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Universities between traditional forces and modern demands: the role of imprinting on the missions of German universities

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An Erratum to this article was published on 20 June 2016

Abstract

Universities find themselves faced with the conflicting institutional demands of being cathedrals of learning and research as well as introducing managerial and corporate-like structures. Despite many studies in higher education research that focus on how this situation affects the mission of universities, the role of imprinting has not received considerable attention yet. Our study aims at closing this research gap by analyzing the influence of institutional founding conditions on mission statements of universities. Results show that imprinting does not affect the introduction of mission statements, but rather their contents. The role of imprinting is, however, moderated by the power and the reputation of universities. In discussing these findings within the context of higher education research, our study contributes to a better understanding of developments in the field of universities.

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Notes

  1. Higher education is under the authority of the federal states in Germany, and policies differ between them.

  2. A comprehensive table with the codes and examples is provided by the authors upon request.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Francisco Ramirez, John W. Meyer and the members of the Comparative Sociology Workshop at Stanford University for their very helpful comments on an earlier version of this manuscript. Moreover, we thank Lisa Fenchel and Katrin Kämpfner for their help in collecting the data for this study as well as Louisa McClatchy for her support regarding the final preparation of our manuscript. Finally, we are in debt to our Editor Rosemary Deem and two anonymous reviewers for their very helpful comments.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Chair of Organization, Leadership, and Human Resource Management, School of Economics and Business Administration, Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Carl-Zeiss-Strasse 3, 07743, Jena, Germany

    Simon Oertel

  2. Chair of Business and Economics Didactics, Institute of Vocational Education, Faculty of Economics and Management, University of Kassel, Heinrich-Plett-Strasse 40, 34132, Kassel, Germany

    Matthias Söll

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  1. Simon Oertel
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Correspondence to Simon Oertel.

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An erratum to this article is available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10734-016-0021-0.

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Oertel, S., Söll, M. Universities between traditional forces and modern demands: the role of imprinting on the missions of German universities. High Educ 73, 1–18 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-016-0013-0

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