How to Explain Academic Capitalism: A Mechanism-Based Approach

The full reference for this article is: Kaidesoja, Tuukka & Ilkka Kauppinen. 2014. How to Explain Academic Capitalism: A Mechanism-based Approach. In Cantwell, Brendan & Ilkka Kauppinen (eds) Academic Capitalism in the Age of Globalization, The Johns Hopkins University Press: Baltimore, 166186. How to Explain Academic Capitalism: A Mechanism-Based Approach Tuukka Kaidesoja and Ilkka Kauppinen Empirical studies on academic capitalism have mostly described the changing relations and blurring boundaries between universities, markets, and states in different contexts. This chapter asks whether it is possible to take one step further, to develop systematic causal explanations of this restructuring of the systems of higher education. Our goal is to propose an affirmative answer to this question by outlining a mechanism-based approach to social explanation and applying it to the phenomenon of academic capitalism. We also suggest that when we are explaining the emergence of academic capitalism, there is a need to investigate how globalization and academic capitalism are interrelated.1 Previous studies on academic capitalism have aimed to provide not only descriptions but also explanations. For example, in their book Academic Capitalism and the New Economy, Slaughter and Rhoades (2004) write: “we present a theory of academic capitalism that explains the processes by which colleges and universities are integrating with the new economy, shifting from a public good knowledge/learning regime to an academic capitalist knowledge/learning 10-1 regime” (7; emphasis added). They also identify several “processes by which universities integrate with the new economy” (14) as well as explicate an array of “mechanisms and behaviors that constitute an academic capitalist knowledge/learning regime” (15; emphasis added). Slaughter and Leslie (2001, 155) accordingly discuss various external and internal mechanisms through which concrete actors and organizational units have enacted or adapted to academic capitalism. They also write that, in comparison to competing theories that seek to explain recent changes in higher education, a theory of academic capitalism “focuses more clearly on mechanisms, enabling the identification of strategic points of change around which resistance can be mobilized” (156). Slaughter and Cantwell further extended this theory in 2012. One could thus argue not only that the explanatory theory of academic capitalism has already been developed, but also that this theory cites a number of social mechanisms and processes that are either constitutive of the academic capitalist knowledge/learning regime or have contributed to its emergence in various national contexts. Though we do not deny that the research literature on academic capitalism contains important sketches of those processes and mechanisms that have contributed to the shifts toward the academic capitalist knowledge/learning regime in various national contexts, we nevertheless suggest that the theory of academic capitalism can be further developed as an explanatory theory because Slaughter and Rhoades (2004) do not specify in what sense the theory of academic capitalism should be considered as explanatory, nor do they specify their concept of explanatory mechanism. It is also unclear what exactly is the phenomenon or range of phenomena of which this theory is supposed to explain. As we indicate below, there are also some conceptual ambiguities in this theory. The aim of this chapter is to advance explanatory research on academic capitalism by 10-2 outlining a methodological framework for that purpose. The framework we go on to develop is based on the concepts of social mechanism and the model of mechanism-based explanation. We do so by building on some recent methodological discussions on mechanism-based explanations in the philosophy of social sciences and historical sociology. Drawing on the existing research literature, we also illustrate how this framework could be applied to the phenomenon of academic capitalism. Before addressing these methodological issues, we take a closer look at some aspects of the theory of and empirical studies on academic capitalism. The Need for Explanatory Studies In many recent studies on academic capitalism (e.g., Slaughter and Leslie 2001; Slaughter and Rhoades 2004), the concept of academic capitalism performs a double role. First, it is used to refer to a collection of empirically identifiable behaviors, activities, practices, mechanisms, and processes that are conceived as objects of empirical study. Second, it functions as a name of the theory that aims to explain the emergence of these empirically identifiable phenomena that characterize the academic capitalist knowledge/learning regime. In our view, this ambiguity in the concept of academic capitalism involves a risk of confusing explanandum (a phenomenon to be explained) and explanans (factors that are cited in the explanation of the phenomenon) in explanatory studies on this topic. Such ambiguity is one of the reasons we believe that more precise and explicit articulation of the methodological ideas that could provide guidance for building of causal explanations is needed. In addition, though Slaughter and Rhoades (2004, 1) claim that the theory of academic capitalism is meant to provide an explanation for the recent restructuring of systems of higher education as well as for the blurring boundaries between universities, states, and markets, we 10-3 nevertheless argue that research literature on academic capitalism has so far been mostly descriptive. It has focused on identifying and characterizing recent trends and changes in universities and in their relations to other social systems. Some studies have also examined how these institutional changes have given rise to increasingly contradictory demands experienced by various groups of academic workers in universities (e.g., Ylijoki 2003). As a result, relatively few efforts have been made to provide causal explanations to these phenomena. In addition, while the theory of academic capitalism provides a set of interconnected theoretical concepts that are useful in conceptualizing the recent restructuring of higher education systems, it nevertheless does not provide methodologically conscious causal explanations for the emergence of academic capitalist