Between politics and markets: The institutional allocation of resources in higher education

This research spans two analytic traditions regarding resource allocation in organizations in order to develop an explanation for apparent ownership effects that simultaneously incorporates environmental factors and structural components of the decision process. The study focuses on resource allocation in higher education institutions in order to establish that variation among ownership forms can explain sectoral patterns of variation in resource allocation after 1980. It then explores the source of those differences by assessing how forms of ownership get defined and constructed.;The study investigates these differences through quantitative analysis of panel data, which contains US Department of Education and personally gathered survey data concerning institutional characteristics and resource allocations patterns at roughly 1350 colleges and universities tracked over 30 years. Using various techniques for studying panel data and controlling for variation stemming from contextual factors, I assess the relative contribution of ownership forms, governance arrangements, and institutionalized expectations to decisions surrounding resource allocation.;My findings demonstrate that the constraints and opportunities imposed by different ownership forms fostered divergent institutional responses to significant environmental change. The increase in the demand for higher education and the budget contractions necessitated by public sector fiscal crises around 1980 constituted environmental shifts to which institutions could respond only so far as parties with an ownership claim would allow. The resulting patterns of resource allocation appear to reflect the interests of groups granted the most authority under the ownership form and governance arrangements. These results are consistent across several configurations of ownership, and they persist even after controlling for other sources of organizational variation. Drawing from political economy's emphasis on institutional arrangements of power, the study proceeds to consider whether variation in governance structures better explain variation in resource allocation than general forms of ownership. While the structural features of governance are significantly different between public and private sectors, surprisingly, the differences do not prove statistically significant in their influence on organizational behavior. Further investigation reveals that ownership effects may be more closely related to the shared conceptions and cognition participants carry regarding the appropriate response of public and private institutions to particular environmental conditions.