Carsten Greve partipates in a new project funded by the Velux Foundation:

Governance, Funding and Performance of Universities

Conducted by professor Poul Erik Mouritzen, University of Southern Denmark.

The objective of the research programme on Governance, Funding and Performance of Universities is to produce systematic knowledge about the - intended as will as unintended - effects of reforms and New Public Management tools at universities. Universities are, when it comes to studying the impact of NPM tools, a critical case since the clash between culture and pecuniary incentive systems (intrinsic and extrinsic motivation) is potentially very strong. And, the Danish university system presents an excellent case for such a study. The Danish University reform of 2003 is among the most radical reforms in western countries when it comes to the governance of universities, and the introduction in 2010 of performance-based budgeting involving research publications allows for a quasi-experimental design, which is able to trace the effects over a period of four years. The combination of a critical case (universities) and an extreme case (Denmark) and the particular quasi-experimental study design therefore has an innovative potential which, to our knowledge, is quite unique in the international literature on new public management in general and performance measures in particular.

The programme is organized into four integrated projects. The first project on Development of Performance Indicators is a prerequisite for the other three since it aims at the development of a valid and coherent set of tools which can be used to measure performance of university departments across the different main disciplines.

The other three projects aim at answering the following substantive questions:

• To what extent has the governance reform of 2003 been implemented and with what effects on management and management tools, decision-making, resource allocation, administrative structures and composition of staff and – ultimately – on performance? (Project on University Governance)

• How has the 2010 reform on performance-based funding been implemented, and will the reform - as intended - lead to quantitatively more and qualitatively better research and what characterizes a high performing department? (Project on the Bibliometric Research Indicator)

• What are the causal mechanisms and processes leading to high performance at universities (Project New Public Management at Work).

The four projects are tightly integrated since each of them requires data as well as results produced by the other projects. The projects are also integrated in the sense that they follow the implementation of public policy from top (government) to bottom (the individual researcher) and to results (performance). Methodologically, the programme uses almost all the methods in the social science toolbox from highly quantitative statistical analyses, qualitative analyses of interviews and in-depth case studies with a focus on tracing the processes through which results are brough about. The programme rests on the establishment of a large common database consisting of seven datasets based on interviews, survey data, bibliometric data, process-generated information, case studies and official statistical data. It is, as a consequence, based on a genuine mixed-methods design (Morse, 2003; Teddlie & Tashakkori, 2003; Greene, 2007;).

The programme is implemented by a cross-displinary research team involving political scientists, organization theorists, a bibliometrician and at least two PhD students.