The university: a multinational corporation?

Traditionally there has been a stark contrast between ‘cathedrals of learning’ (universities) and ‘cathedrals of earning’ (corporations). In the last few decades, however, it has been increasingly argued that university organizations need to be more similar to corporations and that there should be greater interaction between universities and corporations. Arguments along these lines have been put forward by politicians as well as business people, and have appeared in the literature of the sociology of science [1–3]. A signifi cant development after the Second World War was the global expansion of multinational corporations, which in the 1960s and the 1970s aroused considerable debate [4,5]. These corporations were called into question because of their power in relation to nation states and employees. With the passage of time, this criticism has ceased in the wake of deregulation of markets and the ensuing internationalization of the world economy. This, in turn, has led to renaming of the multinationals. Nowadays they are often called global or ‘transnational’ corporations [6]. In a sense, they have even become role models for other types of organization through their obvious capacity to operate worldwide in a deregulated environment. Since universities have always been highly international in their orientation and now are encountering strong pressure to behave like corporations, it is appropriate to examine whether they can be considered as multinational corporations. To answer this question, it is fi rst necessary to analyse whether they have characteristics similar to or different from corporations, and then to examine to what extent they are multinational. The following sections of this chapter will elaborate on these two issues, followed by a fi nal section presenting conclusions and implications.