La gobernanza de las universidades

The aim of the chapter is to present the changes of governance concepts in Higher Education (HE). To this aim, we make reference to different disciplinary perspectives, namely public administration and public policy, political science and sociology; despite the fact that the field of HE has specific features that make it different from others (loosely-coupled system, Weick 1976; organized anarchy, March and Olsen, 1976, specific organization, Musselin, 2007), we argue that the special features of HE cannot exclude the use concepts existing in other disciplinary fields, which can eventually provide very useful insights (Huisman, 2009); moreover, considering HE as a 'stand-alone' sector has been challenged by studies highlighting the organizational similarities with other professionalized public sectors (Ferlie et al., 2009). The changing relationships between the Universities and the State, and the new narratives of public sector reform -New Public Management, Network Governance and New Public Governance (Ferlie et al, 2005; Paradeise et al, 2009, Osborne, 2006) are also analysed, including the modes of steering, regulating and controlling, as well as concepts used to shape the division of responsibilities and power between the state and other actors implementing actions, such as markets (Margison, 1997; Texeira et al. 2004) and networks (Huisman, 2009; Thompson et al., 1991).