Quality Assurance in Education

Institutionalisation in a newly created private university

Peter Hodson Michael Connolly Said Younes
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To cite this document:

Peter Hodson Michael Connolly Said Younes, (2008),"Institutionalisation in a newly created private
university", Quality Assurance in Education, Vol. 16 Iss 2 pp. 141 - 147
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Institutionalisation
Institutionalisation in a newly in a private
created private university university
Peter Hodson and Michael Connolly
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University of Glamorgan, Pontypridd, UK, and 141

Said Younes
University of Kalamoon, Syria Received 1 July 2007
Accepted January 2008

Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the introduction of a quality assurance system in
a new, private university in Syria, and considers the extent to which the theoretical model based on
institutional theory and isomorphism is reflected in practice.
Design/methodology/approach – A five year longitudinal study which reviews the design,
implementation and embedding of a quality assurance system was undertaken. The approach reflects
on the prevailing practice and adoption of quality assurance systems at key points throughout the
existence of the institution.
Findings – The findings show that for any organisation or institution which is creating a new
model, which is outside the conventional or prevailing models of the sector, there will be multiple
challenges.
Research limitations/implications – The research was conducted during the many visits made
throughout the period, but the changes witnessed to key staff at Kalamoon throughout the five years
has impacted on the institutionalisation model, and generated both increased and reduced isomorphic
responses from staff at various points in the study.
Practical implications – The paper is a useful source of information to any new organisation
creating policies and processes which they hope will quickly become embedded within the
organisational culture, especially in countries where strong state leadership has been the historical
norm.
Originality/value – The paper reports on the first private university in Kalamoon, Syria, and the
strategies adopted to deliver the quality assurance agenda. In addition, it uses the theoretical approach
of institutionalization in a novel manner.
Keywords Quality assurance, Private education, Universities, Syria
Paper type General review

Current emphasis on quality assurance procedures promotes compliance and

accountability. This is true both in the UK and elsewhere and institutions
themselves need to adapt their policies, procedures and culture if higher education
systems are to respond positively to the challenges and demands arising from the
accountability agenda. Drawing upon experience of the creation of a new, private
university in Syria, and utilising institutional theory, the article argues that delivering
compliance across the whole institution requires institutionalisation of it policies and Quality Assurance in Education
Vol. 16 No. 2, 2008
vision. Compliance will need to be balanced by an emphasis on encouraging innovation pp. 141-147
and self-improvement on the part of individual members of staff and reflects on the role q Emerald Group Publishing Limited
0968-4883
of isomorphism in achieving institutionalisation. DOI 10.1108/09684880810868420
 QAE Introduction
16,2 At the turn of the millennium, Syria embarked on a new phase of higher education, and
created a framework in which private universities could be established. The first
private university created as a result of this process was the University of Kalamoon,
established in 2002. From the outset Kalamoon sought to create a university of
international standing; so they recognised the need to adopt and practice many of the
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142 procedures and values of the international community. Hence, they elected to seek the
support of a UK university in helping their institution secure parity of esteem and gain
wide recognition of its standards. The UK was identified by Kalamoon because of its
reputation in operating robust academic systems within the framework of the Quality
Assurance Agency’s Code of Practice.
The University of Glamorgan reached agreement in 2002 with Kalamoon to provide
advice on academic policy, curriculum development and quality assurance systems.
This was a major challenge for both parties. Kalamoon had to be created from nothing,
and clearly those academic members of staff who were recruited to lead the initial work
retained many of the values of the existing local higher education practices prevailing
within Syria. But there was a genuine desire and eagerness to recognise the
opportunities afforded by the rigour and flexibility of the UK model. Glamorgan
provided the academic support and constant “testing” of Kalamoon’s proposed
developments, benchmarking their concepts and outputs against prevailing European
practices.
At the stage that Kalamoon became an operating entity with students enrolled, one
of the many major challenges was moving the now enlarged Kalamoon academic
community towards the full adoption and implementation of their new policies. Indeed
the policies were still evolving, so achieving compliance was more of an aspiration or
ambition than a reality. As the university “matured”, and the staff base stabilised, it
increasingly became clear to the authors that the issues surrounding policy
implementation were of rising importance. Hence, in parallel with the Kalamoon
activity, a case study opportunity arose, based on reflective practice, to consider policy
implementation in such a scenario.
This paper initially reviews the theoretical framework – institutionalization –
within which such a case study may be located and considered. It then reflects on the
extent to which the Kalamoon experience provides a development model for other
institutions being created in similar contexts.

