Topics: Governance (U.S.)

Bastedo, Michael N., Elias M. Samuels, and Molly Kleinman. 2014. “Do Presidents Influence College Applications and Fundraising? Organizational Identity and Performance in U.S. Private Higher Education.” Higher Education 68: 397-415.
The effect of charismatic leadership on organizational performance is contested. Yet despite the lack of consistent evidence of the value of charismatic leadership to organizations, presidential searches have increasingly favored charismatic candidates. This study shows how organizational identity mediates the relationship between charismatic leadership and organizational performance. Among religious colleges, but not among private colleges considered overall, there is a positive relationship between presidents’ charismatic leadership and the number of applications for enrollment and the amount of financial donations colleges receive. This suggests that among organizations with atypical identities, charismatic leadership can be interpreted as a meaningful signal of organizational performance.
Bastedo, Michael N. 2009. Conflicts, Commitments, and Cliques in University Governance: Moral Seduction as a Threat to Trustee Independence. American Educational Research Journal 46: 354-386.

The ability of trustees to make independent judgments in the best interests of the university is a fundamental characteristic of an effective governing board. Trustee independence is increasingly threatened, however, as the university becomes more deeply embedded in government, industry, networks, and the professions. This topic is investigated through analysis of qualitative interviews, focus group observations, and informant-produced documents from 59 public university presidents. It is argued that threats to trustee independence are produced primarily through a process of moral seduction that allows trustees to engage in self-interested decision making while maintaining an ethical self-concept. The article then provides a conceptual model to frame our understanding of how important social actors seek to capture and co-opt boards of trustees to serve external interests, and describes how the mechanisms of moral seduction differ across contexts.
Bastedo, Michael N. 2009. Convergent Institutional Logics in Public Higher Education: State Policymaking and Governing Board Activism. Review of Higher Education 32: 209-234.

This article investigates the convergent institutional logics driving decision making at an activist governing board in higher education. Through a case study of policymaking by a state-level coordinating board in Massachusetts, the article identifies four primary logics of action: mission differentiation, student opportunity, managerialism, and system coordination. The study concludes that institutional logics are a powerful mechanism for understanding shifts in public higher education governance, and results in predictable political outcomes in the negotiation of constituent interests. The potential contribution for further examination of institutional logics on studying higher education politics and institutional stratification is considered.
Bastedo, Michael N. and Nathan F. Harris. 2009. “The State Role in Entrepreneurship and Economic Development: Governance, Oversight, and Public University Start-Up Innovation.” Advances in the Study of Entrepreneurship, Innovation, and Economic Growth 19: 215-35.
Bastedo, Michael N. 2007. Bringing the State Back In: Promoting and Sustaining Innovation in Public Higher Education. Higher Education Quarterly 61: 155-170.

Since the well-known failures of many experimental colleges and programs in the 1960s and 1970s, policymakers and scholars are often cynical about the possibilities for organizational innovation, particularly within public universities. Public university innovation is possible, however, when organizational actors seek to institutionalize reform and use the legitimacy of reform to obtain adequate human and financial resources. An illustrative case study of California State University at Monterey Bay is used to describe how institutionalization processes can be used to establish, support and expand public university innovation, which may be increasingly crucial to meet political and competitive demands for university adaptation.
Bastedo, Michael N. 2007. Sociological Frameworks for Higher Education Policy Research. Pp. 295-316 in Patricia J. Gumport (Ed.), The Sociology of Higher Education: Contributions and Their Contexts. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Reviewing contemporary developments in organization theory and sociology, argues for new approaches to understanding politics, policymaking, and governance in higher education.
Bastedo, Michael N. 2006. Tuition Cuts: The Political Dynamics of Higher Education Finance. Journal of Student Financial Aid 36: 33-48.

Increasingly, states are restricting tuition growth through political pressure and statewide governing and coordinating boards. During the 1990s, California, Virginia, and New York all cut or restrained tuition, and recently Michigan, Florida, Illinois, and New Jersey have restricted tuition growth either through legislation or intense gubernatorial pressure. This case study examines the most extensive use of tuition cuts nationally, in the state of Massachusetts from 1995 to 2001. This case reveals the causes and effects of tuition cuts as a policy measure, and also the political dynamics underlying public higher education finance in in- creasingly politicized environments.
Bastedo, Michael N. 2006. Activist Trustees in the Public University: Reconceptualizing the Public Interest. In Peter D. Eckel (Ed.), The Shifting Frontiers of Academic Decision Making. Washington, DC: ACE/Praeger.

Tracks the development of activist trusteeship in U.S. higher education, arguing that to date activist trustees have been cast as anti-intellectual conservatives, when in fact they have reconceptualized the idea of the public good for higher education.
Bastedo, Michael N. 2005. The Making of an Activist Governing Board. Review of Higher Education 28: 551-570.

Although numerous theories have been proffered, to date activist boards are an empirically unexamined force in public higher education governance. Using the concept of institutional entrepreneurship, this case study examines the reciprocal role that board members and staff played in the organizational development of board activism. In the case of Massachusetts, policymakers were able to successfully negotiate the higher education institutions that mediate policy through the use of political skills, leadership, and leveraging political power. The implications for our understanding of board activism and radical change in public higher education governance are discussed.
Bastedo, Michael N. 2005. Thwarted Ambition: The Role of Public Policy in University Development. New England Journal of Public Policy 20(2): 45-65.

Massachusetts is paradoxically the home of a world-class system of private higher education and a struggling system of public higher education. The influence of private higher education and persistent indifference by state government repeatedly thwarted UMass’s ambition to increase its stature on the national scene. The result was a “boom or bust” cycle of financial support that made rational planning and institutional expansion extremely difficult, exacerbating the university’s late start toward world-class status.
Bastedo, Michael N. and Patricia J. Gumport. 2003. Access to What? Mission Differentiation and Academic Stratification in U.S. Public Higher Education. Higher Education 46: 341-359.

Academic policy initiatives have long been a powerful lever for mission differentiation within U.S. public higher education. Although the higher education literature has examined basic issues in the design of public systems, the tension between access and differentiation has not been explored. Drawing upon comparative case studies of public higher education in Massachusetts and New York, this article examines recent policy initiatives to terminate academic programs, eliminate remedial education, and promote honors colleges within each state system. The analysis depicts how these policies contribute to increased stratification of programs and students within a state system as well as within particular campuses in a system. The authors argue that policy analysis in higher education should develop a more refined conceptualization of access that examines the cumulative impact of contemporary policies on the stratification of student opportunity.
Gumport, Patricia J. and Michael N. Bastedo. 2001. Academic Stratification and Endemic Conflict: Remedial Education Policy at the City University of New York. Review of Higher Education 24: 333-349.

This article examines the remedial education policy change at the City University of New York (CUNY) in historical context and from the analytical perspective of system design. The policy to phase out remedial education in the CUNY senior colleges is interpreted as part of a strategy to create "more of a system" by increasing the differentiation of missions and stratification among campuses within the CUNY system. The authors analyze both the immediate context and the system design rationale for the policy change, then discusses future implications for CUNY and for public higher education more broadly.
Bastedo, Michael N. 2000. Student Outcomes and State Policy in Public Higher Education. On the Horizon 8(1): 10-12.

Revised: August 15, 2016