Managing change: organizational reform in Austrian universities

In the past three decades, Austrian universities have faced a series of organisational reforms. In this paper we will distinguish a first reform cycle with the focus on democratisation of academic decision making bodies and co-determination of new actors. It may be summarized under the label ‘opening’ (Öffnung) universities. The second reform cycle focuses on the issues of quality and efficiency and may be summarized under the label ‘managerialism’. We will deal mainly with the policy context, the goals, the success and the failure of this second reform cycle. Finally we will use some general ideas from organisational theory and discuss why the success of managerial reform has been moderate and many important steps still need to be taken.