1 23
Higher EducationThe International Journal of HigherEducation Research ISSN 0018-1560 High EducDOI 10.1007/s10734-015-9894-6
The iconography of universities asinstitutional narratives
Gili S. Drori, Giuseppe Delmestri &Achim Oberg
1 23
Your article is protected by copyright and all
rights are held exclusively by Springer Science
+Business Media Dordrecht. This e-offprint
is for personal use only and shall not be self-
archived in electronic repositories. If you wish
to self-archive your article, please use the
accepted manuscript version for posting on
your own website. You may further deposit
the accepted manuscript version in any
repository, provided it is only made publicly
available 12 months after official publication
or later and provided acknowledgement is
given to the original source of publication
and a link is inserted to the published article
on Springer's website. The link must be
accompanied by the following text: "The final
publication is available at link.springer.com”.
The iconography of universities as institutionalnarratives
Gili S. Drori1 • Giuseppe Delmestri2 • Achim Oberg2
� Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2015
Abstract The coming of ‘‘brand society’’ and the onset of mediatization spur universities
to strategize their visual identity and pay particular attention to their icon. Resulting from
branding initiatives, university icons are visual self-representations and material-cum-
symbolic forms of organizational identity. In this work we ask: What identity narratives are
conveyed through the organizational iconography of universities? How do narratives
combine in this iconography? Drawing upon content analysis of Internet front-page icons
of 826 universities from 22 countries, we identify four identity narratives: guild-like classic
narrative, professional scientific narrative, localized narrative, and organizational narrative.
Second, we show that such visual self-representations of university identity appear as
products of broad historical themes. Last, we consider the relations between the four
visualized identity narratives, showing evidence for iconographic sedimentation between
the compatible guild-like classical, professional, and local-national narratives, along with
iconographic abrasion of the logic of managed organization on the former. We discuss such
findings in relation to the historical studies of the institution of the university.
Keywords University � Organizational iconography � Identity narratives � World society �Institutionalism
& Gili S. [email protected]
Giuseppe [email protected]
Achim [email protected]
1 The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Mount Scopus, 91905 Jerusalem, Israel
2 WU Vienna University of Economics and Business, Welthandelsplatz 1, 1020 Vienna, Austria
123
High EducDOI 10.1007/s10734-015-9894-6
Author's personal copy
Introduction
‘[The logo] represents your mission, who you are. We are not Coca Cola; we are not
trying to sell products on a shelf’ (Director of Business Development of a US
University, field notes, 24.4.09)
‘The new logo will probably completely disappear. The logo now turns traditional
again, because part of the institution is still identified with it. During the Senate
meeting professors said: ‘We are not that new thing’ and they voted to return to the
traditional seal’ (External Web-Designer involved in the rebranding process of an
Italian University, field notes, 29.5.09)
‘Academic freedom is stretched here to its limits. This annoys me. Because what is
the connection between the color of your business card and your academic freedom?’
(Spokesperson of an Israeli University, field notes, 24.1.11)
These quotes highlight current debates in universities, as in other organizations, about
what best captures the identity of the organization. Fed by the onset of ‘‘brand society’’
and the related frenzy of marketing and brand management (Kornberger 2009), uni-
versities debate how to define their identity (meaning, the ‘‘who are we?’’ question) and
wrestle with categorical judgments (meaning, the ‘‘who we are not!’’ assertions). Given
the millennium-long history of the institution of the university and its worldwide spread,
the field of universities offers a particularly rich array of material-cum-symbolic prac-
tices: from building architecture to academic gowns to publicity material. In this insti-
tutionally plural setting of higher education, identity narratives of universities, namely
their identity claims of character, attributes, and distinctiveness (see, Albert and Whetten
1985; Glynn 2008), are constructed out of different textual and material vestiges. Until
very recently, research on identity work in universities focused on the textual expres-
sions. Attention was paid in particular to how identity gets narrated in the mission
statements of universities (Davies and Glaister 1996; Scott 2006; Morphew and Hartley
2006; Kosmutzky 2012) or in such textual material as brochures (Osman 2008) and on-
line promotional material (Cohen et al. 2014). The recent aesthetic turn in organization
studies toward the visual (Gioia et al. 2013; Meyer et al. 2013; Gioia et al. 2014) spurs
an interest in iconography and branding, also of universities. This study joins this recent
research stream on the branding of universities, yet whereas others highlight the politics
or resource-based processes that affect branding of universities (particularly, Wæraas and
Solbakk 2009; Aula and Tienari 2011), this paper brings an interpretive approach to the
study of the iconography of universities. Specifically, a narrative institutional approach is
applied (see, Czarniawska 1997: 5–7) that draws on several interpretive devices to ex-
tract the visualized identity of universities. The guiding research questions are: What
identity narratives are conveyed through the organizational iconography of universities?
How are these narratives precipitated into universities icons? Are they used exclusively
in their ‘‘pure’’ form or are they combine, and how, in iconographic self-representation?
In search for visualized identity narratives of the institution of the university, the icons of
826 universities in 22 countries from 5 continents are analyzed. The analysis yields four
identity narratives of universities—guild-like classic narrative, professional scientific
narrative, localized narrative, and organizational narrative.
This study engages with, and contributes to, current scholarship on the history of the
university, as well as to the study of visual artifacts of organizational identity. First, by
High Educ
123
Author's personal copy
retelling the history of the institution of the university with such conceptual tools as
‘‘narrative’’ and ‘‘embeddedness’’, this paper offers an institutional perspective to the
often-functionalist conversation about the sequential evolution of the university (Gibbons
et al. 1994; Nowotny et al. 2001). The common functionalist interpretation, of a history
punctuated by the two academic revolutions which mark three distinct academic missions
(Gibbons et al. 1994; Nowotny et al. 2001), is that relations of sponsorship, power, and
dominance between the university and its social environment altered the functionality of
the university’s operations over time (e.g., Kerr 1963/2001; Ruegg 1996). While the pe-
riodization of the history of the institution of the university is widely acknowledged, noting
dramatic transformations in the early nineteenth century and then again in the mid-
twentieth century, this linear historiography is complemented here by adding a different
and more powerful theoretical lens for understanding the variety of visual identities dis-
played by contemporary universities. It is argued that the transformation of the university is
governed primarily by a change in the narrative of the university’s social role. As a result,
more than it being an evolution of the functional mission of the university where one
functional form replaced the other, this paper argues that the transformation of the uni-
versity is a process of construction of identity narratives, which configures a historical,
relational, and interpretive model of what the university is at different historic epochs. It is
because this historical change resembles a sedimentation process that we find today a high
variety of institutional identities among universities.