knowledge/learning regimes in various contexts. There is nothing wrong with descriptive (in contrast to explanatory) studies in social sciences. Descriptive studies not only provide useful information for various practical purposes (e.g., policy making), but they are also often indispensable in identifying and specifying empirical phenomena that are worth explanatory studies as well as in providing empirical evidence that can be used in evaluations of the proposed explanations. Descriptive studies may also offer useful cues for the construction of tentative theoretical ideas and models about the explanatory mechanisms that have brought about empirically identified phenomena. Nevertheless, given the numerous descriptive studies that have addressed the phenomenon of academic capitalism in different contexts, we believe that the time is right to start developing more specific causal explanations to these empirically documented changes in higher education. As mentioned above, we acknowledge that there are some important explanations in the relevant research literature, but argue that these sketches can be fruitfully elaborated by using some fresh methodological ideas. 10-4 Because our point of departure is the mechanism-based model of explanation, something should said about the uses of the concept of mechanism in the academic capitalism literature (e.g., Slaughter and Leslie 2001; Slaughter and Rhoades 2004). In contrast to the notion of social mechanism developed below, the meaning of the term “mechanism” is typically left unspecified in the academic capitalist literature. It is also used rather ambiguously, as it refers to social entities and processes of various kinds. Slaughter and Leslie (2001), for example, specify a number of “external and internal mechanisms”—such as market contraction, increased competition, privatization, commercialization, deregulation of public entities, and interstitial organizational emergence—that involve “the enactment or adaptation of academic capitalism by concrete actors and organizational units” (155). Just like the concept of academic capitalism, these mechanisms have a double role in that some of them appear to constitute the phenomena that characterize the academic capitalist knowledge/learning regime while others could be seen as causal processes that have contributed to the emergence of this regime. Furthermore, Slaughter and Cantwell (2012) state that narratives, discourses, and social technologies are mechanisms that explain the emergence of academic capitalism. As we show below, our understanding of what constitutes an explanatory mechanism is different and more specific. In this chapter we try to disentangle the social mechanisms that constitute the academic capitalist knowledge/learning regime from the social mechanisms that have brought about the restructuration of higher education and universities, resulting in the rise of this regime. In order to do so, we first specify the nature of mechanism-based explanations and social mechanisms. Mechanism-Based Explanations and Social Mechanisms Recent decades have witnessed discussions on social mechanisms and mechanism-based 10-5 explanations in many contexts in the methodology and philosophy of the social sciences (for a review, see Hedström and Ylikoski 2010). These ideas have nevertheless received relatively little attention in the field of higher education studies (for an important exception, see Bastedo 2012). Here we try to change this situation by briefly introducing some of the ideas that we consider promising in the context of explanatory studies on academic capitalism. Sociologist Peter Hedström (2005) states that “the core idea behind the mechanism approach is that we explain not by evoking universal laws, or by identifying statistically relevant factors, but by specifying mechanisms that show how phenomena are brought about” (24). Mechanism-based explanations are thus different from covering-law explanations, as the former do not typically involve any general law statements, nor is the deductive form necessary to mechanism-based explanations (Hedström 2005, chap. 2; Hedström and Ylikoski 2010, 54–55; see also Bastedo 2012; Tilly 2001). Because social mechanisms are typically assumed to consist of interacting social actors and their activities, mechanism-based explanations are also regarded as alternatives to functionalist and structuralist explanations, which either abstract from the social actions of concrete social actors or see these actions as inevitable consequences of the larger social structures or systems. In addition, the model of mechanism-based explanation in the context of the social sciences is often connected to the Mertonian idea of middle-range theory (e.g., Hedström 2005), meaning that the mechanism-based approach is distinguished not only from “grand” social theories—which are often deemed too general, abstract, and conceptually ambiguous for explanatory purposes—but also from the tradition of correlation-based statistical “causal modeling,” which is criticized for its eclectic empiricism and tendency to replace real social actors with statistical variables (e.g., Hedström 2005, chaps. 1 and 5). Nevertheless, the 10-6 usefulness of statistical analysis in empirical testing of theories and models about social mechanisms cannot be denied. But what exactly are these social mechanisms that are said to bring about social phenomena? Drawing on Machamer, Darden, and Craver’s (2000) influential paper on mechanismbased explanations in biology, Hedström (2005) answers: “A social mechanism, as here defined, describes a constellation of entities and activities that are organized such that they regularly bring about a particular type of outcome” (25). Elsewhere, Hedström (2005, 2) makes it clear that in the case of social mechanisms the key entities and activities are social actors and their actions. Though this view is not included in his definition of social mechanism, as an advocate of methodological (or structural) individualism, Hedström makes an additional assumption that social actors in social mechanisms are always individual human beings. Mario Bunge’s account of social mechanisms rejects this methodologically individualist view. For Bunge (1997), a social mechanism is “a mechanism in a social system” (447). He also writes, “a social mechanism is a process involving at least two agents engaging in