Mergers in Higher Education : Understanding stakeholder perceptions of leadership–academic community conflicts mid- and post-merger of a Finnish University
Eun, Soojin (2025)
Tampere University
2025
Hallintotieteiden, kauppatieteiden ja politiikan tutkimuksen tohtoriohjelma - Doctoral Programme in Administrative Sciences, Business Studies and Politics
Johtamisen ja talouden tiedekunta - Faculty of Management and Business
This publication is copyrighted. You may download, display and print it for Your own personal use. Commercial use is prohibited.
Väitöspäivä
2025-10-31
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-952-03-4168-8
https://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-952-03-4168-8
Tiivistelmä
Mergers in higher education institutions have been occurring steadily around the world, and are expected to increase on a considerable scale in certain regions. This phenomenon is driven by a variety of factors, including evolving societal demands on educational institutions, demographic decline, financial pressures, efforts to enhance institutional competitiveness and achieve economies of scale, or changing public perceptions of university degrees, among others.
Since most organizational change involves some form of resistance to change, universities often experience conflicts amongst relevant stakeholders at various stages of the merger process. In this regard, this research explores conflict dynamics in a university merger, a relatively underexplored topic in the literature, by looking into the perceptions of the stakeholders in a contested merger case with the aim of identifying how university mergers can be implemented with minimized conflicts. Specifically, it investigates the factors that can lead to conflicts in university mergers and its impact on the university community as well as the merger, drawing on the case of Tampere University merger (2014-2019). Focusing on the conflict between the leadership group (interim board, founders, Ministry of Education and Culture) and the University of Tampere (UTA – former City Center campus) community which unfolded across the pre-, mid-, post-merger stages, this study employs a grounded-theory approach. Based on semi-structured interviews with 25 stakeholders, the study looks into each group’s perspectives on the conflicts, their responses and motivations, the perceived impact on the merger and the community, as well as lessons for reducing conflicts in university mergers. By applying the open, axial, and selective coding in the grounded theory approach, it ultimately develops a substantive theory on conflict mitigation in higher education mergers.
The dissertation offers multiple insights into reducing or preventing conflicts in HEI mergers, and concludes that leaders should not overlook the “human” factor in merger processes. Besides suggesting various measures that enable the university community to absorb the shock of change with reduced resistance, the dimensions of ‘who’ and ‘how’ in conducting mergers are emphasized as being critical as the content of change itself. This case in particular, highlights the importance of value alignment among relevant stakeholders on the university’s vision and goals prior to the merger. The findings have significant implications for higher education leaders and policy-makers on the strategies for minimizing conflict in future university mergers, and contributes to the first substantive theory on addressing conflict across the stages of merging higher education institutions.
Since most organizational change involves some form of resistance to change, universities often experience conflicts amongst relevant stakeholders at various stages of the merger process. In this regard, this research explores conflict dynamics in a university merger, a relatively underexplored topic in the literature, by looking into the perceptions of the stakeholders in a contested merger case with the aim of identifying how university mergers can be implemented with minimized conflicts. Specifically, it investigates the factors that can lead to conflicts in university mergers and its impact on the university community as well as the merger, drawing on the case of Tampere University merger (2014-2019). Focusing on the conflict between the leadership group (interim board, founders, Ministry of Education and Culture) and the University of Tampere (UTA – former City Center campus) community which unfolded across the pre-, mid-, post-merger stages, this study employs a grounded-theory approach. Based on semi-structured interviews with 25 stakeholders, the study looks into each group’s perspectives on the conflicts, their responses and motivations, the perceived impact on the merger and the community, as well as lessons for reducing conflicts in university mergers. By applying the open, axial, and selective coding in the grounded theory approach, it ultimately develops a substantive theory on conflict mitigation in higher education mergers.
The dissertation offers multiple insights into reducing or preventing conflicts in HEI mergers, and concludes that leaders should not overlook the “human” factor in merger processes. Besides suggesting various measures that enable the university community to absorb the shock of change with reduced resistance, the dimensions of ‘who’ and ‘how’ in conducting mergers are emphasized as being critical as the content of change itself. This case in particular, highlights the importance of value alignment among relevant stakeholders on the university’s vision and goals prior to the merger. The findings have significant implications for higher education leaders and policy-makers on the strategies for minimizing conflict in future university mergers, and contributes to the first substantive theory on addressing conflict across the stages of merging higher education institutions.
Kokoelmat
- Väitöskirjat [5198]