Institutional theory
This paper draws upon institutional theory to provide a theoretical framework (Meyer
and Rowan, 1977; Scott, 1995).Scott and Meyer (1983, p. 149) suggest that
organisational environments “. . .are characterised by the elaboration of rules and
requirements to which individual organisations must conform if they are to receive
support and legitimacy”. These positions build on the classic work of Meyer and
Rowan (1977) that recognises that organisations within an organisational field may
conform to rules and requirements, not necessarily for reasons of efficiency, but rather
to increase their legitimacy, resources and survival capabilities. Indeed, DiMaggio and
Powell (1991, pp. 63-4) expand upon this position by suggesting:
Structural change in organizations seems less and less driven by competition or by the need
for efficiency. Instead, we contend, bureaucratization and other forms of organizational
 change occur as a result of the processes that make organizations more similar without Institutionalisation
making them more efficient. . . Highly structured organizational fields provide a context in
which individual efforts to deal rationally with uncertainty and constraint often leads, in the in a private
aggregate, to homogeneity in structure, culture and output. university
Thus organisations may reach “optimal” institutional norms without being efficient,
simply by minimising the risk of organisational death (Baum and Oliver, 1991).
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Kondra and Hinings support this position, suggesting “conformity to norm is 143
facilitated by normative, coercive and mimetic processes” (as reported by DiMaggio
and Powell (1983)) and “compliance may be for pragmatic reasons or due to paradigm
stasis” (as reported by Oliver (1991)) (Kondra and Hinings, 1998, p. 744).
Gates (1997) describes these three processes that create institutional isomorphism
thus:
.
coercive isomorphism relates to the use of power and sanctions to bring about
organizational conformity and is theorized as surfacing around problems of
legitimacy;
.
mimetic isomorphism is associated with actions and plans where organizations
copy others in their field and is posited as arising from conditions of
environmental uncertainty;
.
normative isomorphism is tied to professional standards in the organizational
field that pressure organizations to conform (p.256).

This approach has focused on conformance and constraint. It has also been recognised
that an additional aspect to institutional theory could embrace the role of active agency
and economic considerations to explain the nature of changing institutional norms and
how they might be accommodated (Greenwood and Hinings, 1996). This is an
important aspect, since clear changes do occur in institutions, and convergence on a
norm is not uniformly the case.
Having established that institutions interact with the environment within which
organisations operate, and noting the need to accommodate change, Scott (1994) places
emphasis on institutions being sets of cultural rules which give collective meaning and
value to activities which operate at multiple levels and which integrate organisations
into larger schemes. Scott (1994, p. 70) also suggests that “. . .institutions operate at a
variety of levels and their elements can be embodied in and carried by cultures . . . ”.
Meyer and Rowan (1977) suggested that formal structures play a symbolic role and
can legitimise approaches such as bureaucratic coordination to organisational
operations. It is recognised that such symbolic displays may over-simplify the
complexities of the work process, especially in professionally-oriented organisations
where complex and non-routine problems have to be confronted by practitioners.
Dirsmith et al. (2000, p.158) report:
Meyer and Rowan reasoned that organizations tend to avoid massive dysfunction by
decoupling their simplistic, bureaucratic, symbolic displays from the relatively complex
social processes that they actually follow in performing their work, so that the organization
gains societal support and performs its mission.
They also present the option that rather than being de-coupled, the practitioner’s actual
performance of professional work is loosely coupled with the formal bureaucratic
coordination displayed for symbolic purposes. However, Orton and Weick (1990, p. 204)
 QAE refer to loose-coupling as a “. . . situation where symbolic displays and work processes
16,2 still preserve their own identities, and yet are also influenced by one another”,
supporting a dialectic interpretation that emphasised each word in the term
loosely-coupled.
An interpretation of institutionalism may suggest that “. . .the bureaucratic form of
coordination not only has an instrumental role in performing simple tasks but also has
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144 a symbolic role in demonstrating rational practice in response to institutional pressure”

