The Research On The Academic Quasi-formal Organization In China's Universities

The construction of university organizations under the coordination of the relationships between academic power and administrative power has been a difficulty in the academic research. The purpose of this thesis is searching for new theoretical perspectives and analytical methods to coordinate and optimize the relationship between academic power and administrative power, thereby to establish a modern university governance structure in line with China's national conditions.Through the research on university organizations, the thesis expounds that the quasi-formal organization is a prevalent organizational form in universities. It can be classified into four types: participatory ones in decision-making, to participate in decision-making and to play a leading role in the academy; consultative and assessment ones, to provide advices and to make the judgment and assessment in various kinds of school governance and research activities; specific task-oriented ones, to undertake the temporary, periodic and special tasks; community activities, to meet the interests of teachers and students, playing the main role in the university cultural construction. Attached to formal organizations, quasi-formal organizations play the role of complementing and reinforcing the functions of formal organizations. The definition of quasi-formal organization provides a valid key to analyze the academic character and complexity of the university organization.Through the international comparative study of the academic quasi-formal organizations, we found that the quasi-formal organizations in China's university have the following problems as: members mostly designated by the formal organization; lack of the effective mechanism to mutual penetration with and constraint of the formal organizations; the relationship with formal organization needs to be coordinated optimized; lack of a proper regulatory framework and operational mechanism. From the international comparative analysis, we can see that the status and role of quasi-formal organizations in China's university are in a weak form. The imbalance of its function with formal organization leads to the difficulty in raising the efficiency of university organization performance.Taking the Professor Committee as an example, the thesis made an empirical research on the status and the role of quasi-formal organization in China's university. The results indicate that the Professor Committee is an important organizational carrier to promote the professor managed academy, and strengthen the scientific decision-making and democratic governance; thereby the university professors placed great expectations to raise the status and the role of such academic quasi-formal organizations. Both the university and the schools should set up the Professor Committee and the sub-committee in professional fields, which play a leading role in the positional title assessment, teaching affairs and major policy decisions. Members of the Professor Committee should be elected by all teachers through democratic recommendation, which reflects the spirit of democracy in universities, and seriously affects the functions of the Professor Committee. The study has shown that the independence of the Professor Committee's operational mechanism can be enhanced by defining and clarifying its functions, formulating standard rules and regulations and so on. The results of the research provide a theoretical basis and practical guidance for building a system of the quasi-formal organization in China's university. and improving the mechanism of coordinating quasi-formal organizations and formal organizations.For a long time, the discussion on the relationship between academic power and administrative power has been sunk in the power struggle, which created a concept of "professor governed university", and confused the university leadership, administration rights and academy rights, blurring their different functions. On the basis of empirical research, this paper expounds the idea of strengthening the construction of academic quasi-formal organizations in universities, the technology path to optimize the function of university organizational structure, and a model of the university governance, that is "three powers dividedly governance, mutual check and balance, interactive collaboration", which will promote the political power, academic power and administrative power governance in a reasonable manner.Theoretically, this paper made a discussion on the university organizations from the perspective of organization theory and empirical research by applying the management science in the higher education administration. It expands the object of study and form a three-dimensional, pluralistic and all-round cognitive framework in the discipline of higher education administration. Practically, from a viewpoint of the quasi-formal organizations, the paper proposed a solution to the crux of the antagonism between the two powers, with the coordination and optimization of the quasi-formal and the formal organizations, making a breakthrough in the process of China's modern university system construction.