forming, maintaining, transforming, or dismantling a social system” (447). Social systems are in turn “composed of people and the artefacts they use to communicate” (Bunge 1998, 311), or, in the case of more complex social systems, they are composed of social subsystems. Furthermore, Bunge (1996) holds that all social systems are ultimately “held together (or torn asunder) by feelings (e.g., of benevolence or hatred), by beliefs (e.g., norms and ideals), by moral and legal norms, and above all by social actions such as sharing and cooperating, exchanging and informing, discussing and commanding, coercing and rebelling” (21; see also Bunge 2003; Kaidesoja 2013; Wan 2011). According to his CESM model of systems, every social system can be analyzed in terms of its Composition, Environment, (relational) Structure, and Mechanisms 10-7 (e.g., Bunge 2003, 35–36). He thus ties the concept of social mechanism to that of social system. Four things in Bunge’s (1996, 2003) view on social systems (see also Kaidesoja 2013; Wan 2011) should be emphasized: (1) social systems have ontologically emergent properties that their individual members lack and that are not mere ontological aggregates (or resultants) of the properties of the systems’ parts; (2) social systems are concrete and dynamical entities ultimately composed of people and their artifacts; (3) social systems are inherently dynamical entities that continuously interact with their changing social (and natural) environments (including other social systems), meaning that the members, structures, environments, boundaries, and functions of social systems tend to change over time; and (4) social systems not only interact with but also intersect each other, in the sense that most people living in modern societies are members of more than one social system at the same time. Examples of emergent properties of social systems include the relational structure, norms, institutions, and cohesion of a system. According to Bunge (2003), emergent properties of this kind are not unexplainable mysteries because they are dependent on the properties of the parts of these systems as well as their mutual relations and interactions. They therefore can be explained in terms of the properties, relations, and interactions of the components of the system as well as, at least in some cases, in terms of their relations and interactions with their environment. But explanations of this kind do not eliminate the properties that have been explained from our social ontology, as “explained emergence is still emergence” (Bunge 2003, 21). Hence Bunge advocates a weak (or rationalist) variety of the concept of emergent property that should be distinguished from the strong forms of this concept because the latter deny the possibility to scientifically explain emergent properties of social systems. What is more important in this chapter is that there are two points separating Bunge’s 10-8 understanding of social mechanisms from that of Hedström’s. Bunge holds that (1) every social mechanism exists in some social system and (2) there are social mechanisms not just at the level of interacting individual human beings but also at the level of interacting collective actors, such as organizations (see Wan 2011). Both of these views run counter to the methodological individualism advocated by Hedström (2005). Bunge’s (1997) ideas on mechanism-based explanations suggest that, from the viewpoint of theory development, the most interesting social mechanisms recur in many social systems. Hence, though he tends to equate mechanisms with concrete processes, Bunge’s (2004) concept of social mechanism is meant to explicate the causal interaction structures that a certain class of social systems shares and that drives systems of this kind—or “makes them tick.” Furthermore, it can be expected that in all complex social systems composed of social subsystems there are many interacting and intersecting mechanisms operating at different levels of organization (Bunge 1997, 431; 2004, 193). According to Bunge (1997), it follows that “the mechanism of every major social change is likely to be a combination of mechanisms of various kinds coupled together” (417) and that “all unifactorial (in particular unicausal) explanations of social change are at best partial” (417–18). We believe that the best way to understand the concept of social mechanism is to combine some ideas from both of these views. Like Hedström (2005), we emphasize that social mechanisms consist of interrelated and interacting social actors and their activities in certain contexts, but deny his view that these actors should always be individual human beings. In addition to social mechanisms that are composed of interacting individuals, we maintain that there are important social mechanisms in which the core actors are concrete social systems (in Bunge’s sense), such as formal organizations.2 Hence social mechanisms can be said to exist at 10-9 different levels of organization in the social world depending on what type of entities they consist of. Following Bunge, we admit that many social mechanisms could be usefully construed as mechanisms of social systems (i.e., the interaction structures of social processes that result in the formation, sustenance, transformation, or dismantling of social systems) but deny that this point applies to all social mechanisms. In our assessment, his view that ties all social mechanisms to some social system is too limited for the purposes of developing mechanismbased explanations of social phenomena, as there appear to be interesting social mechanisms that are not necessarily connected to any specific (kind of) social system (Maynzt 2004, 243). Drawing selectively on both Hedström’s (2005) and Bunge’s ideas, we thus maintain that social mechanisms could be best understood as structures of interlinked actions or organized interactions of many social actors (either individuals or organized collectives) that drive social processes, and that these mechanisms may (but do not have to) be connected to some systemic context. Sometimes it is also necessary to pay attention to the artifacts that mediate the actions and communications between these social actors. In addition, unlike what is sometimes assumed in the social mechanism literature, we believe that the concept of social mechanism does not imply a commitment to any specific theory of action even though it highlights the importance of environmentally embedded social action in explanations of social phenomena (Kaidesoja 2012; Maynzt 2004). This understanding entails the possibility of utilizing conceptual resources of different action theories for different explanatory purposes and that, for some explanatory purposes, collectives (e.g., formal organizations) may be regarded as social actors. 