Second, by focusing the study of organizational identity on visual artifacts, this study
explores the materialized and aesthetic codes of university identity, joining a recent
resurgence among organization scholars in accepting visual material as a discursive
device (Meyer et al. 2013). Thus, this study adds a hermeneutics investigation of content
and aesthetics of icons to text-based analysis of university identity (Osman 2008; Kos-
mutzky 2012). Within the emergent field of studying university branding, where attention
is given to the marketing strategies (Bruzel 2007; Chapleo 2011) or to the social process
of university branding (Wæraas and Solbakk 2009; Aula and Tienari 2011), the content
of the brand image is analyzed and the identity narratives conveyed in the icons are
extracted.
This paper is organized to convey an institutionalist argument about the iconographic
and historical narratives of university identity. Following the summary of the commonly
told history of the university as marked by three historic eras and their respective
functional missions, this history is retold here from an institutionalist perspective,
highlighting the processes of institutionalization and subsequent diffusion and focusing
on narratives and their sociocultural context. This interpretation is based on the branch of
the new institutionalist literature on universities that mostly engaged with this institution,
i.e., world polity, a perspective focusing on the theorization, diffusion and translation of
global models, templates, and organizational forms (Strang and Meyer 1993; Delmestri
and Wezel 2011; Drori et al. 2014). Then, it is shown that narratives can be traced in the
iconography of organizations, thus suggesting that the history of the institution of the
university can be recognized in the icons of universities. After describing the data and
method of our collection of university iconography, the text proceeds to detail four
distinct narratives conveyed through the visual cues. In addition, these four narratives
that govern the identity of the university are described in how they are socially situated,
or rooted in specific historic eras and national contexts. The conclusion comments on the
institutional character of, and on the place of organizational identity in, the change to
universities.
High Educ
123
Author's personal copy
Academic revolutions and academic missions
The founding of the University of Bologna in 1,088 is noted as the creation of a university
as a new organizational form, namely an institution of advanced studies that has a formal
charter, which today is commonly referred to as accreditation, to award academic degrees.
These two features, which came to define a university, were rapidly replicated in the
subsequent founding of universities: until the mid-nineteenth century, universities were
founded at a low yet constant rate (Riddle 1993; Ruegg 1996; Wissema 2009); since the
late nineteenth century, there is a dramatic exponential growth in the number of univer-
sities and of tertiary education students (Schofer and Meyer 2005), with a current estimate
of 12,000 universities and colleges worldwide.
This millennial continuity was punctuated by two academic revolutions, thus dividing the
long history into three stages. The first stage, of the medieval university, is marked by the
dominance of religion on the content and form of scholarship and by academe’s guild-like
professional autonomy. In the early nineteenth century came the first academic revolution,
which added to the primary mission of teaching also the second academic mission—of
research that follows the scientific method of experimentation, disclosure, and rationality.
This ‘‘Humboldtian university’’ model, which marries research and teaching missions, was
carried far forward by the nineteenth century institutionalization of the nation-state; in the
USA in particular, ‘‘land grant universities’’ were all formatted after the Humboldt model;
and the subsequent popularity of this university model worldwide benefitted from German
and then American hegemonies. This university model was stably intact until after World
War II, when a second academic revolution occurred, bringing about the ‘‘entrepreneurial-
‘‘(Clark 1998) or ‘‘third generation-’’ (Wissema 2009) university. This new model of the
university has the added, third mission of innovation, relevancy, and engagement with the
market. Archetypical universities in this category are Stanford University and MIT in the
USA and Cambridge in the UK, each creating strong bonds with industry and intensely
commercializing academic knowledge (Bok 2003; Willmott 2003; Rhoten and Powell 2010).
In summary, this historiography of the university sets the life course of the university as a
three-stage process that is punctuated by two academic revolutions.
This historiography of the university assumes that the periods mark changes in the
functional relevancy of the university and its products. Specifically, the uses of the uni-
versity and of knowledge are noted as evolving in response to civilizational changes (Kerr
1963/2001), funding pressures (Press and Washburn 2000), and capitalist demands (Deem
2001; Slaughter and Rhoades 2004). Knowledge evolved to fit the evolving mode of
production, therefore changing from ‘‘mode 1’’ (academic knowledge) to ‘‘mode 2’’
(production-relevant knowledge; Gibbons et al. 1994; Nowotny et al. 2001).
From this perspective, university evolution reflects organizational survival strategies: uni-
versities throughout time, and in particular universities of current era knowledge-economy, are set
to fulfill the expected production-related functions of education, research, and innovation (Mazza
et al. 2008). However, this focus on the production functions of universities narrows the scope of
this rich history. First, these function-driven explanations neglect to convincingly explain the
variety of academic arrangements throughout an increasingly global knowledge-economy (cross-
national variation). Second, they overlook the role of cultural and identity construction processes,
which provide meaning to the historical transition. The intention of this research is to advance an
institutionalist account of the historic changes to the university, highlighting matters of organi-
zational identity and describing the master narratives that depict the various identities of the
university over time.
High Educ
123
Author's personal copy
University change as an institutional process
In spite of the many ways in which a university came to be conceived (see, Stevens et al.
2008), there is no argument about the specifics of the historic path of the university. Also
widely acknowledged is the recent change of universities into practice-oriented, en-
trepreneurial, marketized, commercialized, and often profit-seeking organizations (Bok
2003; Tuchman 2009; Rhoten and Powell 2010). Nevertheless, an institutionalist account
of such transformation sees it within its sociocultural, rather than economic, context and
interprets the change as resulting from embeddedness in different sociocultural environ-
ments. Therefore, it is argued, the institutionalist vocabulary of legitimacy, rationalization,
and isomorphism offers an appropriate, additional and, it is argued, more focused lens for
describing this historic transformation of the university.