(Dirsmith et al., 2000, p. 519). This is particularly helpful in considering the relationship
between Kalamoon and the Syrian Government’s Ministry of Education, and the way
in which Kalamoon reacted to Glamorgan’s advice and policy inputs. Kalamoon was
simply responding to the recognition that the more practices are taken for granted
within the organisation, the more they may be used symbolically to demonstrate their
fitness.
One of the arguments advanced for institutional theory is that organizations of
particular types (universities for example) in different localities are more similar than
one might expect. However, clearly organisations can, and do, deviate from
institutional norms, otherwise change may never occur. Further institutional norms
may themselves shift as a result, for example, of governmental pressures or may be
subject to interpretation. Notions of quality in universities have altered over time and
been subject to debate. Further institutional pressures for practices that secure
legitimacy may generate tensions for some Higher Education Institutions because of
their financial and economic position. Thus, we see norms not as rigid standards, but
as being flexible and allowing different practices. Indeed, diversity is the sine qua non
of change, and institutional theory has to embrace such diversity and to accept that the
environment and the institutional norms generating legitimacy which derive from it
are dynamic and that change will occur over time. Kondra and Hinings (1998, p. 750-1)
promote the notion of organisations having “a high fit and low fit to the institutional
norms”, suggesting that some aspects of performance are related to conformity to
norms, but exceptional performances above and below the norm stem from low fit. In
addition the demands of legitimacy may occur from different sources. Thus, strong
local or national cultures may have to be accommodated.
This is reinforced by Scott (1995, pp. 131-2), who notes that the performance process
is not solely one way:
Organisations are affected, even penetrated, by their environments, but they are also capable
of responding to these influence attempts creatively and strategically. Organisations are
creatures of their institutional environments, but most modern organisations are constituted
as active players, not passive pawns.

Kalamoon experiences
To offer appropriate support and advice at various stages in the development of
Kalamoon has required careful consideration and reflection on their progress to
achieving institutionalisation of their processes. In an environment where staff
changes were frequent, and part-time academic contracts were common, the extent to
which isomorphism influenced the ability of Kalamoon to adopt new practices was
recognised as problematic from the very early stages. Initially the majority of academic
staff engaged in the teaching activity were strongly influenced by their previous
 experiences within the state sector, where formalities prevailed and innovation and Institutionalisation
change were not strongly evidenced or necessarily encouraged. Nonetheless the in a private
commitment from the most senior management of Kalamoon to achieve their vision of
esteem and international recognition was clearly demonstrated on many occasions. university
Thus, for example, several quality assurance workshops, supported by Glamorgan,
were delivered to a wide range of staff and academics including those from other
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institutions in the region. 145

