32. Organizational Education
Symposium
Uncertainty and Responsibility: Exploring a Manifold Relationship in Higher Education Organizations
Chair: Julia Elven (Marburg University)
Discussant: Susanne Maria Weber (Marburg University)
Reducing uncertainty has always been one of the key achievements of organizations: They define goals and the ways to achieve them, they allocate resources and align the practices of their members with these objectives. They achieve this not least through a structure of roles and responsibilities that detaches their functioning from individuals and their peculiarities. In this way, organizations use responsibilities to create stability and predictability into an uncertain future. Of course, these organizational responsibilities are not necessarily congruent with the actual (causal) responsibility (Hart, 1968) of individual actors for certain organizational actions. Against the backdrop of an increasing complexity of social and technical systems in modernity, the very idea of attributing individual responsibility may seem outdated and even pre-modern (Besio, 2014). But nonetheless, for organizations there is unfolding room for practical negotiations on the attribution of effects to individual actors that can be made productive in limiting uncertainty – especially under the concept of “decision” (Brunsson, 1990).
However, uncertainty seems to have grown to a challenging level: in times of multiple, overlapping crises of global proportions, uncertainty is no longer just a theoretical prerequisite of social practice in general, but an actual condition of everyday life that is perceptible to individual as well as organizational actors. Higher Education organizations are particularly affected by this development insofar as they find themselves in an ambivalent situation: On the one hand, orientation towards the future is inherent to them as a task and responsibility; on the other hand, they are particularly dependent on the reliability of future developments in connection with their concrete operations.
As a symposium in network 32 at ECER 2024, we would like to explore the manifold relationships between uncertainty and responsibility in higher education organizations and their effects on organizational education.
Generally, we believe that at least three forms of this relationship between uncertainty and responsibility in higher education organizations can be distinguished, that shall be explored in the symposium:
- How does increasing societal uncertainty lead to an increased invocation of responsibility within higher education organizations? As uncertainty increases in times of multiple crises, many traditional management strategies that are based on comprehensible cause-and-effect relationships and the ability to plan for the future prove futile. Attributing responsibility, on the other hand, may not ensure more successful management, but it does potentially simplify the handling of uncertainty and the processing of failure. Conversely, the ‘moralization of organization’ that we can witness occasionally could be discussed as a problematic signal: „morality does not solve the complex problems facing organizations; however, moral communication can become a temporarily adequate manner of dealing with uncertainty.“ (Besio, 2014, p. 309)
- How can responsibility at the same time be maintained in the face of increasing uncertainty within organizations? For organizations, this not only increases uncertainty in their environment, but also within themselves: Particularly with regard to their personnel, changing value patterns lead to a changed meaning of work and changed work structures and forms. At the same time, new technical possibilities (e.g. AI) are changing the content as well as the formal organization of work. This tends to be associated with insecure conditions with changed opportunities for the attribution of responsibility.
- How comes responsibility into play for breaking up structures and creating uncertainty in order to bring about change in higher education organizations? From an organizational education perspective, however, the question also arises how higher education organizations attribute the responsibility to deliberately create uncertainty - i.e. to question established structures, to consider possible changes, to envision alternative futures. After all, this is an important basis for organizations to maintain an ongoing ability to learn.
ReferencesBesio, C. (2014). Uncertainty and attribution of personal responsibility in organizations. Soziale Systeme, 19(2), 307–326. https://doi.org/10.1515/sosys-2014-0207
Brunsson, N. (1990). Deciding for responsibility and legitimation: Alternative interpretations of organizational decision-making. Accounting, Organizations and Society, 15(1), 47–59. https://doi.org/10.1016/0361-3682(90)90012-J
Hart, H. L. A. (1968). Punishment and responsibility: essays in the philosophy of law. Oxford: Clarendon press.
Presentations of the Symposium
Understanding the Call for Decolonization as a Conduit for Creating Responsible and Responsive Higher Education Institutions in South Africa
Marcina Singh (University of Johannesburg)
The call for a decolonized higher education in 2015 (#RhodesMustFall) flagged that all was not well in higher education in South Africa. Student voices that initially petitioned for the eradication of the Western episteme in the curriculum soon included a call to decolonize university structures, including human resources and institutional processes, and culminated with a call to end university fees (#FeesMustFall). For many South African students, if they are lucky enough to make it to university, the start of a better life is enshrouded in debt, institutional alienation and exclusion, language challenges, and cultural intolerance. In this context, is it the responsibility of higher education to address historical legacies? This paper posits three responses. First, universities ought to be a public good. As such, it needs to be responsive to the needs of society, in terms of skills development, but also the values of citizenship. Second, as extensions of the democratic political economy, universities have the responsibility to mirror the values of this political disposition in their policies and practices, and third, given the political transition, higher education spaces are third spaces/ borderlands and are powerful in their ability to effect change. It is pivotal that universities use this power to demand transformation – for students and for society. The discussion contributes to the expanding discourse of decolonization in the Global South, as well as the debates around the role of higher education in the context of crises and neoliberalism.
References:
Anzaldúa, G. (1987). Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. San Francisco, CA: Aunt Lute Books.
