Study On The Running System Of Multi-campus University From Organization Culture Perspective

With the acceleration of Chinese reform of higher education since the 1990s, large quantities of universities have merged, while others have set up new campuses, which created a flood of multi-campus universities. The running system of multi-campus university is a new topic for China's higher education reform, as we are still at the very beginning stage in practice and theory, and there is no mature pattern to draw lessons from. Due to the difference of formation, we could divide all multi-campus universities into two types, joint multi-campus universities and extended multi-campus universities. Compared to single campus universities, the multi-campus ones have many specific characteristics either in the number of campuses, the instructional scales, the integration and complexion of disciplines, or in the diversities of campus culture. So this topic is of great theoretic and realistic importance. Researchers of China and abroad are paying more and more attention to this topic by studying from respective perspectives based on specific conditions. Unfortunately there have been no widely accepted theories or empirical researches.This paper first studies the organization culture theory and its related achievements and ideas, then analyzes the three methods of classification:two levels, three levels and four levels, defines university organization culture's contents and functions, finally divides it into three levels:physical, institutional and spiritual according to international standards.After introducing the historic backgrounds and processes of multi-campus formulation and development, this paper describes the present conditions, summarizes the four significant features, including large-scale, complete disciplines, scattered campus and mixed culture, then assays the advantages and disadvantages of multi-campus. On the side, the multi-campus has advantages in accelerating its management reform, perfecting the discipline structure, promoting the capacity of social capital production, expanding the development space. On the other side, we cannot neglect the negative effects, for example raising the cost, producing culture conflict, increasing the management difficulty, making chasms between different disciplines. From the perspective of organization culture theory, the last part of this paper put forward nine suggestions from physical, institutional and spiritual levels to realize the scientific development of multi-campus universities. These suggestions are attaining the fair and reasonable distribution of resources, creating featured and advanced disciplines, constructing united capable faculty, exploring efficiently running management pattern, carrying out rigorous and scientific institution regulations, founding simplified coordinated organization structure, establishing open and developing university conception, building up harmonious and unified campus culture, reconstructing tolerated respectable university spirit. These counter policies are of important reference value or significance in enriching the high education management theory and in directing the management practice.This paper has three innovations:the first is studying from the perspective of organization culture; the second is expanding the contents of organization culture; the third is bringing out several suggestions to develop the multi-campus universities based on organization culture theory.