Revisiting the five problems of public sector organisations and reputation management—the perspective of higher education practitioners and ex-academics

Transformation trends in higher education in Europe and beyond have growingly adopted market-driven approaches of new public management (NPM) (Thynne 2013). It has been argued that transformations inspired by NPM have aroused debate and diverse expectations towards universities’ contributions to the surrounding societies (Kallio et al. 2016). Furthermore, other business-like models, such as branding and reputation management, have migrated into higher education among other marketisation trends, but challenges have also been reported (Aula and Tienari 2011; Aspara et al. 2014; Suomi et al. 2014; Aula et al. 2015). In particular, the growing interest in branding (e.g. Suomi 2014; Aula et al. 2015) and rankings (e.g. Kehm 2014) in institutional higher education markets (e.g. Czarniawska and Genell 2002; Hemsley-Brown 2011) has highlighted the importance of reputation in higher education. However, the concept of reputation is seldom applied in higher education research. In this study, we apply Alessandri et al.’s (2006, 261) definition of reputation as “perceptions of the organization shared by its multiple constituents over time” to study problems of reputation management in higher education.

This study is conducted in Finland, where universities have traditionally been guided by the Humboldtian idea of universities being national cultural institutions with autonomous and free-thinking scholars persuading a call for the universal values of knowledge and truth (Välimaa 2012; Kallio et al. 2017) and a basic research orientation (OECD 2002). In 2010, the University Act and the core funding model of the universities were introduced in Finland. These new reforms have motivated universities and academics to pursue quantifiable results (e.g. Kallio et al. 2017). Further, in 2014 a new transformation incentive was launched in terms of profiling and differentiating Finnish universities from one another (Tirronen 2015; Nuutinen et al. 2016; Academy of Finland 2018a, b). The rationale behind these transformations is to enhance national competitiveness and innovations in Finland and also in global terms (Haapakorpi 2017). Consequently, Finnish universities were left with little flexibility in choosing their strategic objectives (Kallio et al. 2016; Kivistö et al. 2017a, b). However, they were still left with autonomy in their internal management and strategies (Kallio and Kallio 2014). The number of study credits and degrees produced, and the number of publications, as well as the amount of external funding, have become the key performance indicators in the university funding scheme. Moreover, university employees’ salaries are increasingly determined by performance evaluations (Kallio et al. 2017). From the beginning of the 1990s, the share of so-called external funding has increased steadily from almost nothing to a recent 40% of the universities’ funding. External funding is competitive funding that is mostly derived from public sources such as the Academy of Finland or Business Finland (formerly called the Finnish Innovation Agency, TEKES). It is not a part of the funding derived from governments’ core funding model (Pekkola et al. 2015; Kallio et al. 2017; Suomi et al. 2019).

These transformations in higher education increase competition in academia (Ylijoki and Henriksson 2017), and thus they may create contradicting objectives for universities and academics (Kallio et al. 2016). Further, academics balance between, on one hand, meeting the surrounding societies’ needs in terms of fulfilling a university’s third mission by knowledge transfer and, on the other, simultaneously struggling with publishing research articles in highly ranked international journals as well as with taking care of their teaching loads (Ylijoki and Henriksson 2017). By “a university’s third mission” we refer here to “all activities concerned with the generation, use, application and exploitation of knowledge and other university capabilities outside academic environments” (Molas-Gallart and Castro-Martínez 2007, 321). Naturally, problems arise when these contradicting needs are simultaneously pursued with limited resources (Ylijoki and Ursin 2013; Suomi et al. 2014; Suomi et al. 2019).

As the discussion above shows, many of these contradictions relate to the fact that Finnish universities belong to the realm of the public sector. Indeed, in their conceptual study, Wæraas and Byrkjeflot (2012) reported five particular problems related to reputation management in the public sector organisations: politics, consistency, charisma, uniqueness and excellence. Further, Suomi et al. (2014) reported problems or dilemmas in reputation management in higher education, but they focused on the educational programme level, suggesting that more empirical research on the field would be useful, concentrating not only on different types of educational programmes but also on different universities. Aula and Tienari (2011), Aspara et al. (2014) and Aula et al. (2015) focused on reputation-building in a university merger.

