Analysing Policy Positions of Stakeholder Organizations in Higher Education: What, How and Why?

Abstract

Stakeholders and their organizations are increasingly involved in governance of higher education, not only within institutions or at system level, but also in various supra-national and intergovernmental processes. For these, as well as pragmatic reasons (ease of access and relatively simple methods for analysis), this chapter advocates for a more systematic approach to studying stakeholder organizations, their participation in and impact on governance of higher education. Specifically, the chapter: (1) provides a three-fold nested conceptualization of policy positions of stakeholder organizations, comprising issues, preferences concerning these issues, and the normative basis utilized to legitimize said preferences; (2) presents advantages and disadvantages of different methodological approaches to analyzing policy positions of stakeholder organizations, including qualitative and quantitative content analysis, employing either human coding or computer-assisted coding of policy documents; and (3) highlights different insights one can gain from analyzing policy positions of stakeholder organizations. It combines (thus far limited) insights from higher education studies with the more generic literature on interest groups, and uses examples from European level stakeholder organizations to illustrate its points.

Citation

Vukasovic, M. (2019), "Analysing Policy Positions of Stakeholder Organizations in Higher Education: What, How and Why?", Theory and Method in Higher Education Research (Theory and Method in Higher Education Research, Vol. 5), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 1-17. https://doi.org/10.1108/S2056-375220190000005002