With that, the founding of the University of Bologna is the starting point of a long
institutionalization process, during which this new organizational form that is devoted to
advanced studies grew in numbers to create an institutional field of an estimated 12,000
universities worldwide. Once institutionalized, ‘‘the main features of the university as an
institution are persistence and expansion’’ (Mazza et al. 2008: 1). First, the university has
continued to exist, even if with changes to character and scope of operations, through a
millennium of social changes. It also exists worldwide, thus persistently transcending
multiple cultural boundaries. In particular since 1900, there has been an exponential rate of
expansion in both the number of universities and the number of university students
worldwide (Meyer et al. 2007). Second, the university has expanded both its reach (more
countries and people) and its scope (more sectors or topics). And while such structuration
has also been accompanied by a change in substantive emphasis (see, Drori and Moon
2006; Frank and Gabler 2006), the commitment of the university to education has been
continuously preserved, further confirming the stature of the university as an authoritative
social institution. And, most importantly, both features of persistence and expansion are
carried forth by the rationalized, professionalized, and agentic features of universities
(Krucken and Meier 2006; Frank and Meyer 2007), which match with the normative fabric
of world society at the current era (Meyer et al. 2006). Till today, however, different
institutionalized master narratives inscribed in laws, norms, and culture coexist in telling
the university as an institution devoted to either learning and education rooted in academic
self-governance, Enlightenment, and science for the benefit of the professions and/or the
nation-state, or managerialized and marketized organizational proficiency.
Seeing its current authority and reaches, the dominant features of the global field of
universities are the seemingly contradictory patterns of isomorphism and heterogeneity. On
the one hand, universities worldwide share a common set of features, such as organization
along disciplinary demarcations and a normative commitment to knowledge. On the other
hand, expansion was accompanied by much differentiation, resulting in heterogeneity in
the field of higher education (see, Kavanagh 2009). In this differentiated field, the global
prestigious universities consolidate an emerging global model (EGM) of the twenty-first
century research university (Mohrmana et al. 2008; also, Nelson and Wei 2012). This
modeling produces intense isomorphism, where many ‘‘middle range’’ universities enact
the features of a top global university. This enactment is what drives intense governance
reforms in universities worldwide, identified by a surge in strategic planning (Ramirez
2010; Ramirez and Christensen 2013) and branding (Engwall 2008; Wæraas and Solbakk
2009; Hearn 2010), with intense ‘‘soft law’’, or normative, pressures applied by the in-
creasingly professional field of university administration (Cusso 2008; Kretek et al. 2013).
High Educ
123
Author's personal copy
In summary, throughout its long life, the social institution of the university draws an
inspiration from its sociocultural context. Seen through the lenses of world polity insti-
tutionalism, universities embody a universalized, civilizational meaning that has always
gone far beyond the particulars of their economic or political functions (Meyer et al. 2007).
The social role assigned to universities—as a site for teaching and research and lately as
delivering social import—is at the roots of its continuous legitimacy. This institutional
character of the university is, therefore, anchored in an institutionalized narrative of the
social role of the university. The next section, more specifically, highlights how univer-
sities narrate their particular identity by drawing on the master narratives that are ac-
ceptable for the field of higher education.
Visualizing institutional narratives
Institutional narratives are symbolic orders that make sense of social context and events
and, with that, also construct identities. Such narratives, or discursive constructs in general,
are simultaneously material and symbolic; most notably, Friedland and Alford describe
institutional logics as ‘‘material practices and symbolic constructions’’ (1991: 248). While
identity narratives are conveyed through, and take a materialized form—indeed, a variety
of forms—text-based expressions of institutional identity have been privileged until re-
cently. Lately, calls have been made that language ‘‘goes beyond spoken words to include
objects, behaviors, practices, images, symbols, etc.—all of which are called ‘signs’’’
(Brannen 2004: 595). In the field of higher education, too, analyses of identity narratives
privileged text-based expressions namely mission statements and promotion material (see,
Davies and Glaister 1996; Scott 2006; Morphew and Hartley 2006; Osman 2008;
Kosmutski 2012; Cohen et al. 2014). Yet, following recent proposals to focus on visual
artifacts of organizations to capture meanings or institutional narratives (see, Meyer et al.
2013), this study intends to seek the identity narrative of universities in visual material
calling attention to organizational iconography as capturing, expressing, and materializing
meanings about organizational identity and social role. More specifically, drawing on
legitimate master narratives, universities narrate their particular identity also in visual
terms. The use of these institutionalized narratives crystallizes the university’s identity: the
icon, resulting from the use or assemblage of one or more narratives, is a claim for the
three main identity elements of character, attributes, and distinctiveness (see, Albert and
Whetten 1985: 265; Glynn 2008: 420–421). And the identity narrative gets an embodied,
materialized form in the visual artifact of the university icon (see, Drori et al. 2013). In
summary, it is claimed that the icons of universities capture and materialize meanings
about the identity and social role of this long-standing social institution.
Data and method
To launch a cross-national and historical review of visual expressions of the institutional
narratives that have been and are governing the university, this research studies the icons of
universities from different countries worldwide. The value-neutral term ‘‘icon’’ refers to
the visual identity mark of universities, thus allowing other commonly used and institu-
tionally specific terms such as ‘‘logo,’’ ‘‘emblem,’’ ‘‘brand’’ or ‘‘seal’’ to remain substantive
descriptors of the icons. The following section describes the selection criteria for countries,
High Educ
123
Author's personal copy
the information compiled about the universities’ history, the nature of the visual material
compiled for each university, and the coding strategy of the content or narrative expressed
in the visual material.
Data gathering required choices regarding the sample of universities and the specific
icon that self-represents the university. Sample-wise, the research team compiled infor-
mation on all universities in 21 countries and on a sample of American universities. In
total, our data covers 826 universities in 22 countries1 in five continents. The countries
sampled represent a variety of world regions and of political and economic conditions,
while also covering a range of cultural histories. The list of existing universities in each
country was generated from the BrainTrack, which is an on-line directory of over 10,000
universities and colleges in 190 countries and a gateway to the on-line material about these
higher education institutions.
For this set of 826 universities, the research team complied a database of the icons of
each university in the current era and these icons serve the unit of analysis for our sub-
sequent analyses. Recent branding initiatives have proliferated university icons, resulting
in multiple visual self-representations, whereas icons such as seals and emblems have
traditionally been used, and still most commonly used, as the sole symbolic self-repre-
sentation of universities (for instance in letterheads, diplomas, Webpages, and merchan-
dise), an increasing number of universities currently add non-official icons, such as word
marks, marketing logos, favicons (short for ‘‘favorite icon’’ typically displayed in the
browser’s address bar) or sports logos. Therefore, for purposes of standardization across
our many universities, the research team draws the icons from the university’s primary
Webpage, and, in case of multiple displays, this research focuses on the most prominent.
By requiring this threshold of commitment of the university to its representative icon, the
analysis is confined to the most visible, self-chosen, single icon for each university.
Following the compilation of iconographic data for all 826 universities, content analysis
is executed, using with both inductive and deductive, heuristic and systemic, content
analysis methods. The content analysis is primarily aimed at extracting identity narratives.