This study continues by focusing on problems of reputation management in higher education, expanding the view from individual programmes and universities to more holistic scrutiny in the higher education sector. That being said, the purpose of this study is to examine whether and how the problems of reputation management occur in public higher education. We use the categorisation introduced by Wæraas and Byrkjeflot (2012) as a basis for our data analysis. The categorisation of Wæraas and Byrkjeflot (2012) was adopted in this study because it elaborates problems of reputation management in the public sector at the organisational level. However, Wæraas and Byrkjeflot (2012) neither gathered empirical evidence nor concentrated on any particular public sector context. In short, the study applies a typology of reputation management problems in the public sector to the context of publicly funded higher education.

In this study, 40 semi-structured interviews were analysed to further our understanding of universities’ reputation management problems. The interviews were gathered from a group that has been largely neglected in previous studies: doctorates who have exited academia, or ex-academics (see also Suomi et al. 2019). To the knowledge of the authors, prior literature has not covered the perceptions of university reputations as perceived by academic workers who have exited academia and transferred to other sectors to work. In addition to ex-academics, interviewees also included their employers and university leadership. In the study, we follow Wæraas and Byrkjeflot’s (2012) suggestion that future research seek to determine the extent of reputation management problems and how they may vary across contexts. Examining the content of these problems in depth in higher education should thus provide beneficial knowledge not only for academics, but also for practitioners, so that they can identify the sources of the reputation problems and thus be better prepared for them. As Wæraas and Byrkjeflot (2012) note, a strong reputation may be beneficial for a public organisation in times of scarce resources and rising public expectations, and it is also beneficial in terms of retaining power and independence. One compelling reason for studying problems of reputation management in Finnish higher education is that although the Finnish education system has traditionally had a strong reputation, for example in terms of being equal and thus accessible for students irrespective of their social background, place of residence or family wealth, the university sector has experienced major reforms in recent years (e.g. Kallio et al. 2016; Suomi 2015).

The remainder of the study is organised as follows. First, academic literature on reputation and its management is reviewed. Second, reputation management in the public sector is discussed. Then, methodology and empirical analysis are described. After that, the results of the study are discussed. Finally, the study ends with conclusions, limitations and suggestions for future studies.

The empirical data was gathered between May and November 2017 with 40 semi-structured interviews (see Appendix) as a part of a larger research project in Finland. The interviewees formed three different groups: 1) doctoral degree holders who had academic work experience, as well as work experience from some other sector; 2) representatives of university management (deans, vice-rectors and board members of Finnish universities); and 3) HR and senior-level managers in public and private sector organisations who recruit and employ doctoral degree holders. Purposive sampling and “snowball sampling” (Bernard 2000, pp. 179–180) were applied in selecting the interviewees. All interviewees were first contacted via e-mail or phone and asked to participate in the study. All contacted persons agreed to participate. Semi-structured interviews were conducted, lasting 45–80 min. The interviews were recorded and transcribed to help in the analysis and enhance the reliability of the result (Silverman 2001; Patton 2002).

The selection criteria of the first interviewee group (N-18) comprised the following three criteria. Firstly, the interviewee had to have work experience from a Finnish university. Secondly, the interviewee had to be a doctoral degree holder in either social or technical sciences (in this study, the social sciences also include business sciences). The third condition was that an interviewee also had to have working experience in some sector other than university. In total, the interviewees had working experience at eight universities.

In selecting the second interviewee group, the Finnish universities’ internet homepages played a key role. The interviewees include seven deans and four vice-rectors. In addition, interviewees include three senior-level executives (two university board members and one senior administrator). Overall, the 14 interviewees in the second group represent four universities in total and both technical (“hard”) and social (“soft”) sciences.

The third participant group consists of eight interviewees (seven human resource managers and one CEO) from both public and private organisations that have employed doctoral degree holders. The organisations comprise four Finnish universities, a large state-owned foundation, a large municipality, a consulting firm and a large multinational company.

