Institutional Autonomy of Universities in Theory and Practice : A qualitative Research on decentralized Financial and Human Resource Competences

The research aims to contribute to the understanding of institutional autonomy in higher education systems. Recent years demonstrated a growing emphasis on New Public Management oriented policies as a response to the increasing demands for autonomy, accountability and legitimacy as well as to the lack of trust in decentralized units. The research focuses on faculty competences of the traditionally centrally regulated areas of finance and human resource management and utilizes the principal-agent theory as a normative approach on policy reform. On the basis of the theoretical background, it is hypothesized that the actual level of autonomy does not necessarily resemble the same level of autonomy formally granted. Therefore, exemplified by the case of North Rhine-Westphalia, the formal and real autonomy is assessed by analyzing laws and policy documents at the federal and institutional level and by conducting semi-open expert interviews with university personnel in leading positions, respectively. In order to test the hypothesis, the findings of formal and real institutional autonomy were compared. The research found evidence that indicate a divergence between formal and real autonomy in the areas of financial and human resource management at the decentralized level.