For this goal, the content analysis comprised of two steps. Initially, the research team
extracted an exhaustive list of substantive and design features: the motto (also its language)
and pictorial references, as well as shape of seal, figurative style, color and alike. Then, the
team conducted cluster analysis, grouping the many substantive and design elements into a
final set of categories, which are deduced as the identity narratives in the field of higher
education.
Following this construction of the main identity narratives in the field, the team
members proceeded to categorize the 826 icons into the categories of identity narratives.
For such assignment of category, it was relied on impressionist coding by a group of ten
coders of diverse albeit European background. Through an automated randomizing pro-
cess, at least five coders classified each icon. Final decision as for classification of an icon
into an identity category was done through ratio of inter-coder agreement: if 70 % of
coders selected the same category for an icon, we classify this icon into a single category.
If this was not possible, we computed the votes for combinations of two categories. If one
of these combinations got more agreement by coders, we classified the logo as belonging to
the intersection of two categories. If this was not possible, we proceeded by computing the
votes for combinations of three categories. Again, if one of the combinations got a
1 The countries are Australia, Bolivia, Chile, Cuba, Germany, Egypt, France, Hong Kong, Israel, Italy,Jamaica, Jordan, Kenya, Luxemburg, Mongolia, Panama, Portugal, South Africa, South Korea, Sweden,USA, and Vietnam.
High Educ
123
Author's personal copy
majority, the logo was classified as belonging to the intersection of three categories. The
remaining logos were left without a classification.
Overall, the study proceeds in two steps: an initial survey of identity narratives of the
field of global higher education (step 1), followed by recognition of the identity narrative
of each university among the 826 according to these categories of identity narratives (step
2). In the following sections, the categories of identity narratives extracted from the
iconography of universities worldwide are described and then, the propensity of each
identity narrative across the sample from the global field of higher education is shown.
Findings: iconographic narratives of university identity
Different identity narratives are conveyed through the representative icons of universities.
Based on the substantive content (images and motto) and the style (design elements and
format), four clusters emerged empirically to deliver four distinct narratives of identity that
are expressed in university icons. These narratives were consistent with—indeed, local
reflections of—the institutionalized master narratives discussed above. These four narra-
tives were named by the research team (1) guild-like classic narrative, (2) professional
scientific narrative, (3) localized narrative, and (4) organizational narrative. The first three
can be considered as traditional, while the last one, the organizational, represents the
actually dominant narrative on the role of the university. Table 1 summarizes these four
narratives and provides illustrations of the related images. University icons distributed in a
peculiar way across the four narratives. The organizational narrative is the one that more
clearly stands apart from the others. Only 104 icons (about 12.6 %) are classified as both
organizational and traditional, while 375 have a clear-cut organizational assignment. On
the contrary, the traditional narratives not only have a 23 % overlapping with the orga-
nizational narrative, but also are also highly overlapping among themselves, as displayed
in Fig. 1. The following sections introduce the four narratives as well as examples of
‘‘overlapping’’ icons designed drawing on more narratives at the same time (see Table 2).
The guild-like classic narrative
This institutional narrative conceives of the university as a community of scholars and
defines universities as ‘‘associations of students and teachers with collective legal rights
usually guaranteed by charters issued by princes, prelates, or the towns in which they were
located,’’ much like the status of other Medieval guilds (Colish 1997: 267) or as a
‘‘Republic of Letters’’ which is managed by academics. Krause (1996: 7) documented that
the academic profession ‘‘continues to have some guild characteristics even today’’ with
‘‘guild power’’, i.e., the capacity to be independent from intrusions from sovereigns or
capitalist states, varying by country. This narrative focuses on erudition and on vocational
ethics related to the profession of teaching and scholarship. Initially (meaning in Medieval
universities and also in religious universities since), erudition was described in religious,
even monastic, terms: study was primarily of religious scriptures and of philosophical texts
and subject to religious oversight.
The religious tone for erudition is conveyed in visual images of cloaked men, often
reverentially posed in church setting; this is evident in the icon of the University of
Heidelberg in Germany (Table 1). Alternatively, religious-based erudition is conveyed in
referencing religious, or holy, books. Also in ‘‘overlapping’’ icons religious symbols are
referred to, as, for example, the icon of Bar Ilan University in Israel, in which a Torah
scroll becomes a component of a highly abstracted microscope. Or, as in the icon of the
High Educ
123
Author's personal copy
Table
1C
ateg
ori
zin
gU
niv
ersi
tyic
ons
asin
stit
uti
on
aln
arra
tiv
es
Guil
d-L
ike
clas
sic
nar
rati
ve
Pro
fess
ional
scie
nti
fic
nar
rati
ve
Loca
lize
dnar
rati
ve
Org
aniz
atio
nal
nar
rati
ve
Iden
tity
con
tex
to
fth
eU
niv
ersi
ty
Lea
rnin
g,
along
wit
hre
ver
ence
toth
ech
arte
r-g
ran
tin
gau
tho
rity
En
ligh
ten
men
tan
der
ud
itio
n;
scie
nce
,te
chn
olo
gy
,an
dp
rofe
ssio
nal
pra
ctic
e
Nat
ion
al,
reg
ion
al,
or
oth
erw
ise
loca
lid
enti
fica
tio
nB
ran
ded
,m
ark
etiz
ed,
and
un
iver
sali
zed
imag
ery
Ex
emp
lar
Univ
ersi
tyIc
on
ogra
ph
y
Univ
ersi
tyof
Hei
del
ber
g(1
38
6,
Ger
man
y)
Has
hem
ite
Univ
ersi
ty(1
992,
Jord
an)
Min
ia
Univ
ersi
ty(1
976,
Egypt)
Ho
ng
Ko
ng
Po
lyte
chn
icU
niv
ersi
ty(1
97
0,
Ch
ina-
HK
)
Co
mm
on
sty
list
icfe
atu
res
Mo
stly
seal
des
ign
Mo
stly
seal
or
shie
ldd
esig
nC
om
mo
nly
seal
or
shie
ldd
esig
nC
om
mo
nly
ab
ord
erle
ssd
esig
nan
dg
rap
hic
ally
abst
ract
Lit
eral
rend
erin
go
fim
ages
Sy
mbo
lso
fen
lig
hte
nm
ent
Oft
enco
mb
ine
sym
bo
lso
fb
oth
the
pro
fess
ion
and
of
the
nat
ion
or
loca
tion
Con
tain
asi
mp
lifi
edg
rap
hic
des
ign
or
am
od
ern
-fo
nt
acro
ny
mC
om
mo
nly
incl
ud
en
ame
of
un
iver
sity
Sy
mbo
lso
fth
esc
ien
ces
and
pro
fess
ion
Nu
mb
ero
funiv
ersi
ties
a1
47
38
47
37
5
23
23
75
aU
niq
uel
yper
cate
gory
;th
resh
old
isin
ter-
coder
agre
emen
tra
tio
above
70
%
High Educ
123
Author's personal copy
Universidades Lusiada, where Christ’s cross, together with a spherical astrolabe, is part of
an abstracted logo surrounded by a seal (Table II). Later, from the eighteenth century an
on, the guild-like classic narrative was transformed to take a secular and bureaucratic tone,
even if still declaring erudition and education as the core of professional life. This narrative
highlights professional competence, administrative independence, and career track of
academics.
