Trust, the Essence of Governance?

In this first decade of the twenty-first century, universities seem to be caught up in grand contradictions (Clark 1998: 146). They have, for instance, to do more and more with less money, to maintain the expanding cultural heritage with the best of the past and at the same time quickly and flexibly develop new fields of study and modes of thought, and to respond to everyone’s demands because all are ‘stakeholders’. It is, however, not only the ‘angry world outside’ that puts pressure on universities, but also the dynamics of science itself, with its accelerating pace of knowledge growth, specialization and reconfiguration. To deal with these contradictions, problems and tensions, or if one likes to dramatize, to survive in the increasingly tight and competitive world of higher education, universities should have an organisational structure that is able to swiftly respond to this rapidly changing environment. Most of us would tend to agree with this conclusion, but then what should the university decision making structure look like? There are, and have always been, significant differences of opinion on the answer to this question.