As mentioned, the data for the study was collected within a larger research project. Thus, the analysis of the data can be considered an iterative process. The pre-understanding of the literature on the concept of reputation and its management led the authors to notice that much of what the interviewees reported related to reputation management, particularly in terms of detected problems related to it (Silverman 2001; see also Kuoppakangas 2015; see also Suomi et al. 2019). Thus, it was decided to revisit the empirical data through the literature on reputation, and particularly the categorisation provided by Wæraas and Byrkjeflot (2012). Consequently, the three above-mentioned participant groups allowed us to further our understanding of problems of reputation management in higher education from different angles. The 40 interviews can be considered comprehensive qualitative data (c.f. Creswell 1998; Guest et al. 2006), which resulted in data saturation when the interviewees provided repeatedly similar answers and no new information to complement the previously collected data was supplied (Patton 2002; Marshall and Rossman 2006). The current study concentrates on the answers to the following three questions as a part of a larger interview protocol. The interviewees were asked 1) whether academia’s and the surrounding society’s needs are dividing or unifying and to explain the rationale behind their answers; 2) what obstacles might occur in meeting academia’s and surrounding societies’ needs as regards knowledge transfer between academia and other sectors; and 3) what changes should occur in order to support successful knowledge transfer between universities and other sectors. Thus, neither reputation nor reputation management was used in the interview protocol as a term per se, as studying reputation management and related problems was not the initial aim of the larger research project. As is typical in a qualitative study, we decided to ask new questions of the data, here, by employing the lenses of the reputation management literature. Reanalysing qualitative data “allows both for reinterpretations and also for new questions of the data. New themes can be studied” (Corti and Thompson 2007, 302). All three questions and their answers are equally important in presenting and discussing the five problems of reputation management.

The empirical data collected from the three interviewee groups was analysed for the current study with a thematic qualitative approach with abductive logic, going back and forth between theory and the empirical data (e.g. Dubois and Gadde 2002) in the following five phases. In the first phase, the transcriptions of the interviews were read several times, bearing in mind the purpose of the study (Silverman 2011). During the second phase, topics of importance were detected and arranged into data-driven themes. In the third phase, the arranged themes were scrutinised by coding, in other words, finding relevant frequently repeated terms, words, phrases and sentences. In the fourth phase, resulting from the coding process, numerous key topics were recognised and further constructed into the key themes (Silverman 2011). Drawing from the content analysis, in the fifth phase, the key themes were reconstructed into the categories following the five problems in reputation management in public sector organisations detected by Wæraas and Byrkjeflot (2012).

Importantly, the categories represent collectively the three participant groups of this study, including both hard and soft sciences; thus, none of the categories are solely based on just one participant group’s interviews. The authentic quotations are presented to demonstrate the richness of the data and to enhance validity of the findings (Silverman 2001). All the quotations were translated from Finnish to English. In order to ensure the interviewees’ anonymity, they were labelled with I (as an interviewee) and a number (from 1 to 40). Next, the five problems of reputation management of public sector organisations, and how they occur in the university context, are reported.

The purpose of this study was to examine whether and how the problems of reputation management occur in public higher education. In this, Wæraas and Byrkjeflot’s (2012) categorisation of five problems of public sector organisations and reputation management was adopted as a basis for the analysis. The five problems relate to politics, consistency, charisma, uniqueness and excellence. In order to respond to the purpose of the study, 40 semi-structured interviews altogether were qualitatively analysed. The interviews were carried out with 1) doctoral degree holders with work experience from academia and other sectors, 2) representatives of university management and 3) people employing doctorates outside academia, to see how these groups make sense of universities’ problems of reputation management.

All five reputation problems were detected in the context of higher education, and they are partially connected and overlapping with each other (see also Wæraas and Byrkjeflot 2012). Table 1 summarises the empirical findings of the study. After that, each problem is briefly discussed.