10-10 Social Mechanisms Contributing to the Emergence of Academic Capitalism There are some plausible candidates for social mechanism that have contributed to the emergence of the academic capitalist knowledge/learning regime in the United States and elsewhere. Here we focus on social mechanisms that (1) are compatible with the previous characterization of this concept; (2) have been mentioned in, or assumed by, the existing research literature on academic capitalism (though not always termed social mechanisms); and (3) can be considered as explanatory mechanisms in the sense that they have participated in the causal generation of the academic capitalist knowledge/learning regime by restructuring higher education and universities in the United States as well as in other contexts. We suggest that there are at least four generic mechanisms that meet these requirements: global economic competition, coalition formation, legislation, and organization design (and redesign). Here we view narratives, discourses, and social technologies as components of social mechanisms of different kinds rather than as distinct social mechanisms (cf. Slaughter and Cantwell 2012) because we like to stress that interacting social actors of various kinds always (re)produce, circulate, and use these entities in order to achieve certain objectives or to pursue their interests—regardless of whether they are successful. It is also methodologically important to emphasize that narratives and discourses are often embedded in artifacts like strategy papers, reports, policy programs, university rules, and legislative texts generated and circulated by various social actors for various purposes. Insofar as we are interested in mechanism-based explanations of social phenomena, it is not enough to focus only on the abstract contents of these texts, but they should be rather seen as artifactual components of social systems and mechanisms of various kinds. 10-11 Global Economic Competition The rise of the neoliberalist ideology promoted by the Reagan and Thatcher administrations (among others), the collapse of the Soviet Union and its satellite countries, the end of Cold War, the deregulation of capital flows in and between many countries, as well as the invention and diffusion of new information and communication technology tools and infrastructures have all contributed to a new round of globalization of the capitalist economy that accompanied the intensification of the global economic competition. Intensified global economic competition in turn characterizes the social environment of higher education systems throughout the world. But how exactly should we understand the mechanism of global economic competition? In general terms, competition can be seen as a process whereby two or more social actors pursue the same scarce resource in mutually exclusive ways that over time result in the uneven distribution of this resource between the competing actors and the increased efficiency (in some respect) of the most successful actors (i.e., the winners of the competition). It is then possible to apply this abstract mechanism scheme to more concrete processes of competition, such as global economic competition between companies for market shares and profits in global markets or competition between states for drawing new investments and mobile economic capital to a country by means of creating institutional environments (e.g., in terms of a national innovation system and low taxation) that advance the competitiveness of companies in a country. These competition mechanisms could be further specified, for example, by relying on theories of global capitalism (e.g., Centeno and Cohen 2010; Robinson 2004; Sklair 2002). But all processes of competition are regulated by moral or legal norms (or both), which is what separates competition from war or violence. The processes of global economic competition related to global capitalism thus presuppose a historically created institutional framework. Though different mechanisms of 10-12 global economic competition could be further theoretically specified, here we nevertheless rely on more intuitive understandings of these mechanisms and consider their relation to academic capitalism. The mechanisms of economic competition between private companies (both national and transnational), regional industries, and national economies can be considered one of the key drivers of the development toward academic capitalism. Increasing economic competition between companies in global markets accompanied by the recent crises of global capitalism have created serious fiscal problems for rich industrial states, resulting in cuts to public spending as well as searches for new sources of revenues. Given the intensified global economic competition, current political climate, massification of higher education, and decreased budget funding, universities have been forced to search for new sources of external funding to cover their operational expenditures. They have also faced intensified expectations to contribute to the new knowledge-driven economy by means of more efficient commodification and commercialization of the results of scientific research and education services (see Rhoades, Maldonado-Maldonado, Ordorika, and Velásquez 2004; Slaughter and Cantwell 2012; Slaughter and Leslie 1997; Slaughter and Rhoades 2004). As discussed below, neoliberalist ideology and the related competitiveness narrative are essential elements in understanding how various social actors— who are responsible for science and education policy, university legislation, university administration, as well as applied research—responded to the outcomes of the increasing global economic competition. There are also competition mechanisms that characterize (or constitute) the academic capitalist knowledge/learning regime, including competition between universities for wealthy and bright students as well as for external funding and rankings, competition between 10-13 departments for budget funds