Experiential Learning for All! An Institutional Analysis of How University Administrators Responded to the Ontario Government’s Call to Action

Governments in Western liberal democracies, such as Ontario, have increasingly used policy tools to influence university priorities and actions, despite the literature suggesting that policy tools are limited in their ability to shift institutional behaviour. As institutional theory posits, institutions require legitimacy to remain prominent in society and they may respond to government policy tools in superficial ways that mask non-compliance. Universities are autonomous institutions rooted in their small, liberal arts traditions and structures of decentralization, collegial governance, and academic freedom, and this institutional context makes institutional change difficult. This study explores the gap between the intention of government policy tools and their implementation by institutions. By leveraging the Ontario government’s experiential learning (EL) call to action in 2016-2019, a multi-case study design is used to explore how five universities interpreted and responded to the government’s EL call, as a way to explore this gap between policy tool goals and institutional responses. In particular, this study focuses on the experience of 21 university administrators who sit below the President and Provost, and at the juncture of strategy and implementation (i.e. Vice-Provosts, Assistance Vice-Provosts, Directors, Managers, and Registrars) to explore how administrators balance government calls for accountability and transparency with university structures and cultures. Using theoretical and conceptual constructs from institutional theory, this study contributes to our understanding of policy tools and institutional change by highlighting characteristics of the political and institutional contexts that influence institutional actions. First, the findings suggest that a process of layering is occurring, where the Ontario government is arguably introducing new priorities without the authority to replace existing structures and priorities. Second, the findings highlight the role of central university administrators as rule facilitators—critical actors who work with their institutional structures and cultures to respond to government policy tools in ways that maximize institutional legitimacy. Lastly, the findings echo existing propositions in the literature that suggest there is a relationship between alignment and compliance, where government policy tools that do not align with institutional priorities encourage strategic responses that mask non-compliance.Ph.D