Gutiérrez, K.D. (2008). ‘Developing a sociocritical literacy in the third space’. Reading Research Quarterly 43, 148–164, https://doi.org/10.1598/RRQ.43.2.3
Jansen, J., & Walters, C. (2018). The Recent Crisis in South African Universities. International Higher Education, (96), 23–24
Jansen, J. & Walters, C. (2022). The Decolonization of Knowledge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Govender, L., Naidoo, D. (2023). Decolonial insights for transforming the higher education curriculum in South Africa. Curriculum Perspectives 43(Suppl 1), 59–71. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41297-023-00200-3
Ndlovu-Gatsheni, S.J. (2021). ‘Internationalisation of higher education for pluriversity: a decolonial reflection’. Journal of the British Academy, 9(s1): 77–98.
Knowles, C., James, A., Khoza, L., Mtwa, Z., Roboji, M., & Shivambu, M. (2023). Problematising the South African Higher Education inequalities exposed during the Covid-19 pandemic: Students’ perspectives. Critical Studies in Teaching and Learning (CriSTaL), 11(1), 1-21. https://doi.org/10.14426/cristal.v11i1.668
Sayed, Y., Carrim, N., Badroodien, A., McDonald, Z., Singh, M. (2018) Learning to Teach in Post-Apartheid South Africa – ‘Student Teachers’ Encounters with Initial Teacher Education (Y Sayeded). Stellenbosch: African Sun Media.
University Social Responsibility in Times of Uncertainty: An Analysis of discursive positions in mission statements of German universities
Jörg Schwarz (Marburg University), Julia Elven (Marburg University)
In the context of multiple global crises and accelerated changes that we are facing, the relationship between university and society is also shifting. Consensuses that were thought to be secure and responsibilities that have long received little public attention are becoming more and more fragile: The discourse on fake news and post-truth is causing uncertainty among parts of the population about the resilience of knowledge and truth (Elven, 2022), digitalisation / AI is putting research and teaching infrastructure to the test (Pinheiro, Edelhard Tømte, Barman, Degn, & Geschwind, 2023) and the climate crisis is raising questions about the extent to which universities are still able to produce the knowledge they need or whether a fundamental reform of knowledge production is necessary (Schneidewind, Singer-Brodowski, & Augenstein, 2016). There is also a questioning of the self-image, task and role of science within the academic discourse - for example on the part of postcolonial studies (Seth, 2009).
On this backdrop, we currently are conducting a research project (funded by the German Research Foundation, project number 457876539), where we raise two core questions:
1. How do higher education institutions (HEI) position themselves in relation to these societal challenges, diverse demands and conflicting expectations? How do universities succeed - on an organizational level - in formulating a consistent concept of the universitys social responsibility?
2. How is this concept of social responsibility negotiated within the HEIs and how does the staff relate to it (e.g. accept, deny, negate constructively critize, …)? Which role does the social background of the staff play for relating and can we find systematic differences betweend different groups within the organization - especially between different generations of researchers?
In our contribution, we will present findings from the first step of the research project where we conducted a field-focussed discourse analysis of mission statements from German universities. For this investigation, we gathered mission statements from all universities in Germany (without universities for applied sciences and similar institutions; n=120). We analyzed these documents applying techniques of qualitative text analysis by Kuckartz (2014), suggestions for the methodization of discourse analysis (Diaz-Bone, 2006) and categorizing procedures in discourse analysis (Glasze, Husseini, & Mose, 2021).
In our presentation, we focus on uncertainties expressed in mission statements and related concepts of social responsibility. Based on these findings, we can shed light on the relationship between growing uncertainties in Europe and worldwide and the necessity to deal with social responsibility in HEIs.
References:
Diaz-Bone, R. (2006). Zur Methodologisierung der Foucaultschen Diskursanalyse. Historical Social Research / Historische Sozialforschung, 31(2), 243–274. Retrieved from https://www.jstor.org/stable/20762129
Elven, J. (2022). The Negotiation of Social Responsibility in Academia. An Analysis of Ethical Discourses on the March for Science at German Universities. Zeitschrift Für Diskursforschung, 10(1).
Glasze, G., Husseini, S., & Mose, J. (2021). Kodierende Verfahren in der Diskursforschung. In Handbuch Diskurs und Raum: Theorien und Methoden für die Humangeographie sowie die sozial- und kulturwissenschaftliche Raumforschung (pp. 293–314). Bielefeld: transcript. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783839432181
Kuckartz, U. (2014). Qualitative Text Analysis: A Guide to Methods, Practice and Using Software. London et al.: SAGE. Retrieved from https://books.google.com?id=9B2VAgAAQBAJ
Pinheiro, R., Edelhard Tømte, C., Barman, L., Degn, L., & Geschwind, L. (Eds.). (2023). Digital Transformations in Nordic Higher Education. Cham: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-27758-0
Schneidewind, U., Singer-Brodowski, M., & Augenstein, K. (2016). Transformative Science for Sustainability Transitions. In H. G. Brauch, Ú. Oswald Spring, J. Grin, & J. Scheffran (Eds.), Handbook on Sustainability Transition and Sustainable Peace (pp. 123–136). Cham: Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-43884-9_5
Seth, S. (2009). Putting knowledge in its place: Science, colonialism, and the postcolonial. Postcolonial Studies, 12(4), 373–388. https://doi.org/10.1080/13688790903350633