The professional scientific narrative
The professional scientific narrative reflects the Humboldtian reinterpretation of the role of
the university. Enlightenment and the transformation of guilds into professions based on
science—no more on traded knowledge—lays at the center of this narrative. In most other
universities, this narrative is conveyed through visual references to the so-called tools of
the trade, i.e., equipment of study and research, such as laboratory instruments (most
frequently a beaker), production tools (most frequently a cog wheel) or other scientific
devices (such as a measuring tool, microscope, or telescope). Many such references are
abstract, marked by visual images to both a book (mostly open) and a source of light (star,
sunrise, or rays of light), thus abstractly referencing the Age of Enlightenment and its
ideals of reason, rationality and (secular) education. This is illustrated in, for example, the
icon of the Hashemite University in Jordan, where images of a book, a cogwheel and a
beaker are combined (Table 1). In other universities, for example, in the icon of the Tanta
University, an open book and light emanating from it are combined—in addition to a
highly localized narrative (Table 2). In addition to these symbolic images, many of the
icons conveying this professional scientific narrative include textual, or worded, references
to truth, science, or knowledge. For example, Harvard University’s icon is marked with
Veritas (truth, in Latin) written across three open books. Such text-based references in
university icons further reinforce the relation of the university with the ideals of enlight-
ened erudition: that education and science draw on the moral and ethical foundations of the
profession. Other abstract references to erudition are made through images of classical
allusion to knowledge. For example, the icon of Rice University in the USA includes the
image of three owls, referring to the Athenian owls that symbolize wisdom (see, Table 2).
For some universities, this iconographic association is central to their identity: in response
Fig. 1 Distribution of Traditional University icons across narratives and their overlapping
High Educ
123
Author's personal copy
to a recent rebranding campaign in an Israeli leading university, where a suggestion was
made to simplify the already abstract visual reference to the torch of erudition, one aca-
demic official said ‘‘if we take this off, we might as well ‘‘close shop.’’ We are not a
university without it.’’
Table 2 University Icons as Combinations of Institutional Narratives
* Number of universities that combine two narratives.
Professional ScientificNarrative
Localized Narrative
Organizational Narrative
Guild-Like Classic Narrative
Rice University (1912, US)
University of Nairobi
(1970, Kenya)
Universidades Lusiada
(1986, Portugal)Number of universities* 56 37 18Professional ScientificNarrative
Tanta University(1962, Egypt)
University of Suwon
(1977, S. Korea)Number of universities* 15 37Localized Narrative
Fachhochschule Brandenburg
(1992, Germany)Number of universities* 24* Number of universities that combine two narratives.
Professional ScientificNarrative
Localized Narrative
Organizational Narrative
Guild-Like Classic Narrative
Rice University (1912, US)
University of Nairobi
(1970, Kenya)
Universidades Lusiada
(1986, Portugal)Number of universities* 56 37 18Professional ScientificNarrative
Tanta University(1962, Egypt)
University of Suwon
(1977, S. Korea)Number of universities* 15 37Localized Narrative
Fachhochschule Brandenburg
(1992, Germany)Number of universities* 24
a Number of universities that combine two narratives
High Educ
123
Author's personal copy
The localized narrative
This institutional narrative describes the university in reference to particular location or
heritage. It is most clearly evident in national or state universities, where the university is
born out of political initiative, sponsored by public funds, and often operates as a state
agency. But it is also characteristic of the strengthening of the nation-state in the nineteenth
century and the challenge it posed on universities, requiring them to serve it and ‘‘deliver’’
the needed state bureaucrats and professionals (Krause 1996). Still, this narrative also
influences private universities, particularly those that were founded after the mid-nine-
teenth century. Embedding the university within the context of the country in which it is
located, its people and its government, icons of universities in this category incorporate
elements from national, regional, or otherwise local indication.
Specifically, icons of universities in this category use four types of symbols: referencing
national insignia, national heroes, territory, or specific location. First and most directly
conveying the localized narrative are those university icons that include the national flag.
This is the most common feature of bi-national universities, where icons combine the flags
of both nations, and other icons incorporate elements of the national flag. Second, uni-
versity icons reference local context by including images of national leaders (other than
royal figures). For example, the icon of Minia University in Egypt displays the image of the
legendary fourteenth century BCE Queen Nefertiti (Table 1). And, icons of universities
from countries that have a royal family (in particular the icons of royal institutions) often
include royal insignia, such as the crests of the royal family or an image of a thrown. For
example, the icon of the Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden includes the image of a
thrown and a wreath encircling its acronym as KTH. In addition, many universities include
ethnic insignia; for example, the icon of Kenya’s University of Nairobi, while set in a regal
style, includes East African artifacts along with heraldic attributes typical of the guild-like
classical narrative (Table 2). Third, similarly direct references to local context are made in
icons that integrate a map. For example, the icon of Tanta University in Egypt displays a
map of the Nile’s Delta along with references to Enlightenment (Table 2).
Last, icons of universities in this category also include the visual markings of a location,
thus relating the university to a particular geo-political context or heritage. For example,
the icon of Petra University in Jordan includes a rendering of the widely recognized facade
of the Treasury building in the ancient city of Petra; and the icon of L’Universite Paul
Cezanne Aix-Marseille in France includes a rendition of the natural landscape (a graphic
rendition of mountain, river and a small sail).
Text-based additions to the icons also enhance the embedding of the university in
relation to local legacies. For example, several American universities in this category
include as their motto the passage ‘‘In God We Trust,’’ which is also the motto of the USA
and quoted on the American currency.
