Organization and Governance of Universities Ivar Bleiklie a and Maurice Kogan b a Department of Administration and Organisation Theory, University of Bergen, Christiesgate 17, Bergen N-5007, Norway. E-mail: ivar.bleiklie@aorg.uib.no b Professor Emeritus of Government, Brunel University, UK. The article analyses how the dominant ideals about the actual organizational patterns of university governance have changed over the past few decades away fromtheclassicalnotionoftheuniversityasarepublicofscholarstowardstheidea oftheuniversityasastakeholderorganization.Inthisarticle,wefirstlookatsome general supranational trends, often assumed to influence developments on a global scale. Then, we present some ideas about change processes in universities and academic organizations and analyse how they may help us understand how change may be promoted or limited by the characteristics of such processes. In the following section, we present some research findings about national variation regarding the extent to which changes have taken place in a comparative cross- national perspective. Finally, we discuss how change and variation may be understood in terms of the concept of higher education regimes. Higher Education Policy (2007) 20, 477–493. doi:10.1057/palgrave.hep.8300167 Keywords: governance; organization; organizational change; higher education institutions; higher education regimes Introduction The dominant ideals about the organization and governance of universities have changed over the last few decades. The way in which organizational and decision-makingstructureswithinuniversitiesarejustifiedareinformedbytwo broad set of ideas about university governance. According to the first, we may consider the university as a republic of scholars whereas the second regards the university as a stakeholder organization. In the former, institutional autonomy and academic freedom are seen as two sides of the same coin — which means that leadership and decision making are based on collegial decisions made by independentscholars.Inthelatter,institutionalautonomyisconsideredabasis for strategic decision making by leaders who are assumed to see it as their primary task to satisfy the interests of major stakeholders and where the voice of academics within the institutions is but one among several stakeholders. Academic freedom is therefore circumscribed by the interests of other stakeholders, and decision making is taking place within more hierarchical Higher Education Policy, 2007, 20, (477–493) r 2007 International Association of Universities 0952-8733/07 $30.00 www.palgrave-journals.com/hep