Whilst all staff expressed support for the ideas and concepts promoted, the routine
practices did not always provide the evidence that wide-scale adoption had been fully
achieved. For example, the principle of cross-checking assessments and marking was
understood, but not widely practised. Another example, particularly in the early years of
Kalamoon’s existence, relates to the validation of new programme designs. Although
validations were recognised as good practice, such events were not always evidenced by
an auditable trail that would reflect robust and defendable processes. It was however
possible, right from the start of Kalamoon’s operational period when teaching
commenced, to identify the good practice of full, documented module design of
comparable standard and detail to most UK institutions. The evidence by 2004 suggested
that quality assurance policies were emerging and more uniform processes were being
adopted, but various depths of understanding existed. In that context it is possible to
identify Scott’s (1994) argument that institutions operate at a variety of levels. Equally the
view of Dirsmith et al. (2000) on the bureaucratic display for symbolic purposes may be
one dimension in trying to explain why some of the activities were seen as key by the top
management, but not fully absorbed as activities by the broader academic community.
Thus different staff, at different levels of appointment and with varying lengths of
service ranging from the maximum of five years to as little as a week, would display a
wide range of understanding and commitment to the policies and quality assurance
agenda. The rationale and desire to follow a quality assurance agenda was operating at
a variety of levels ranging from compliance set in the context of normative
isomorphism to a clear commitment to the institutional vision of international
recognition. Yet, during the last quality assurance workshops help in conjunction with
Glamorgan in 2006, there was a widespread understanding by the majority of
participants of the key quality assurance issues. Even more heartening there was
recognition of the role of quality enhancement based on self-critical review amongst the
staff, with strong evidence of a desire to promote such values.
In analysing the emerging levels of dysfunction, it was recognised that the support
offered through Glamorgan needed to adopt an additional strand. Of course the
continued activity of developing robust policy and engaging the Kalamoon academic
community through further quality assurance workshops was continued. But a strategy
to gain wider adoption through all the three processes of isomorphism detailed by Gates
(1997) was commenced. Glamorgan staff joined staff at Kalamoon in teaching some of
the provision with an attempt to create a mimetic isomorphism approach. The senior
management at Kalamoon were keen to raise the participation level of academics
following the best practice guidelines, in an attempt to create normative isomorphism
conditions. But of course it must be recognised that there is a prevailing culture in the
region, and coercive isomorphism remains a powerful dimension. It was certainly
recognised that whenever new senior management arrived at Kalamoon and added their
 QAE weight to pursuing a UK-like quality assurance approach, that further step changes in
16,2 staff participation and adoption of policies were achieved.
Three years after Kalamoon became operational, it is evident that enormous
progress has been achieved. The wide acceptance of the values and mission that
Kalamoon set out to establish is heartening. But of course there remains a residual gap
between policy creation and policy implementation. There is evidence in their systems
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146 of both top-down and bottom-up policy creation, which is not surprising when there
were strands of policy vacuum in the early stages. But, it is equally evident that the
desire to deviate from the institutional norms of the universities in the Syrian state
sector is widely recognised and that a dynamic and efficient university model is being
created.

Conclusion
For any organisation or institution which is creating a new model, which is outside the
conventional or prevailing models of the sector, there will be multiple challenges. In
establishing policy and operational procedures to deliver the new agenda, the potential
for slow adoption is present, and will vary depending upon the cultural context. The
Kalamoon experience demonstrates what can be achieved when the issues facing the
development and adoption of best practice are analysed in a rigorous manner, and
strategies to promote isomorphism are actively pursued.

References
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Administrative Science Quarterly, Vol. 36, pp. 187-218.
DiMaggio, P.J. and Powell, W.W. (1983), “The iron cage revisited: institutional isomorphism and
collective rationality in organizational fields”, American Sociological Review, Vol. 48,
pp. 147-60.
DiMaggio, P.J. and Powell, W.W. (1991), The New Institutionalism in Organisational Analysis,
Chicago University Press, Chicago, IL.
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displays in a GAO context”, Organization Studies, Vol. 21 No. 3, pp. 515-37.
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theory”, Organization Studies, Vol. 19 No. 5, pp. 743-67.
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Scott, W.R. (1994), “Institutional analysis: variance and process theory approaches”, in Scott,
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 Scott, W.R. and Meyer, J.W. (1983), “The organisation of societal sectors”, in Meyer, J.W. and Institutionalisation
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CA, pp. 129-53. in a private
university
Further reading
Scott, W.R. and Meyer, J.W. (1994), Institutional Environments and Organizations, Sage,
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Thousand Oaks, CA. 147

Corresponding author
Peter Hodson can be contacted at: pjhodson@glam.ac.uk

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