Institutional work of joint programmes and their quality co-creation

I now proceed to discuss the main elements and findings related to the institutional work of JPs and their quality as summarized in the Figure 3. I outline activities that were instrumental in the co-creation and maintenance of JPs and their quality practice which is viewed in the study as the institution.

The institutional complexity discussed earlier shaped the meaning of JP quality and its practice and had implications for the activities taking place. The findings indicate that the IW of JPs and their quality practice co-creation and maintenance is facilitated by inter-organizational cooperation, consultation with key HE stakeholders, and best practices of JP providers. It involves a combination of the following activities:

• policy work emanating from the political agenda and goals of HE reforms;

• newly established structures such as networks, associations, a register composed of mutually recognized actors, e.g. other HEIs offering JPs or

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• inter-organizational arrangements of JP providers;

• daily work of JP staff;

• development, dissemination and promotion of normative frameworks such as quality guidelines and handbooks via public means and professional training. Much of this work was grounded in ‘best practices’, and organizational praxis of JP providers.

Figure 3. Institutional work of joint programmes and their quality practice¹⁶ Institutional Work

Due to the multi-layered nature of the phenomenon, the praxis of JP quality is relational. It is an interaction of processes, events and activities taking place in policy (macro-level), among and within HEIs (meso-level), and through daily work

16Constructs and elements in bold text are found/feature in the study

Outcome:

Facilitated by inter-organizational cooperation, consultations with key HE stakeholders, and best practice of JP providers

Agency:

Varied national HE characteristics, regulatory environment and quality discourse Academic culture and practices of HEIs

Multiple levels of working and organizational differences, etc.

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(micro-level). A recursive relationship among these activities is observed (see also Table V-11). At all of these levels activities are found to reinforce each other. Such findings expand theoretical explanations of the relationships involved in the process of IW. One of the key theoretical explanations is about a recursive relationship between agency and institutions (cf. Sminia, 2011; Zietsma and Lawrence, 2010; Smets, Morris and Greenwood, 2012, etc.). The findings of this study also indicate recursivity which exists among various activities taking place at different levels.

In the policy realm, inter-organizational collaboration and consultation with key HE stakeholders was used to mobilize political, regulatory, and financial support for the institutionalization of JP practice. Policy was employed to confer a status of excellence to JP programmes, especially via the EM label. In order to meet the political agenda objectives, macro-level actors created a vision and profile of JPs, attributed certain roles and characteristics and set standards for its quality practice.

The latter was facilitated and carried out by networks and associations, the intermediary organizations representing academic communities, students, quality agencies, and other HE stakeholders. In addition to generic standards and guidelines for QA in the EHEA (the ESG), JP-specific QA guidelines and manuals were developed. These outlined underpinning values, principles, expectations and good practice related to JPs and their quality assurance.

All main processes of institutionalization (Scott, 2008b) are observed in these activities. Regulatory pressures took place at a European and national level in the form of agreements and recommendations for the legal basis of JPs. Normative orientations were prescribed by assigning a status of high profile programmes and, in case of EM, a status of excellence; promoting certain values such as innovation, value-added, and jointness; adopting standards and by proposing a particular approach for quality assurance. Various elements of JPs and the implementation processes of these high quality programmes were grounded in the best practices of JP providers (HEIs), their cultural-cognitive framework of organizing.

A strategic-projective agency oriented towards the future has been driving activities taking place at a macro-level. As it has been observed, the projective agency of collective actors has a potential to both increase and decrease the institutional complexity. The complexity increases when an emerging institution is envisioned by actors to address multiple goals, and the practice is undertaken in highly varied institutional environments across national borders. The complexity may be reduced when actors work collaboratively with key stakeholders in the field

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to define and design a common set of elements, characteristics, and standards of a new practice. Steps are taken to secure the support for the emerging institution by promoting its underpinning values, common principles, and standards, and to engage in advocacy and monitoring activities of a new practice.

At the meso-level, JP developments are undertaken by HEIs via inter-organizational arrangements among JP providers set to raise quality standards through joint actions in collaborative engagements as well as to meet their interests.

