A Consideration of the Organizational Framework of Higher Education Systems : with special reference to Burton Clark

The purpose of this article is to consider Burton Clark's theoretical framework on higher education systems and to examine the direction and possibilities of using the organizational approach in studying higher education systems. In the first section, the question of why the organizational approach is needed was discussed. Also, development in the sociology of organizations and its application to higher education research was reviewed over the past 20 years. In the second section a) characteristics of Burton Clark's approach b) 3 basic elements in higher education systems (work, belief and authority) c) integration and change were summarized and discussed. In the third section the following three points were discussed: a) Burton Clark's internal approach emphasized defining the basic elements of higher education systems as an organization. In order to understand how organizations respond to changes in the external environment, it is necessary to clarify the internal structure of organizations. In this sense, Burton Clark's internal approach is quite a reasonable research strategy, however it can be considered as not being dynamic enough. It is also important to understand the process of how each element and the system responds to various external changes. b) Burton Clark's higher education system theory implies a new research area called the "political-economy of higher education systems". He defined 3 types of coordination patterns i.e. state authority, academic oligarchy and the market. However he did not give a complete explanation of what kind of motivation influenced each pattern. Gareth Williams developed a new perspective for explaining coordination mechanisms according to how higher education systems are financed. This perspective should be reexamined within the framework of the sociology of organizations. In doing this the concept of resource dependency should be an important point of focus. Still, research on higher education and the sociology of science is going on separately. If organizational theory is applied to the sociology of science and if the sociology of science focuses on an 'operating unit' as an object of study, then it will be able to develop and link up with research on higher education systems