and external funding, and competition between research teams and individual researchers for prestige and external funding. Also, many of these competition mechanisms are by nature transnational or even global (e.g., student markets; see chap. 14 in this volume). Creation, diffusion, and intensification of these types of competition mechanisms and respective markets that constitute the academic capitalist knowledge/learning regime, however, can be seen as consequences of the workings of the explanatory mechanisms that we have identified here rather than as generators of the institutional restructuring of higher education. For example, not only new legislation and regulation policies produced by powerful political coalitions but also designing (and redesigning) of both intermediating and interstitial organizations by academic and nonacademic actors have enabled universities to act more smoothly in various types of markets as well as to create new types of “academic quasi-markets” (e.g., building new kinds of funding mechanisms of universities that are based on the competition between departments in terms of their academic production). Nonetheless, for other explanatory purposes, these types of competition mechanisms may well be seen as explanatory. Coalition Formation Coalition formation can be defined generally as a process in which a temporal alliance or union between two or more individuals or groups is established for some specific purpose. Coalition formation between individuals or groups thus requires the creation of a shared representation of the aims of the coalition, which often demands compromises between parties. In order to achieve its intended aims (such as certain kind of new legislation), a coalition often draws upon the expertise (e.g., to identify the problem and to provide information) and framing skills (e.g., to 10-14 translate some specific issue into an instrument of policy making) of its members (see Sell and Prakash 2004). In the US context, Slaughter and Rhoades (1996, 2004, chap. 2) have analyzed the formation of the political competitiveness coalition that, according to their view, followed and partially intersected the Cold War<th>/<th>health war coalition. The competitiveness coalition was gradually formed during 1970s. Its aims were to: “(1) win control of global markets through privatization and commodification of intellectual property; (2) establish government subsidies for high-technology and producer services industries; and (3) move R&D, including university R&D, toward commercial science and technology” (Slaughter and Rhoades 1996, 314). According to their analysis, this coalition was composed not only of the Republican Party and most Democrats but also of state and local governments, universities (or certain groups within universities), and certain corporations (Slaughter and Rhoades 1996, 308). Profound changes in defense, health, agricultural, and insurance industries that facilitated the interests of companies to promote the new competitiveness coalition in R&D policy preceded the formation of this coalition (Slaughter and Rhoades 1996). In order to pursue these goals, the coalition rewrote “the narrative that privileged basic science” in a way that promoted “a more commercial science and technology” (Slaughter and Rhoades 1996, 307) in order to secure the competitiveness of the private companies in the United States. In the new competitiveness narrative, “knowledge was valued not for its own sake, or for what it might someday contribute to economic development, but for its contribution to the creation of products and processes for the market of the moment” (Slaughter and Rhoades 1996, 317). The coalition then employed this narrative as a source of reasons to publicly justify new legal reforms and university policies. As we shall see, the mechanism of coalition formation is 10-15 tightly interconnected to that of legislation. At the transnational level we can identify a formation of a similar competitiveness coalition within Europe in the 1980s. In crude terms, the key actors of this European-wide coalition were the transnational policy-making group European Round Table of Industrialists (ERT) and European political leaders (especially the European Commission). This coalition successfully promoted the competitiveness agenda and, more broadly, the Single European Market project (e.g., Bradanini 2009; van Apeldoorn 2000, 2002). And, just like in the case of US-based business leaders (see Slaughter and Rhoades 1996), the ERT was also reacting in many ways to destabilizing events, external threats, and perceived problems and challenges. In the European context, these included the advantages of both the United States and Japan in terms of university-industry collaboration, threats posed by the emerging East Asian economic competitors, and the fragmentation of European higher education. One of the aims of this coalition was to restructure European higher education in a way that would strengthen linkages between higher education and industry between and in European national states (Kauppinen forthcoming). This example nicely illustrates how a shift toward academic capitalism in Europe cannot be explained by referring only to the social mechanisms that take place within nationstate borders. Rather, we should remain open to the possibility that at least some of these social mechanisms are constituted across nation-state borders. The same applies to legislation. Legislation The legislation process proceeds somewhat differently depending on the context even though in most cases it has an identifiable interaction structure. In parliamentary democracies, legislation usually involves the following steps: (1) preparation of the legislation proposal; (2) a 10-16 parliamentary process that leads to either acceptance or rejection of the proposal; and (3) implementation of the accepted law. It also typically involves state agencies, political parties, and lobbyists (e.g., interest organizations) of various kinds. As emphasized by Slaughter and Rhoades (1996, 2004), many of the laws that enabled and created new opportunities for academic capitalist activities and practices in US universities were supported by a bipartisan coalition in the Congress that was receptive to the competitiveness narrative. They also importantly indicate that, although the congressional coalition that “legislated the privatization and commercialization of federal research” was “bipartisan, it was political” (Slaughter and Rhoades 2004, 229). “The coalition drew together Democrats and Republicans who worked with the business class . . . to develop neoliberal policies that fostered privatization, deregulation, and commercialization under state auspices and with state support” (Slaughter and Rhoades 2004, 229). So there is an important connection between the mechanisms of coalition formation and legislation. In general, empirical studies on academic capitalism have focused on “national and international legislation, treaties, and trade agreements that create opportunities for academic capitalism in postsecondary education” (Slaughter and Rhoades 2004, 35) as well as in research universities (Slaughter and Rhoades 2004, chaps. 