Sociology Of The University Of Boundary

According to organizational sociology, university boundary is not only one boundary but a binding boundary group which is designed by the threesubjects——university, government and stakeholders, according to the three coreelements of university——actors, activities and relations under the action of themechanism of efficiency, validity and culture in colleges. The mechanism of efficiency will assure university of work efficiency and high speed of development; the mechanism of validity will guarantee university acquiring public recognition; the mechanism of college culture will protect the essence of university. If a university was an organism, efficiency mechanism would assure it of a high speed development to adapt to the outer environment; college culture mechanism would insure it against the aberrance of its gene and validity mechanism would assure a harmonious relationship between the university and its outer environment. University boundary has four functions: maintaining, filtrating, symbol and harmonizing.University is both a common social organization and an academic organization with clear particularities. For the sustainable development of university, university boundary has to keep the particularities of its organization and its academic standard to protect the core technologies not to be weakened. Meanwhile, according to organizational sociology, as an ordinary organization, university is not an autarkic organization which has to exchange material, information and energy with its exterior environment and across its boundary too. In other words, university boundary should maintain favorable osmosis to get needed resources, student source and teacher source for the development of the university. It is a university can keep a reasonable tension between boundary maintenance and boundary crossing that can be considered as a successful university.In order to keep a reasonable tension between boundary maintenance and boundary crossing, a university should carry out three strategies of answering itsexterior environment——environmental scanning; buffering strategy and bridgingstrategy. Scanning strategy is a precondition to run a university; buffering strategy, a maintenance strategy, is a foundation of running a university and bridge strategy is a crossing strategy which can assure the university to be increasingly stronger. The same target of these three strategies is to accelerate university to adapt to the exterior environment well, to reduce the uncertainty of university's exterior environment and to enhance university's ability of resisting risks and grasping opportunities. At the same time, university should carry through three aspects ofmanagement——relationship management, impression management and interfacemanagement to insure the university to keep its academic features with the condition of favorable osmosis. Although contemporary Chinese university boundary has some weaknesses, such as designed by others, similarities and poor osmosis, the future Chinese university boundary must be self-designed, strong osmosis and the boundary that can keep a reasonable tension between maintaining and crossing it.