Parallel to the increasing level of maturity of the field of research on higher education, an increasing number of scholarly works aims at synthesising and presenting overviews of the field. We identify three important pitfalls these previous studies struggle with, i.e. a limited scope, a lack of a content-related analysis, and/or a lack of an…

This article explores the factors affecting the content of universities' mission statements. We conceptualize missions as identity narratives, a type of symbolic representation of an organization. Based on the literature on organizational identity we argue that universities need to address two major challenges when crafting their mission…

A study of Dutch universities from 1974-93 examined factors in the emergence of new academic programs and specializations, particularly the effects of government funding mechanisms (external factor) and level of paradigmatic development (internal factor), drawing on social exchange and resource dependency theory. Results indicate these two factors…