2 and 3). For example, legislation that pertains to US academic capitalism at federal, state, and international scales includes the following laws (for a more complete list, see Slaughter and Rhoades 1996, 317): • 1980 Public Law 65<H>517, the Bayh-Dole Act, and Reagan’s 1983 memo on government patent policy; • 1984 Public Law 98<H>462, National Cooperative Research Act; • 1988 Public Law 100<H>418, Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act; 10-17 • 1993 Public Law 103<H>182, North American Free Trade Agreement; and • 1994 Public Law 103<H>465, General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.</BL> Similar legislative changes have been discussed in other national contexts. As already noted, however, it is not only national legislation that has contributed directly or indirectly to the shift toward academic capitalism, but also international legislation. For instance, the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights agreement of the World Trade Organization (WTO) facilitated universities’ patenting activities, and hence a shift toward academic capitalism, in WTO member countries because it strengthened the protection of intellectual property (IP) and broadened the category of IP (Kauppinen 2012). Various studies have revealed how the promotion of this agreement was a transnational process and that some of the main actors in this respect were transnational corporations (e.g., Braithwaite and Drahos 2000; Kauppinen 2012; Sell 2003). Also, this example suggests that methodological nationalism is an inadequate framework to explain a shift toward academic capitalism both in some particular nation-state and a region (e.g., Europe). As Slaughter and Rhoades (1996, 323–24) indicate, the legislation mechanism is related to the mechanisms of organization design and redesign: new legislation that promoted the competitiveness of US companies by removing the barriers of fluid capital from the boundaries between private, nonprofit, and public organizations enabled the emergence of new types of intermediating organizations between universities and markets, which in turn blurred the boundaries between universities, markets, and states (see Slaughter and Rhoades 2004, chap. 2). Legislation may thus be understood as one of the most important social mechanisms contributing to academic capitalism in the United States as well as at the transnational scale (e.g., restructuring European higher education), as new legislation enabled and stimulated the 10-18 emergence of novel organizations, activities, and practices that characterize academic capitalism. Organization Design and Redesign The creation of intermediating and interstitial organizations is one of the key elements of the theory of academic capitalism. These organizations promote and create policies, practices, and activities that characterize the academic capitalist knowledge/learning regime, as well as blur the boundaries between markets, state, and universities (Slaughter and Rhoades 2004). Here we emphasize that intermediating and interstitial organizations have been all designed in the sense that they did not emerge spontaneously. Rather, they were intentionally established by means of design plans, policies, and blueprints developed by specific social actors in order to secure and increase external resources of their universities in competition against other universities. Some of these organizations were also generated by redesigning previously existing organizations within universities. Though we regard design and redesign of organizations as important social mechanisms contributing to the emergence of the academic capitalist knowledge/learning regime, we emphasize that the implementation of the plans, policies, and blueprints of designers tend to produce both intended and unintended consequences. In other words, it is an empirical matter to what extent the designed organizations have succeeded to meet their designers’ objectives and what kind of unexpected side effects the workings of these organizations have brought about. In addition, particular aims and plans of designers do not come out of the thin air, but institutional and cultural environments have a rather heavy influence. For this reason, we also address some mechanisms that mold the entire organizational field through affecting the activities and plans of 10-19 organization designers. Social mechanisms operating at the level of organizational fields have been discussed under the institutional isomorphism literature. They are typically invoked in explanations of why organizations of certain kind, such as universities, tend to become structurally similar to each other within a particular organizational field (e.g., DiMaggio and Powell 1983). These wellknown mechanisms can be labeled as mechanisms of coercion, mimesis, and attraction (Beckert 2010; DiMaggio and Powell 1983). In the case of European and Latin American higher education systems, for example, many designers of new higher education organizations (and redesigners of the old systems) imitated the organizations and policies of US universities (cf. mimesis) that they considered successful as well as tried to translate them to meet the requirements of local institutional contexts (cf. coercion; see Rhoades et al. 2004; Slaughter and Cantwell 2012). We do not assume that these mechanisms necessarily push higher education organizations toward homogenization; however (following Beckert 2010), those same mechanisms (depending on conditions) may also lead toward divergence and, in this case, divergent organizational ways to