The politics problem was evident in the empirical data because Finnish universities are publicly steered and funded (Kivistö et al. 2017a, b). The government and the Ministry of Education and Culture play the key role of pushing universities to meet the diverse needs of non-academic stakeholders (Kallio et al. 2016). University reform, budget cuts to universities’ core funding and a very strong performance orientation in the provision of core funding have created a new reality for academic work. Additional external funding instruments, such as those employed by Business Finland, support knowledge transfer between universities and private, public and third sector organisations (see also e.g. Stenvall and Laitinen 2015), though university performance measurement still fails to measure the societal impact of research. The reputation problem arises when the needs and expectations of universities and non-academic stakeholders do not meet. This problem seems to be somewhat less recognised within the technology, business and medical disciplines, but nevertheless, all of the interviewees discussed the matter and found it problematic for universities’ reputations. Although the core missions of universities, teaching and basic research, are still officially unchanged, the surrounding societies’ expectations towards universities have shifted to vaster demand (see also Kallio et al. 2016). Discrediting of academics by high-level politicians in Finland seems to be connected to a lack of understanding of the nature of academic work and the role of basic research in building long-term wealth and knowledge in society (see also Wæraas and Byrkjeflot 2012). This degrading is naturally likely to hurt the reputations of universities and academics alike, particularly if it remains unchanged.

As regards the consistency problem, the empirical data implies that balancing between staying true to universities’ original Humboldtian identity and wiggling between the political pressures, is bound to produce contradicting aims, which is harmful to universities’ reputation (see also Kallio et al. 2016). Hence, this is in line with Wæraas and Byrkjeflot (2012, 196), who argued that public sector organisations must often deal with ranges of values that are conflicting and inconsistent. The empirical data indicates that universities’ original identity has been questioned by politicians and stakeholders outside academia. However, to hold positive reputation, universities must clarify their stances towards their original mission: that is, their values, identity and self-presentation (Wæraas and Byrkjeflot 2012). Many Finnish academics agree on the original Humboldtian identity of the university; however, due to the transformation and political pressures, academics are re-evaluating their values (Välimaa 2012; Kallio et al. 2016). The question is, therefore, to what extent should academics adapt their behaviours according to external pressures (see also Ylijoki and Ursin 2013)?

In this study, it was also found that there are two different groups of academics, based on whether they have permanent work contracts or fixed-term contracts, which are often short (see also Pekkola et al. 2015). These two groups are likely to face different challenges and expectations, at least to some extent, and they may thus communicate the university’s identity inconsistently to stakeholders. The permanent faculty members often present themselves as teachers or research-lead teachers, and those with fixed-term contracts present as researchers who are more collaborative with external stakeholders. Earlier research has scrutinised changing careers of early-career researchers with fixed-term contracts at universities (Pekkola et al. 2015; Aarnikoivu et al. 2019). This study discusses academic employees’ fixed-term contracts as well; it considers them to be problematic in terms of reputation management in higher education, as they maintain the consistency problem. Academics in Finland find the balance related to monetary incentives to challenge and often contradict their values (Kivistö et al. 2017a). However, the state funding is taxpayers’ money, and therefore the owners’ expectations for universities’ contributions and services to surrounding society can be seen as legitimate. On the other hand, academic freedom may result in added value to the society in the long term.

Further, the above discussion takes us to the charisma problem in the context of higher education, where the failure to create good feeling, admiration, respect and trust is at the core of the problem. Hence, when universities answer to the surrounding society’s needs, they may create positive reputation. Here, the NPM-influenced performance measurement of universities are in line with Wæraas and Byrkjeflot (2012), who explained how the NPM methods have been introduced to promote the efficiency of the public sector, and they might enhance charisma and build positive reputation accordingly. However, our results imply that NPM methods, and performance measurement in particular, are in fact directing the university work more towards journal publications than toward collaboration with stakeholders outside academia (Kallio et al. 2016). Due to long processes required in publishing research in journals and publications’ theoreticality, researchers may be considered to be slow and isolated within an “ivory tower”, which is likely to retain the charisma problem related to universities’ reputation management.

