POLICY NETWORKS AND COMMUNITIES IN THREE WESTERN CANADA UNIVERSITIES: NEO-INSTITUTIONAL RESPONSES TO A PAN - INSTITUTIONAL ISSUE

The purpose of this study was to describe, analyze and provide and understanding of the process of policy making on an ill-defined pan institutional issue (teaching and learning technology) within three western Canadian universities in two western Canadian provinces. The conceptual framework informing this study was Coleman & Skogstad and Atkinson & Colman's policy network and community model. More abstract organizational theoretical frameworks provide the basis for a post hoc interpretation of the policy findings, where post critical social organization models provide a basis for further development of the framework capacity. The study was conducted in and around three large universities or cases from a potential sample of over 100,000 actors. The description, analysis and interpretation of the policy making process in these cases was conducted at the actor (micro), institution or sector (meso) and macro (policy environment) levels. The focus was on the changing university policy leadership found within a disaggregated state, where a broad policy development community was defined. Within that community, small, relatively closed policy making networks were found. To create these networks, influential actors coalesced from across university departments and colleges, from government agencies and from the administration and faculty chambers. The emergent patterns and the characteristics of these influential relationships among key policy makers, including institutional and government actors, was described and interpreted to gain a greater understanding of the autonomy and capacity of these networks as they responded to the pressing issue of teaching and technology in today's changing university. Analysis of these policy networks and communities suggests that the policy issue of teaching and learning technology activated actors to form certain types of relationships. In the Saskatchewan case, the network emerged because low capacity and low autonomy actors believed that the institution needed to be seen to be keeping up with technology. In the Alberta case, the networks emerged because the actors believed that the institution had to increase its market share. In all cases, the networks discovered were small and relatively closed to the policy community. Further interpretation found that in the Saskatchewan case, stable policy networks organized their interests objectively with the government in a weak and codependent pressure pluralist network. In the Alberta case, policy networks were found to organize their interests more subjectively, creating a tight concertation network positioned to capture targeted government funding. A comparison of the types of policy networks and policy environments found that, though university faculty members have autonomy by Act and collective agreements, some networks chose to organize their interests hierarchically and to become codependent, while other networks maintained high autonomy and high capacity by exercising certain key policy development characteristics. In all cases, the policy development process was found to be leaderless. The significance of the study is that this conceptual framework does provide university sector leadership scholars with an understanding of ill defined, pressing pan-institutional issue organization in large modern universities