adopt and participate in those networks and activities that characterize academic capitalism. This assumption is in line with the idea that there is not just one but many types of academic capitalism (e.g., Slaughter and Leslie 1997; Slaughter and Rhoades 2004). Furthermore, we assume this divergence can be found both between and within nation-states. We also include a fourth mechanism to the previous list—competition between organizations (see Beckert 2010)—that may or may not contribute to academic capitalism in various contexts, as competitive pressures can lead either to the homogenization or diversification of organizations in a field depending on the interpretations of the designers (and 10-20 redesigners) of the organizations in different contexts. It may also contribute to the hybridization of academic capitalism in various national contexts because the competition may lead to the (re)design of “diverse political-legal rules and organizational models that allow for niches” (Beckert 2010, 160) in which universities may specialize. The key here is that mechanisms operating at the level of organizational fields can trigger and influence organization design and redesign.3 The questions of under which conditions these mechanisms would contribute to the homogenization and when heterogenization would occur are fundamentally empirical. Organizations that are developed in some African, Asian, or European countries do not have to be exact copies of the organizations found in the United States in order to qualify as organizational examples of academic capitalism. Just as it makes sense to speak about various capitalist economic systems, it makes sense to consider varieties of academic capitalism and respective organizations for numerous reasons (e.g., differences in regulatory environment). Moreover, social technologies, such as European-level benchmarking (e.g., Slaughter and Cantwell 2012) and global university rankings, can help produce structural similarity by advancing competition through identifying what types of universities are successful in global competition over prestige. As far as these university types are successful not only in terms of how prestigious they seem but also in terms of operating in markets or interacting with market actors (either nationally or transnationally), one might suggest that there are regionally or even globally affective mechanisms (e.g., competition and “soft” coercion) that tend to encourage academic capitalism at organizational levels in different countries and regions. In such cases, organizational (re)designers are both pushed and pulled toward certain types of solutions. Furthermore, as has been well documented by empirical research on academic capitalism (e.g., 10-21 Rhoades et al. 2004; Slaughter and Cantwell 2012), international organizations such as the European Union, International Monetary Fund, Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development, and WTO have also had a major impact on the diffusion of specific designs, policies, and strategies of organizations that aim to promote the academic capitalist knowledge/learning regime in different contexts. These processes thus provide an explanation of the partial isomorphism of education institutions in different contexts (e.g., in different European countries). Mechanisms of the design and redesign of particular organizations are neither morally nor politically neutral (see Bunge 1998, part B). Design plans and policies for new organizations as well as for organizational reforms, instead of being mere technocratic matters, are always based on designers’ (or redesigners’) conceptions of the proper structure, goals, and social functions of the organization under design, which have their origins in the social and institutional environments of the designers. Individuals whose moral and political views differ from the designers often contest these conceptions. In addition, design policies and plans for new organizations typically define the norms and rules that the members of these organizations are expected to follow in their social actions and interactions. These norms and rules may also be enforced by designed incentives, sanctions, and social technologies (e.g., systems of quality control) that are supposed to guide and regulate the behaviors of the organization’s members. Not all relevant parties have equal opportunities to affect the formulation of design (or reform) policies and plans (and the same applies, of course, to legislation). Three types of designed organizations characterizing academic capitalism and their design mechanisms are particularly instructive. First, the design of “intermediating organizations external to universities that promote closer relations between universities and markets” 10-22 (Slaughter and Cantwell 2012, 585) has contributed to the emergence of academic capitalism in various contexts. Organizations like the Business-Higher Education Forum (United States); Carnegie Commission on Science, Technology, and Government (United States); ERT (Europe); and Higher Education-Business Forum (European Union) were all designed (or redesigned) to promote and lobby neoliberal ideology as well as to reshape the political agenda with respect to higher education and its functions in society (Slaughter and Cantwell 2012).4 Second, another important part of the restructuring of higher education has been the design of “interstitial organizations that emerge from within universities that intersect various market oriented projects” (Slaughter and Cantwell 2012, 585). For example, technology transfer offices were designed to establish patent policies for universities as well as to promote patenting of research discoveries and emergence of spin-off companies. Third, the redesign of higher education systems and universities by policymakers, university administrators, and managers has also paved the way for academic capitalism. The diffusion and implementation of management fads and ideologies—such as new public management, total quality management, and business process reengineering (e.g., Olssen and Peters 2005; Slaughter and Cantwell 2012)—are important for empirical studies on these processes because management theories do not function solely as (true or false) descriptions of educational organizations. They also include prescriptions as to how these organizations should be changed in order to achieve