Creating common language and communication between universities and stakeholders outside academia helps to build understanding, trust and respect. However, different operational cultures in terms of critical and analytical thinking in academia and more straightforward decision-making in other sectors, particularly in the private sector, creates challenges for finding a common language (see also Styhre and Lind 2010). Finding ways of improving communication of research projects in a timely manner with policymakers and other relevant stakeholders at different stages of the projects might help in reconciling such situations. The empirical data suggests that if they are asked for advice from stakeholders in outside academia, researchers may provide research results but seldom explain how to apply them into practice. This tends to create disappointment in stakeholders instead of good feeling, and thus it hurts reputations of universities and academics alike. According to Wæraas and Byrkjeflot (2012), the charisma problem in public sector organisations also occurs in connection with media culture and news. It is common that negative rather than positive news is noticed by media. However, universities also receive positive media attention, for example as regards research breakthroughs and Nobel Prize wins, and such media coverage builds positive reputation for the fields of higher education in question.

At its best, successful collaborations in research and development projects with businesses provides legitimacy for universities. Our empirical data suggests that such endeavors serve the surrounding society in knowledge transfer and build positive reputation for universities. Although such projects rarely produce journal publications of high impact, or they are harder to achieve than in fully academic basic research projects, they are still valuable in terms of building good feeling, admiration, respect and trust. It goes without saying that unsuccessful collaboration in projects, in turn, may jeopardise a university’s reputation. When expectations and experience of stakeholders do not meet, it is likely to hurt a university’s reputation. As Wæraas and Byrkjeflot (2012) mention, public sector organisations seldom can choose their consumers or partners. However, in higher education, the situation appears to differ from many other public sector organisations (e.g. tax offices, public health and social care). Although there is a policy of equal access to higher education in Finland (Suomi 2015; Kallio et al. 2016), students are chosen based on their success in entrance exams or in the matriculation exam at the end of their studies in an upper secondary school. In addition, collaboration projects with surrounding society are often based on mutual interests of academics and stakeholders outside academia. Thus, it seems that universities have more options and freedom in choosing their customers and collaboration partners than do many other public organisations (see also Rüegg 2004; Kallio et al. 2016).

Turning to the uniqueness problem, public sector organisations may find it challenging to search for differentation since they are traditionally expected to be similar in order to be legitimate (Wæraas and Byrkjeflot 2012). However, our results show that Finnish universities are growingly differentiating their core strategic focus and thus profiling differently from one another (Academy of Finland 2018a, b). Such a phenomenon has been seen globally in higher education, and it has been recently introduced as a political incentive in Finland (e.g. Tirronen 2015; Academy of Finland 2018a, b). Further, the main incentive is the core funding of the universities, which is coercively pushing universities to differentiate, specialise and build heterogeneous profiles (e.g. Tirronen 2015). Competing for uniqueness raises solidarity questions in universities, because academics are more reluctant to share information and ideas with each other in a competitive situation, and this is in contradiction with universities’ traditional moral symbols, such as openness, trust and care (Christensen and Gornitzka 2017). However, it is yet to be seen how profiling activities will affect Finnish higher education.

Scholars have discussed the Finnish government’s “Harvard Here” in a pursuit of creating a “world-class” university by injecting funding into one merged university in the capital of Finland (Aarrevaara et al. 2009; Aarrevaara and Dobson 2016). Further, “merger mania” describes the intense push for university mergers in a search for improved efficiency and effectiveness by diminishing the university network in Finland (Aarrevaara and Dobson 2016). However, worries about smaller rural universities’ survival is relevant. Moreover, contradictions and controversies may occur because of mergers, and accordingly rebranding processes may face internal resistance and conflicts (see also Wæraas and Solbakk 2009; Aspara et al. 2014; Aula et al. 2015), which is likely to have negative impact on a university’s reputation, particularly if it becomes visible by stakeholders outside academia (see also Suomi and Järvinen 2013).

The universities’ profiling policy is also connected to the excellence problem to some extent. Reputation is a relative construct where organisations are compared and ranked against each other (e.g. Rindova et al. 2005; Wæraas and Byrkjeflot 2012). It may well be, for example, that students find it more appealing to receive a degree from one of the “reputable” universities in a particular field than from a lower-ranked university with a less specified focus (see also Engwall 2007), however, the students may not know exactly what rankings hold inside (e.g. Vidaver-Cohen 2007). Further, the empirical data of this study implicates the universities’ wiggly funding scheme, which does not support turning fixed-term work contracts into permanent ones. Academic employees who have been placed in fixed-term contracts are living under uncertainty, which seems to create stress, tension and disappointments (Aarnikoivu et al. 2019; Pekkola et al. 2015; see also Ylijoki and Henriksson 2017).