The organization narrative
This institutional narrative includes the largest number of icons (375 cases distinctly in this
category) and thus is the largest category of visualized university identity. This identity
narrative coveys a modern definition of the university as a formal, regulated, and managed
institution. This narrative is governed by a managerialized ideology, according to which
university administration and operations are disassociated from the particulars of the sector
of higher education or of the local-national context. This narrative is highly rationalized,
High Educ
123
Author's personal copy
standardized, and professionalized; it is also marketized, commercialized, and medialized.
With that, the iconographic style representing this organization narrative of the university
is a logo, or a medialized and proprietary representation, thus drawing on current themes of
‘‘brand society’’ (Kornberger 2009) and of reputation management.
Since the organization narrative is expressed visually in a logofied brand image, uni-
versity icons in this category include a non-descriptive, graphic, and simple (if not sim-
plistic) image. Such images are typically a graphic symbol, acronym that represents the
university’s name, or a combination of both. First, university icons in this category contain
a simplified graphic design; an example of such an icon is that of Hong Kong Polytechnic
University (Table 1). While these icons are often described by the universities in sub-
stantive term—HKPU describing its graphic icon as a rendition of the letters ‘‘P’’ and ‘‘U’’
from its name—the icons do not disclose much of this meaning without the added account.
A second sub-category of the organization narrative includes acronyms of the university
names. Commonly, such acronyms are written in modern font, with no serifs, strokes, or
embellishments added to the typeface. An example of such icons is that of Technische
Universitat Dortmund in Germany, which is marked by ‘‘TU’’ and the extended university
name. A third sub-category combines both modernist elements, bringing together both an
acronym and a graphic image. This is exemplified in the icon of the University of Suwon in
South Korea, a complex icon that brings together a gold-color U-tubed image (interpretable
as an open book and therefore also referencing also Enlightenment) as the background of
the university’s USW acronym (Table 2). Graphically, one style dominates this category:
almost all icons that include a graphic image display dynamic and circular elements (as for
instance Bolivia’s Universidad Privada Boliviana).
Overall, icons of universities in this category are modernist in style: they include a
borderless design and are graphically abstract. Also, since these icons are so stylistically
sparse, they do not include a motto.2 Still, their style does not render them void of inherent
relational or contextual meaning; rather, they convey a meaning that is universalistic,
general, and abstract, rather than one that is context-specific. In this way, these university
icons resemble the iconographic self-representations of many other organizations that are
not academic. However, this blurring of distinctiveness as academic, professional, national,
or otherwise local organizations is not a mere stylistic choice. On the contrary: among the
icons in this study, numerous icons are found that are modernist in style (abstract, not
ornate) yet include graphic references to a local or to the profession. For example, the icon
of the University of Kwazulu-Natal in South Africa includes abstract references to a
warrior’s shield and is decorated with primary colors that are associated with Africa; the
icon of Fachhochschule Brandenburg represents a highly stylized building (Table 2).
Therefore, the avoidance of substantive references to professionalized or localized mo-
tives, even if in modernist aesthetic style, is a particular sort of identity self-representa-
tion—one that bridges between universities and all other organizations. The PR and
marketing officer of an Israeli university illustrated this by making the claim that the
justification for rebranding, and with that shedding the iconographic references to erudition
in her university’s icon, was that the university ‘‘must march with the spirit of these times,
look modern, and act like any other globally relevant, modern, normal organization.’’ For
others, this exact flattening of the distinction of their university is a source of outrage; as
our opening quote highlights by comparing the university’s icon to the Coca Cola brand,
2 Even if most of these universities do not have their motto marked on the icon, often they still have amessage conveyed in a ‘‘tag line’’ that they commonly include in their media communication.
High Educ
123
Author's personal copy
the possibility of iconographic resemblance to organizations outside its category is a
degradation of academia and a call for alarm.
Summary
The four institutional narratives that are visualized in the iconography of universities
convey particular identities of the university: they each situate the university within a
unique context and thus define the university’s social place in a unique manner. The guild-
like classic narrative portrays the university as an institution that derives its legitimacy
from its very age-old existence; the academic profession should be granted the autonomy
to persist in this civilizing project. The professional scientific narrative conceives of the
university in vocational and educational terms: the university is a training site for certain
professions, while also serving as a site for professional scholars, and it is a place for
individuals to live the values of Enlightenment; with that, the university’s social role
highlights the importance of erudition and research. The localized narrative conceives of
the university as a particularistic, often national, institution that carries local pride and
exhibits local uniqueness. And, the organization narrative conceives of the university in
universalistic, thus generalized terms, and is therefore embedded in the era of ‘‘brand
society’’ (Kornberger 2009).
Discussion: iconographic narratives and historic change
The goal of this study is to explore the history of the university through an institutionalist
prism, anchoring such institutionalist analysis in the visual artifacts of the university. The
analysis of the icons of universities advances the questions—What is a university and how
is its identity represented? This study identifies four distinct institutional narratives that
define the university and its social role: guild-like classic, professional scientific, localized,
and organizational. This study also finds that while such narratives have their roots in
specific eras throughout the lifespan of the institution of the university, all four narratives
are available at the current era. All four narratives, however, distinct they are conceptually,
exist contemporaneously within the global field of universities. Relying on such findings
allows the retelling of the history of the university: not as a linear evolution of functional
capacity and social mission, but rather as an institutional process of embedding universities
within various social contexts from which they draw a variety of signals to be reassembled
into an identity narrative. Over the millennium that passed since the founding of the first
university, the emergence of several institutional narratives created a varied backdrop to
the branding campaigns and related strategic identity exercises that many universities
currently undergo.
How do such institutional narratives relate to each other? Our evidence for the current
heterogeneity of institutional narratives in the field of universities nowadays highlights
patterns of layering, or sedimentation, of narratives: Like Kuhn’s theory of paradigmatic
changes, narratives that define the social role of the university emerge from a time- and
place-specific social context, they rise to dominate the discourse, and then come to be
overshadowed by a newly emerging narrative; rarely do they disappear completely,3 but
rather they morph and change, get translated and sediment, and then co-exist.
3 For example, the nineteenth century tale of the French model of the university (with its strict statecontrol), while eclipsed by the Humboldtian model, still shaped a uniquely French university system(Musselin 2004).
