Governance styles in Taiwanese universities: Features and effects

Sheng-Ju Chan and Chia-Yu Yang

International Journal of Educational Development, 2018, vol. 63, issue C, 29-35

Abstract: During the past two decades, Taiwan has undertaken dramatic higher education reforms in response to the changing social, economic, and educational needs. Among the driving forces, neoliberalism and new public management (NPM) are major political ideologies in reshaping the configuration, or even nature, of higher education in Taiwan in many aspects. Against this macro context, the study investigated the primary governance styles inside Taiwanese universities. Has the desirable collegiality or collective governance been destabilized or eroded? Our sampled faculty confirms that collegial and bureaucratic models are still dominant and preferred within the universities. While faculty prefer collegial governance, statistical tests have shown that bureaucratic and corporate styles exercise significantly higher influences upon overall organizational effectiveness at the college level. The results suggest that the current reform directions, NPM and neoliberalism, are upheld empirically in Taiwan—these approaches are on right track for better outcomes. Corporate governance is desirable for policy-makers and university senior managers, if universities want to enhance their effectiveness and performance. The study also found that due to inconsistencies between developments at the national and institutional levels, Taiwan has a dual governance structure (inside and outside the university). In addition the study identified a standardized governance pattern in Taiwanese higher education.

Keywords: Governance styles; Higher education; Dual governance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0738059316304230
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:injoed:v:63:y:2018:i:c:p:29-35

DOI: 10.1016/j.ijedudev.2017.10.007

Access Statistics for this article

International Journal of Educational Development is currently edited by Stephen P Heyneman

More articles in International Journal of Educational Development from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().