Organizational Theory

Please see my new book, published in 2012: The Organization of Higher Education: Managing Colleges for a New Era (Johns Hopkins University Press)
Bastedo, Michael N., Elias M. Samuels, and Molly Kleinman. 2014. “Do Presidents Influence College Applications and Fundraising? Organizational Identity and Performance in U.S. Private Higher Education.” Higher Education 68: 397-415.
The effect of charismatic leadership on organizational performance is contested. Yet despite the lack of consistent evidence of the value of charismatic leadership to organizations, presidential searches have increasingly favored charismatic candidates. This study shows how organizational identity mediates the relationship between charismatic leadership and organizational performance. Among religious colleges, but not among private colleges considered overall, there is a positive relationship between presidents’ charismatic leadership and the number of applications for enrollment and the amount of financial donations colleges receive. This suggests that among organizations with atypical identities, charismatic leadership can be interpreted as a meaningful signal of organizational performance.
Bastedo, Michael N. 2009. Conflicts, Commitments, and Cliques in University Governance: Moral Seduction as a Threat to Trustee Independence. American Educational Research Journal 46: 354-386.

The ability of trustees to make independent judgments in the best interests of the university is a fundamental characteristic of an effective governing board. Trustee independence is increasingly threatened, however, as the university becomes more deeply embedded in government, industry, networks, and the professions. This topic is investigated through analysis of qualitative interviews, focus group observations, and informant-produced documents from 59 public university presidents. It is argued that threats to trustee independence are produced primarily through a process of moral seduction that allows trustees to engage in self-interested decision making while maintaining an ethical self-concept. The article then provides a conceptual model to frame our understanding of how important social actors seek to capture and co-opt boards of trustees to serve external interests, and describes how the mechanisms of moral seduction differ across contexts.
Bastedo, Michael N. 2009. Convergent Institutional Logics in Public Higher Education: State Policymaking and Governing Board Activism. Review of Higher Education 32: 209-234.

This article investigates the convergent institutional logics driving decision making at an activist governing board in higher education. Through a case study of policymaking by a state-level coordinating board in Massachusetts, the article identifies four primary logics of action: mission differentiation, student opportunity, managerialism, and system coordination. The study concludes that institutional logics are a powerful mechanism for understanding shifts in public higher education governance, and results in predictable political outcomes in the negotiation of constituent interests. The potential contribution for further examination of institutional logics on studying higher education politics and institutional stratification is considered.
Bastedo, Michael N. and Nicholas A. Bowman. 2010. The U.S. News and World Report College Rankings: Modeling Institutional Effects on Organizational Reputation. American Journal of Education 116: 163-184.

Processes of certification and evaluation are some of the most powerful institutional forces in organizational fields, and in the higher education field, rankings are a primary factor in assessing organizational performance. This paper explores the institutional effects of the U.S. News & World Report rankings on the reputational assessments made by senior administrators at peer universities and liberal arts colleges. In the estimation of a structural equation model, we found that published college rankings have a significant impact on future peer assessments, independent of changes in organizational quality and performance, and even of prior peer assessments of reputation.
Bowman, Nicholas A. and Michael N. Bastedo. 2009. Getting on the Front Page: Organizational Reputation, Status Signals, and the Impact of U.S. News and World Report Rankings on Student Decisions. Research in Higher Education 50: 415-436. Subgroup Analyses.

Recent studies have suggested that a causal link exists between college rankings and subsequent admissions indicators. However, it is unclear how these effects vary across institutional type (i.e., national universities vs. liberal arts colleges) or whether these effects persist when controlling for other factors that affect admissions outcomes. Using admissions data for top-tier institutions from fall 1998 to fall 2005, we found that moving onto the front page of the U.S. News rankings provides a substantial boost in the following year’s admissions indicators for all institutions. In addition, the effect of moving up or down within the top tier has a strong impact on institutions ranked in the top 25, especially among national universities. In contrast, the admissions outcomes of liberal arts colleges—particularly those in the lower half of the top tier—were more strongly influenced by student prices.
Bastedo, Michael N. 2007. Bringing the State Back In: Promoting and Sustaining Innovation in Public Higher Education. Higher Education Quarterly 61: 155-170.

Since the well-known failures of many experimental colleges and programs in the 1960s and 1970s, policymakers and scholars are often cynical about the possibilities for organizational innovation, particularly within public universities. Public university innovation is possible, however, when organizational actors seek to institutionalize reform and use the legitimacy of reform to obtain adequate human and financial resources. An illustrative case study of California State University at Monterey Bay is used to describe how institutionalization processes can be used to establish, support and expand public university innovation, which may be increasingly crucial to meet political and competitive demands for university adaptation.
Bastedo, Michael N. 2007. Sociological Frameworks for Higher Education Policy Research. Pp. 295-316 in Patricia J. Gumport (Ed.), The Sociology of Higher Education: Contributions and Their Contexts. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Reviewing contemporary developments in organization theory and sociology, argues for new approaches to understanding politics, policymaking, and governance in higher education.
Bastedo, Michael N. 2006. Open Systems Theory. In Fenwick W. English (Ed.), The Sage Encyclopedia of Educational Leadership and Administration. Thousand Oaks: Sage.

A very brief explanation of open systems theory and its uses in studying organizations.
Bastedo, Michael N. 2005. The Making of an Activist Governing Board. Review of Higher Education 28: 551-570.

Although numerous theories have been proffered, to date activist boards are an empirically unexamined force in public higher education governance. Using the concept of institutional entrepreneurship, this case study examines the reciprocal role that board members and staff played in the organizational development of board activism. In the case of Massachusetts, policymakers were able to successfully negotiate the higher education institutions that mediate policy through the use of political skills, leadership, and leveraging political power. The implications for our understanding of board activism and radical change in public higher education governance are discussed.
Bastedo, Michael N. 2005. Curriculum in American Higher Education: The Historical Roots of Contemporary Issues. Pp. 462-485 in Philip G. Altbach, Robert O. Berdahl, and Patricia J. Gumport (Eds.), American Higher Education in the Twenty-First Century: Social, Political, and Economic Challenges (2nd edition). Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

The historical dynamics of curriculum reform in American higher education, discussed from an organizational perspective.

Revised: August 15, 2016