High Educ
123
Author's personal copy
Such patterns of layering and sedimentation of institutional narratives are evident in the
iconography of universities. As noted earlier, many university icons include visual cue of
the professional scientific narrative (book) with a visual cue of the local-national narrative
(territorial map or flag elements). Such combinations, or layers, of institutional narratives
are, however, patterned in a way that suggests a unique dynamic to the relationship
between institutional narratives: some narratives mesh and interact, while others stand
apart. Specifically, many of the icons that convey the national narrative also include
markings of the profession. For example, the icons of both Egyptian Tanta University and
Minia University combine the professional marking of an open book with national themes
of territory (map of the Nile’s Delta) and of legendary leaders. However, icons that convey
the organization narrative do not include national markers and rarely, and if so than also
rather abstractly, incorporate markings of the professional narrative. And while a few
abstract icons that convey the organization narrative may also be taken to convey a
professional or national,4 they highlight the distance created with such stylistic abstraction:
the images require deep interpretation to possibly deliver this identification. And with this
distance comes an aloofness of the organization narrative, setting it apart, rather than
combining with, the professional and localized narratives. In this sense, while the pro-
fessional and localized narratives seem to be commensurable, the organization narrative
represents rapture in the institutional mythology of universities.
What inspires the university to construct new institutional narratives of its identity and
social role? Obviously, the social context of the institution of the university changed over
the course of a thousand years. And, at each era, particular ideas and ideals took hold not
only of human imagination but also molding economic, technological, and political ar-
rangements. The turning points of western, now global, civilization leave their mark on
university iconography, by infusing their narrative with messages about religious erudition,
Enlightenment, and the rise of the nation-state. The recent rise of ‘‘brand society’’ is carried
forward by globalization and its universalistic themes, by professionalization and ra-
tionalization that also penetrate university administration, by marketization and commer-
cialization of knowledge that is also fueled by assumptions about fierce global competition,
and by mediatization which opens new venue for legitimacy strategies (Drori et al. 2013).
These forces come together to drive the university to change from being a ‘‘Republic of
Scholars’’ into ‘‘an organization’’ (Krucken and Meier 2006). And, these trends are ac-
centuated by managerialism, where increasingly the operational control of universities is
moved out of the hands of the professionals (academics) into the hands of professional
managers (Krause 1996).
The limited scope of our empirical study opens a door for most interesting future
research. First, university icons are but a single in a series of material identity artifacts in
organizations; others, also ripe for interpretive analysis, are mission statements (Kosmutski
2012), publicity material (Osman 2008), ceremonies, formal dress, and similar insignia.
Some, more than others, also offer an opportunity for further developing techniques for
content analysis of visual material. Second, our cross-national survey of icons and other
data, from universities in 22 countries worldwide, provides a platform for comprehensive
comparative research. Such survey research could, and should, be supplemented with case
analyses that would inform us of the social process that constructs iconographic narratives.
Exploratory investigations, which relied on interviews with participants in branding dis-
cussions and archival searches through meeting protocols and university regulation, show
4 For example, the icon of the University of Tokyo is reminiscent of a Ginkgo leaf thus referring to its Asiancontext.
High Educ
123
Author's personal copy
this to be a fruitful venue for understanding the contested process of identity construction
in organizations. It is in this junction between social process and materialized artifacts that
institutional narratives get constructed, explicated, and made public.
Acknowledgments This study is generously supported by two grants awarded to Gili S. Drori, from theIsrael Science Foundation (Grant No. 812/12) and the European Commission’s Marie Curie Career Inte-gration Grant (PF7-People-2012 322041).
References
Albert, S., & Whetten, D. A. (1985). Organizational identity. In L. L. Cummings & B. M. Staw (Eds.),Research in organizational behavior (Vol. 7, pp. 263–295). Greenwich, CT: JAI Press.
Aula, H.-M., & Tienari, J. (2011). Becoming ‘world-class’? Reputation-building in a university merger.Critical perspectives on international business, 7(1), 7–29.
Bok, D. (2003). Universities in the marketplace: The commercialization of higher education. New Jersy:Princeton University Press.
Brannen, M. Y. (2004). When Mickey loses face: Recontextualization, semantic fit, and the semiotics offoreignness. Academy of Management Review, 29(4), 593–616.
Bruzel, D. L. (2007). Universities sell their brand. Journal of Product and Brand Management, 16(2),152–153.
Chapleo, C. (2011). Exploring rationales for branding a university: Should we be seeking to measurebranding in UK universities? Journal of Brand Management, 18(6), 411–422.
Clark, B. R. (1998). Creating entrepreneurial universities: Organizational pathways of transformation. NewYork: Pergamon IAU Press.
Cohen, A., Yemini, M., & Sadeh, E. (2014). Web-based analysis of internationalization in Israeli teachingcolleges. Journal of Studies in International Education, 18(1), 23–44.
Colish, M. L. (1997). Medieval foundations of the western intellectual tradition 400–1400. New Haven:Yale University Press.
Cusso, R. (2008). Reforming the European university: Social change in the shadow of the educational modeland ‘quality’. In J. Resnki (Ed.), The production of educational knowledge in the global era (pp.215–227). Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.
Czarniawska, B. (1997). Narrating the organization: Dramas of institutional identity. Chicago: Universityof Chicago Press.
Davies, S. W., & Glaister, K. W. (1996). Spurs to higher things? Mission statements of UK universities.Higher Education Quarterly, 50(4), 261–294.
Deem, R. (2001). Globalisation, new managerialism, academic capitalism and entrepreneurialism in uni-versities: Is the local dimension still important? Comparative Education, 37(1), 7–20.
Delmestri, G., & Wezel, F. C. (2011). Breaking the wave: The contested legitimation of an alien organi-zational form. Journal of International Business Studies, 42(6), 828–852.
Drori, G. S., Delmestri, G., & Oberg, A (2013). Branding the university: Relational strategy of identityconstruction in a competitive field. In L. Engwall & P. Scott (Eds.), Trust in Higher EducationInstitutions (pp. 134–147). London: Portland Press.
Drori, G. S., & Hyeyoung, M. (2006). The changing nature of tertiary education: Neo-institutional per-spective onto cross-national trends in disciplinary enrollment, 1965–1995. In P. D. Baker & A.W. Wiseman (Eds.), The impact of comparative education research on institutional theory (pp.163–192). Elsevier Science.
Drori, G. S., Hollerer, M., & Walgenbach, P. (Eds.). (2014). The glocalization of organization and man-agement: Issues, dimensions, and themes. In Global themes and local variations in organization andmanagement: Perspectives on glocalization (pp. 1–24). London: Routledge.
Engwall, L. (2008). Minerva and the media: Universities protecting and promoting themselves. In C. Mazza,P. Quattrone & A. Riccaboni (Eds.) European universities in transition: Issues, models and causes (pp.32–48).
Frank, D. J., & Gabler, J. (2006). Reconstructing the University: Worldwide Shifts in academia in the 20thcentury. California: Stanford University Press.
