‘HE

reform’ 1992-2012 (62 individual documents, approximately

7,750 pages)

• Frame – constitutive, manifest and ideological intertextuality

(Riad et al., 2012)

The intertextual production of the university

Contribution

• Key findings

– Prime example intertextuality

– Extensive ‘reach’ of enterprise university – within the organization

– ‘Co-opted’ narrative of traditional university, on-going

– Enabled through emotion - fear and hope

– Ideological framing that supports centralisation of meaning

• Theory

– Strategy ‘endures’ because thrust & direction is maintained through

framing that maintains wide availability and inculcates resonance and

reduces conflict

• Future?

What now?

Thank youQuestions

Dr Jeannie C. A. HolsteinAssistant Professor, Strategic and Public Sector ManagementNottingham University Business School

22nd May 2015