Quality practice of the selected case features:

• common JP characteristics and the dominant approach to QA practice of JPs as fitness-for-purpose promoted at a macro-level and some ‘best practices’ taking place at other JP providers (meso-level);

• certain variations from the normative and cultural-cognitive ‘architecture’

of JP quality practice promoted at macro-meso levels.

These findings support IW theorization that an institution (here JP and its quality practice) is created and sustained via actions (here inter-organizational arrangements and daily work) that are both defined and shaped by elements of institutional complexity, as well as driven by organizational and individual actors’

interests and goals. The case exemplifies how organizations involved in JP, through their daily work and using criteria also ‘defined’ by other social actors (here - EM structures, professional networks, etc.) develop a quality programme featuring JP characteristics and some of the best practices as well as its own specificities.

This case analysis thus also explicates a situated nature of JP quality praxis. The consortium has created its own flexible system of QA in which JP staff are less concerned with detailed descriptions of processes and compilation of those in quality compendiums, rather focusing their attention and energy on changes and improvements that they deem necessary. The agency and reflexivity of SOLO staff is embodied in their chosen approach to programme quality and practices in how the consortium works to alleviate the bureaucratic burden associated with QA processes and, at the same time, to act upon their interests, based on their understanding and interpretation of quality. As the case suggests, on the ground level, in everyday work situations the staff focus on their individual tasks and roles.

These are primarily linked with daily activities and core aspects of the programme such as curriculum and research, teaching and learning, administrative and organizational infrastructure, and student support services. Quality-driven activities

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in SOLO cover various aspects of the programme (e.g., content-related collaboration, team teaching, programme administration and student support) and include deliberate communication and information sharing practices between and among staff and students. These activities are transformative aspects of quality theorized by Harvey and Green (1993) where the focus is on students’ learning and development, their educational gains and career success.

The praxis of quality in this particular setting brings about innovation, programme enhancement, shared understanding among staff as well as increased professionalism (academic, managerial, and administrative). The latter was important to deal with the prescribed evaluation activities (both internal and external). The professionalization that is necessary to secure legitimacy is one of the unintended consequences of quality work also observed in other HE studies (c.f. Stensaker, 2007; 2008). Stensaker argued about the formalisation of quality-related work in the form of written routines and scripts and the people assigned to specific tasks. This formalisation of quality-related work is becoming an accepted and normal part of everyday work.

Practical-evaluative and projective-strategic agency (Emirbayer and Mische, 1998, in section 3.1.1) determined by staff reflexivity and intentional changes and improvements of academic/organizational practices are found to dominate the quality praxis at meso-micro level. The findings show that all partners involved in JP to some extent were pioneering with the EM programme at their institutions.

The collaborative (joint) nature of the programme needed a new approach, some new services and procedures, and additional HR resources. Some of these new developments serve as disruptive elements of the existing academic cultures and practices of PIs. For instance, exchange and sharing of information about teaching and research, team-teaching practices facilitated ‘opening up’ of curriculum matters from a more individualistic approach, teaching from one’s own research agenda, to a more transparent and collectively owned curricula; provision of fast, efficient, and ‘user-friendly’ student support services are treated as a necessary element addressing student needs and contributing to the satisfaction of student experience, and their academic success. Other developments and forms of quality assurance and its practices in SOLO, such as centralized course evaluation tools are an example of taken-for-granted, institutionalized practices that do not specifically address JP quality needs. These have been criticized by micro-level actors as inadequate for JP quality monitoring; nonetheless, they are an established routine in the universities involved. Here, an iterative, habitual type of agency may be

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observed. This type of agency is largely unreflexive (Emirbayer and Mische, 1998) and is unlikely to lead to quality transformation and enhancement.

JPs and their quality practice may be referred to as a rather ‘young’ institution. The co-creation and maintenance of this practice are the main outcomes of the multi-actor agency in the institutional work that has been observed. Organizational adaptations are taking place at meso-micro levels. As argued above, there are signs that this new institution of JPs and their quality is disrupting some academic and organizational practices of universities involved (e.g., curriculum and student support related matters). Since that was not the focus of this study, it therefore needs further investigation.