some more or less clearly defined goals. These theories are thus best termed as social technologies because they always contain moral and political elements regardless of whether their proponents are ready to admit it. Conclusion A mechanism-based approach to academic capitalism provides a fruitful framework for 10-23 explanatory studies on the subject. Four generic social mechanisms that have contributed to the emergence of the academic capitalist knowledge/learning regime in the United States and elsewhere support our argument. Yet we do not claim that these mechanisms exhaust the list of all social mechanisms that have participated in the generation of academic capitalism. It is our opinion, however, that the generic mechanisms considered above are among the most important with respective to explanatory studies on academic capitalism in different contexts. At this point it is not possible to focus systematically, owing to a lack of relevant empirical studies, on how transnationally or even globally operating social mechanisms have promoted academic capitalism. For this reason, we focused in this chapter on the United States but also provided some illustrative examples of regionally/globally operating social mechanisms. From this perspective, studies on the academic capitalism–globalization relationship are not only about finding empirical examples of transnational academic capitalism, but also exploring how academic capitalism has been enhanced at regional and global scales. The regional/global promotion of academic capitalism, as well as diffusion of such organizations that characterize it, does not necessarily lead to the strengthening of transnational academic capitalism, but rather (more or less) simultaneous adaptation of academic capitalism in different national contexts. Such adaptation occurs because transnationalization of those activities, flows, and networks that characterize academic capitalism does not automatically occur in different nation-states. Thus it is a fundamentally empirical question whether the globalization of academic capitalism is about the relative convergence of national higher education systems or the transnationalization of those elements that characterize academic capitalism. Of course, it can involve both of these trends. In any case, even if a global trend toward the academic capitalist knowledge/learning regime did exist, this model nevertheless provides room for specialization and differentiation in 10-24 different institutional contexts. Also, institutions and organizations in various national contexts do not have to be exact copies of each other in order to qualify as elements of the academic capitalist knowledge/learning regime. So, for instance, in Finland we find technology transfer offices, and they are not exactly like those in the United States, but they are similar enough to make it plausible to claim that academic capitalism has found its way into the Finnish higher education system (see Kauppinen 2013a). Further studies could determine what sorts of national and regional varieties of academic capitalism exist there, and to what extent these varieties also involve transnational aspects. Overall, we suggest there is a trend toward the model of academic capitalism in different national contexts owing to variety of reasons, but because of competition between universities, it is likely that this trend supports national and organizational specialization in order to achieve comparative advantage even if there seems to be also powerful templates, such as global research universities, for (re)designers to consider. The methodological framework developed above is compatible with different types of research strategies on phenomena that characterize academic capitalism at different levels in higher education systems as well as at the transnational level. These research strategies may include case studies, comparative studies, and perhaps also survey studies. Different types of methods, including both qualitative and quantitative ones, may be utilized in explanatory studies that are based on a mechanistic approach. In these respects, the mechanism-based approach is compatible with a moderate methodological pluralism. Notes 1. A growing number of studies suggest that developments toward academic capitalism can be identified not only in the United States but also in many European (e.g., Kauppinen and 10-25 Kaidesoja 2014; Slaughter and Cantwell 2012) and Latin American countries (Rhoades et al. 2004), as well as at the transnational scale (e.g., Kauppinen 2012, 2013b). 2. This finding is in line with the literature on academic capitalism because “the theory of academic capitalism sees groups of actors—faculty, students, administrators, and academic professionals—as using variety of state resources to create new circuits of knowledge and link higher education institutions to the new economy” (Slaughter and Rhoades 2004, 1). Slaughter and Rhoades (2004) also emphasize that they “have come to see colleges and universities (and academic managers, professors, and other professionals within them) as actors initiating academic capitalism, not just as players being ‘corporatized’<TH>” (12). The theory of academic capitalism thus explicitly recognizes role of various social actors in the emergence of the academic capitalist knowledge/learning regime, and these actors include both individuals and environmentally embedded organizations. 3. A similar type of categorization of social mechanisms recognizes three mechanisms that are active in cross-national policy transfer: imposition, harmonization, and diffusion (e.g., Dahan, Doe, and Guay 2006). 4. In the case of ERT, its aim was not to restructure higher education per se, but rather to increase the competitiveness of European-based transnational corporations in global capitalism. It was under this agenda that the ERT also identified the restructuring of European higher education as one of its key goals (e.g., Kauppinen forthcoming). 10-26 References Bastedo, Michael N., ed. 2012. The Organization of Higher Education: Managing Colleges for a New Era. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Beckert, Jens. 2010. “Institutional Isomorphism Revisited: Convergence and Divergence in Institutional Change.” Sociological Theory 28, no. 2: 150–66. doi:10.1111/j.1467<H>9558.2010.01369.x. 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