The purpose of this research is to investigate the mechanism of noncompliance behavior of higher education institutions with public policy. As the exemplary organizations of open system that are internally loosely-coupled and sensitive to external environmental pressure(Weick, 1976), higher education institutions do not explicitly resist the implementation of public policies but disguise their noncompliance with ceremonial compliance. The long-standing criticism of higher education institutions' inactive attitude toward change and innovation also reflects the fact that noncompliance or ceremonial compliance with social demand is very common among higher education institutions. However, colleges and universities are one of those social organizations which have continued a long history by conducting unique missions that our society assigned them. Their ways of survival and flourish are so complex and multi-faceted that judging their behavior from only one angle would easily interfere with one's seeing the whole picture. Their behavior of noncompliance also needs more careful and multidimensional observation and interpretation in order to lead us to find more feasible and fundamental solutions. The study is specifically interested in the ceremonial compliance of organizations that is not visible but in fact known to be very common among educational institutions in particular(Meyer & Rowan, 1978).
This attitude of organizations that comply with the given policy formally and externally, while refusing to change the existing practices internally was defined as “decoupling” by organization researchers who adopted the view of neo-institutionalism(Meyer & Rowan, 1977; 1978). They argued that organizations easily confirm to external environmental pressure in order to gain social legitimacy, but they are often reluctant to change their whole practices in alignment to the external pressure. Therefore, organizations try to decouple the official structure from actual practice so that they can preserve their established technical practices. This notion of decoupling of organizations provides an ideal conceptual framework for this study which focuses on formal and superficial compliance of higher education institutions.
Out of this research objective the researcher chose the College Admission Officer System as the exemplary policy case to analyze noncompliance of higher education institutions and to explore the important determinant factors. College Admission Officer System was the new college admission policy that the Korean government adopted in 2007 with an aim to advancing the college admission system qualitatively as well as improving the public secondary education effectiveness. The government provided participating colleges and universities with subsidies and various support programs, but, at the same time, demanded those institutions to abide by the governmental standards and recommendations. In 2012, more than 60 colleges and universities across the country took part in the program as official beneficient institutions. Among these institutions this study chose two universities with contrasting organizational characteristics and contexts, and conducted a comparative analysis of their implementation.
On the basis of literature review on College Admission Officer System policy, policy implementation theory, various organizational theories affected by neo-institutionalism, the researcher built an analytical framework which uses the aforementioned notion of decoupling as the basic concept. Since there were not enough preceding researches concerning the concept and strategy of decoupling(Boxenbaum & Jonsson, 2008), the researcher proposed more specific definition of decoupling using Oliver(1991)’s organizational response theory. That is to say that compromise and avoidance among the five strategic responses of organizations that Oliver(1991) suggested were broadly understood as two basic strategies of decoupling. The characteristics of decoupling shown by two universities are judged according to the scale that the researcher developed on the basis of the descriptions of the two strategies.
As the major determinant of decoupling, this study focused on the institutional contexts since this study took the perspective arguing that the implementation process and its results are more fundamentally affected by the cognition and interpretation of the policy by those that practically carry out policy implementation. Out of this viewpoint the analytical framework assumes that the different organizational characteristics and intraorganizational contexts of universities, combined with the core features of the policy, affect the nature and the degree of decoupling. These organizational features and contexts exert direct impact on the process of decoupling as well as indirect influence on it by shaping perceptions of organizational members about the change which will be caused by the new policy. Greenwood & Hinings(1996) called it value commitment of organizational constituents.
Based on this analytical framework, this research examines how the institutional constraints and pressure of College Admission Officer System penetrated two universities’ (A and B) implementation process, and how the intraorganizational features reacted to the institutional pressure and eventually brought about decoupling in the two institutions. Their contrasting features and contexts were found to have caused a phenomena that the same policy resulted in different nature and degree of decoupling in the two institutions.
University A was a very small, local, Christian university which put much emphasis on the undergraduate program. It had a relatively short institutional history and its institutional status was not high, and it has suffered from lack of resources since its establishment. However, it successfully developed a very unique organizational culture including a strong leadership and tightly-coupled internal structure. According to the definition of professional organizations by Scott(2003), University A was categorized as a 'heterogeneous professional organization' in which professionalism was not as much recognized as the other type of professional organizations, 'autonomous professional organizations'.
University A was generally active in responding to the new College Admission Officer System, but existing departments resisted concerning key issues that could influence the structure of resource management in a long term, such as recruiting sufficient number of admission officers or their status stabilization issue. Consequently, University A complied with the basic requirements of the College Admission Officer System imposed by the government, while using various strategies of compromise and avoidance, sometimes even manipulation(more similar to explicit noncompliance), in order to sustain the technical core of the existing admissions affairs. The exemplar strategies interpreted as compromise were noted such as failing to provide satisfactory environments for comprehensive document review, deteriorating the employment conditions of perpetual employment contracts, substituting the task of the old admission office with the new admissions officer team, especially in the area of college promotion affairs.
The organizational features of University A such as scarce resources and low institutional status were found to cause those decoupling tactics aforementioned. The religious and informal organizational culture and uniquely strong leadership, however, showed the effects to prevent decoupling from widening. These features exerted indirect impact on decoupling through value commitment of the constituents. The governmental subsidies and the promotion effects brought about by the policy were loomed large in the resource-scarce institution like University A, so most of the constituents of University A formed a reformative or competitive value commitment toward the College Admission Officer System.
In contrast, University B boasted institutional reputation and abundant resources as one of the most prestigious colleges in Korea. The huge and complicated organizational structure has strengthened the loose coupling that did not have clear causal relationship among departments. The autonomy, independence, and professionalism of each department were the basic principles of organizational operation.
Various forms of decoupling were identified: Minimizing the importance of qualitative evaluation leaving the old evaluation practice in place, defining the role and function of the admissions officers so narrowly that they did not exert any practical influence in the whole process of admission, simply changing the name of the year-contract into the perpetual contract without changing the content of the contract, and downsizing the admission officers team with deterioration of their employment conditions. According to the scale the researcher developed, they were interpreted as the compromise and avoidance strategies. Compared to the decoupling tactics of University A, those of University B centered on a few tactics of the two strategies showing lower variation in the degree. The researcher interpreted this finding to mean, while University A, as an institution located in the periphery of the field, tried more actively to explore the way to benefit from the new admission policy, University B, located in the core, was more interested in preserving its existing practices and condition.
Among many organizational features and contexts which evoked this kind of passive decoupling in University B, the extreme competition in admission with the 2 competing prestigious universities was found to be most influential. The highly sensitive situation regarding admission affairs made all constituents reluctant to try new change in this area. As a result, the existing members were not willing to share the political power with the new admissions officers, who were not recognized as professional enough and institutionally legitimate. Its organizational culture of the loosely coupled system and autonomous professional organization also prevented the admissions officers from finding value and legitimacy of their work and role within University B.
Out of comparison of the two case studies the researcher drew three conclusions. First, decoupling tactics were indeed easily found in both universities although the nature and degree of decoupling differed from each other. Second, organizational features mattered in the issue of decoupling. They were found to be directly and indirectly influential determining the nature and degree of decoupling attempted by the two institutions. Third, however, the contexts of policy implementation surrounding organizations mattered more than organizational features themselves. As shown in the two case studies, it was difficult to anticipates in which direction those organizational features will exert impact on decoupling. The same features such as organizational resources or institutional status brought about different effect on decoupling depending on internal and external contexts that each university was facing. On the basis of these findings the researcher presented some implications for policy makers as well as leadership of the higher education institutions regarding successful policy implementation and organizational change.