This study contributes theoretically to the academic literature on reputation management in the public sector by applying Wæraas and Byrkjeflot’s (2012) categorisation of five problems of reputation management in public sector organisations to higher education. As Wæraas and Byrkjeflot’s (2012) categorisation was solely conceptual, this study expands our understanding of the topic by analysing a comprehensive set of qualitative data from Finnish higher education to describe the dynamics in the public sector. All five reputation problems were detected in the data. The study provides empirical evidence derived from semi-structured interviews on the content of problems in higher education and discusses related recent transformations in higher education. As such, the study provides novel insights into and perceptions of a previously under-researched group in reputation management: ex-academics, their employers and representatives of university leadership (see also Suomi et al. 2019).

It can be concluded that the politics problem is fundamental in the higher education context and closely related to all other reputation problems (see also Wæraas and Byrkjeflot 2012). In terms of reputation management, one of the most problematic matters appears to be knowledge transfer and applicability of research into practice, as it is not supported by the current funding model of universities or related performance measurement of academic employees. The challenge related to knowledge transfer cross-cuts all five problems from different angles.

The study provides further understanding on the current division between employees with permanent and fixed-term contracts in universities (Pekkola et al. 2015; Aarnikoivu et al. 2019; see also Ylijoki and Henriksson 2017). This division is likely to create tension and competition between academic colleagues and thus problems for reputation management as regards the consistency problem (see also Suomi and Järvinen 2013). Further, it appears that academic freedom has somewhat diminished after NPM methods were introduced to universities (see also Ylijoki and Ursin 2013; Kallio et al. 2016). A conclusion could be drawn, in line with Wæraas and Solbakk (2009), that trying to eliminate the reputation problems may lead to other problems, such as solidarity problems, as the example of the current push for profiling in Finnish higher education implies.

The empirical contribution of the study lies in its use of comprehensive and rich qualitative data with a fresh perspective, focusing on doctorates who have exited academia and their employers and university leadership. The key empirical findings, which are structured in Table 1, summarise the findings and serve as a basis for future research in the field and beyond the Finnish context.

With respect to policy implications, we suggest that the Ministry of Education and Culture and policymakers might re-evaluate the universities’ performance measurement to better meet the needs of the surrounding societies. Positive – not to mention excellent – reputation is hard to attain with the contradicting expectations that universities currently face. In order to build and maintain positive reputation, universities themselves will have to re-evaluate their Humboldtian core mission, research and education, and how it is situated in contributing to the contemporary societies’ needs.

Further, the current policy of profiling in higher education, if successful, may enhance clarifying identities of universities’ identities. Strong identity builds charisma and uniqueness among other players in the higher education field. However, in a global comparison, Finnish universities are rather unknown and small players; thus, joint marketing efforts might yield better results in attracting international students than efforts of individual universities.

The study suggests that managers in higher education should acknowledge that a university’s reputation can only be as good as its reputation among its employees (Suomi et al. 2014). Indeed, universities should consider their internal reputation among academics as important as the external one, because academics play a critical role in building a university’s external reputation and brand, not only at their workplace, but also through interactions with families, friends and networks (e.g. Morokane et al. 2016). Thus, academics’ support and trust is essential in building positive reputation for a university. Further, we suggest that managers in higher education focus on reducing the duality between different types of university workers, as this duality threatens universities’ reputations in general and consistency in particular.

This study focuses on the problems of reputation management in higher education in the Nordic country of Finland. Thus, the results of the study should be applicable to other Nordic countries with similar public higher education systems (see e.g. Hansen et al. 2019). As regards future studies, it would be valuable to evaluate the outcomes of universities’ profiling activities in terms of reputation management, because it is too early to do so yet. Further studies concentrating on other educational systems and cultures, to see whether they come up with differing results, could prove beneficial. Further, as Wæraas and Byrkjeflot’s (2012) categorisation was conceptual, further empirical studies could expand the research beyond higher education to other public sector contexts.