Frank, D. J., & Meyer, J. W. (2007). University expansion and the knowledge society. Theory and Society,36(4), 287–311.
High Educ
123
Author's personal copy
Gibbons, M., Limoges, C., Nowotny, H., Schwartzman, S., Scott, P., & Trow, M. (1994). The new pro-duction of knowledge: The dynamics of science and research in contemporary societies. New York:Sage.
Gioia, D. A., Hamilton, A. L., & Patvardhan, S. D. (2014). Image is everything: Reflections on thedominance of image in modern organizational life. Research in Organizational Behavior, 34, 129–154.
Gioia, D. A., Patvardhan, S. D., Hamilton, A. L., & Corley, K. G. (2013). Organizational identity formationand change. The Academy of Management Annals, 7(1), 123–193.
Glynn, M. A. (2008). Beyond constraint: How institutions enable identities. In R. Greenwood, C. Oliver, R.Suddaby & K. Sahlin (Eds.), The sage handbook of organizational institutionalism (pp. 413–430). NewYork: Sage.
Hearn, A. (2010). ‘Through the looking glass’: The promotional university 2.0. In M. Aronczyk & D.Powers (Eds.), Blowing up the brand: Critical perspectives on promotional culture (pp. 197–219). NewYork: Peter Lang.
Kavanagh, D. (2009). Institutional heterogeneity and change: The university as fool. Organization, 15(4),575–595.
Kerr, C. (1963/2001). The uses of the university (5th ed.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Kornberger, M. (2009). The brand society: How brands transform management and lifestyle.. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.Kosmutski, A. (2012). Between mission and market position: Empirical findings on mission statements of
German higher education institutions. Tertiary Education and Management, 18(1), 57–77.Krause, E. A. (1996). Death of the guilds, professions, states, and the advance of capitalism, 1930 to the
Present. New Haven: Yale University Press.Kretek, P. M., Dragsic, Z., & Kehm, B. M. (2013). Transformation of university governance: On the role of
university board members. Higher Education, 65(1), 39–58.Krucken, G., & Meier, F. (2006). Turning the university into an organizational actor. In G. S. Drori, J.
W. Meyer, & H. Hwang (Eds.), Globalization and organization: World society and organizationalchange (pp. 241–257). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Mazza, C., Quattrone, P., & Riccaboni, A. (2008). Introduction: Found in translation? The persistence of theuniversity as an institution. In Mazza (Ed.), European Universities in transition: Issues, models andcauses (pp. 241–257). Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
Meyer, J. W., Drori, G. S., & Hwang, H. (2006). World society and the organizational actor. In G. S. Drori,J. W. Meyer, & H. Hwang (Eds.), Globalization and organization: World society and organizationalchange (pp. 25–49). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Meyer, R. E., Hollerer, M. A., Jancsary, D., & Van Leeuwen, T. (2013). The visual dimension in organizing,organization, and organization research: Core ideas, current developments, and promising avenues. TheAcademy of Management Annals, 7(1), 487–553.
Meyer, J. W., Ramirez, F. O., Frank, D. J., & Schofer, E. (2007). Higher education as an institution. InPatricia Gumport (Ed.), The sociology of higher education: contributions and their contexts (pp.25–49). Maryland: Johns Hopkins University.
Mohrmana, K., Mab, W., & Baker, D. (2008). The research university in transition: The emerging globalmodel. Higher Education Policy, 21(1), 5–27.
Morphew, C. C., & Hartley, M. (2006). Mission statements: A thematic analysis of rhetoric across insti-tutional type. The Journal of Higher Education, 77(3), 456–471.
Musselin, C. (2004). The Long March of French Universities. Routledge and Falmer.Nelson, A. R & Wei, I. P. (Eds.). (2012). The global university: Past, present, and future perspectives.
Palgrave Macmillan.Nowotny, H., Scott, P., & Gibbons, M. (2001) Rethinking Science: Knowledge in an Age of Uncertainty.
Polity.Osman, H. (2008). Re-branding academic institutions with corporate advertising: A genre perspective.
Discourse and Communication, 2, 57–77.Press, E., & Washburn, J. (2000). The kept university. Atlantic Monthly, 285(3), 39–54.Ramirez, F. O. (2010). Accounting for excellence: Transforming universities into organizational actors. In
V. Rust, L. Portnoi, & S. Bagely (Eds.), Higher education, policy, and the global competition phe-nomenon (pp. 54–75). New York: Pelgrave.
Ramirez, F. O., & Christensen, T. (2013). The formalization of the university: Rules, roots, and routes.Higher Education, 65(4), 695–708.
Rhoten, D. R., & Powell, W. W. (2010). Public research universities: From land grant to federal grant topatent grant institutions. In D. Rhoten, C. Calhoun, & S. Bagely (Eds.), Knowledge matters (pp.54–75). New York: Columbia University Press.
High Educ
123
Author's personal copy
Riddle, P. (1993). Political authority and university formation in Europe, 1200–1800. Sociological Per-spectives, 36(1), 45–62.
Ruegg, W. (1996). A history of the university in Europe (Vol. I-III). Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress.
Schofer, E., & Meyer, J. W. (2005). The world-wide expansion of higher education in the twentieth century.American Sociological Review, 70(6), 898–920.
Scott, J. C. (2006). The mission of the university: Medieval to postmodern transformations. The Journal ofHigher Education, 77(1), 1–39.
Slaughter, S., & Rhoades, G. (2004). Academic capitalism and the new economy. Maryland: Johns HopkinsUniversity Press.
Stevens, M. L., Armstrong, E. A., & Arum, R. (2008). Sieve, incubator, temple, hub: Empirical andtheoretical advances in the sociology of higher education. Annual Review of Sociology, 34, 127–151.
Strang, D., & Meyer, J. W. (1993). Institutional conditions for diffusion. Theory and Society, 22(4),487–511.
Tuchman, G. (2009). Wannabe U: Inside the corporate university. Chicago: Chicago University Press.Wæraas, A., & Solbakk, M. N. (2009). Defining the essence of a university: Lessons from higher education
branding. Higher Education, 57, 449–462.Willmott, H. (2003). Commercializing higher education in the UK: The state, industry and peer review.
Studies in Higher Education, 28(2), 129–141.Willmott, H. (2010). Creating ‘value’ beyond the point of production: Branding, financialization and market
capitalization. Organization, 17(5), 517–542.Wissema, J. G. (2009). Towards the third generation university: Managing the university in transition.
Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
High Educ
123
Author's personal copy
Top Related