Shifting logics: Limitations on the journey from 'state' to 'market' logic in UK higher education

© Policy Press 2018. Our study of UK higher education institutions (HEIs) offers insights into the role of institutional logics in the adoption of organisational practices - specifically outsourcing. We identify two logics prevalent within HEIs: a public service 'state logic' and a 'market logic'. While adherence to the market logic supports commercial-based practices such as outsourcing, organisations enact competing logics in complex ways. Outsourcing is mainly limited to peripheral activities segmented from the core while a nascent cooperative solution is emerging as HEIs co-opt practices and discourse of outsourcing to justify hybrid relationships that marry competing logics in a process of selective coupling