COVID-IN-UNI : French universities facing COVID (ANR 2020)

In March 2020, the ANR is launching a new call for Research-Action projects on COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019) responsible for an epidemic that started at the end of 2019 and caused by the coronavirus pathogen SARS-CoV-2. The project on French universities facing COVID directed by Christine Musselin and Stéphanie Mignot-Gérard, associate professor in management at UPEC (IAE Gustave Eiffel and Institut de Recherche en Gestion) is selected. Aline Waltzing is associate as post-doctorant.

Duration : September 2020 to September 2021

Summary

This project is in line with previous research that addressed the issue of how organizations cope with crisis. Studies on high reliability organizations and analyses of disaster crisis management have both outlined the efficiency of loose coupling in confronting crisis, but little is known about how organizations depicted as structurally ‘loosely-coupled systems’ behave when facing a major crisis. Universities, which are considered as loosely-coupled organizations using weak technologies, thus offer an interesting case in point to investigate this issue. The lack of research on crisis management in universities, in France as in other parts of the world, does not allow to answer this question.

This project therefore aims at providing novel insights into this topic by observing French universities during the COVID-19 pandemic through the following questions.

Question 1: Do the organizational peculiarities of universities weaken or strengthen them during a crisis?

The research mentioned above concludes that loose coupling is a critical factor for reactivity to crisis. Is it still the case for universities? Do low functional interdependency and weak technologies, weak hierarchical relationships, or lack of crisis management plans, have destabilizing effects by making coordination efforts more difficult, by making information unclear or by slowing the implementation of shared processes? Or, on the contrary does it improve the resilience of universities and make them more sensitive to weak signals or alerts, thus allowing the emergence of diversified but accurate solutions that strengthen their innovation and adaptation capacity?

Question 2: Does the crisis transform university governance and power relations?

Such a major exogenous event as COVID-19 is such a crucial challenge that many actors may try to take advantage of it in order to strengthen their position by imposing their definition of the problem, by proposing innovating solutions or by demonstrating that they master the situation. We will therefore look at the reconfiguration of power relations, how they evolve during the crisis, and the extent to which they persist over time.

Question 3: How do universities arbitrate between health security and the continuation of their institutional strategy?

Universities are nowadays expected to develop long-term strategies and to be accountable for their performance. But, as any other organizations facing crisis, with the COVID-19, they are confronted with a delicate equilibrium between the maintenance of their activities and the preservation of the health and security of their staff and publics. How do they articulate the management of the crisis and the implementation of their collective strategy? Does the crisis accelerate the conduct of the pre-existing strategies or are they redefined? Do we observe different answers and trajectories according to the specific local organizational contexts?

Transversal questions

By contrast with natural catastrophes or industrial accidents, the COVID-19 crisis is characterized by its unforeseeable duration, many rebounds and high uncertainty about the future. It is therefore important to take into account the effects of this temporality on the dynamic and management of the crisis.

The breadth of the crisis also require a comparative research design in order to compare the answers developed over the same period by many similar organizations, what was rarely possible in previous studies on the organizational management of crisis.

Research program

Part 1: collection of data and follow-up of the crisis on the whole French territory (May 2020 to September 2021)

Data will be collected in order to get a general overview of the problems faced by French universities, how they have evolved, what answers have been given and how varied they are, and to grasp the role of the vertical (Ministry) and horizontal (professional networks and Conference of university presidents) national coordination in the regulation of the crisis.

A typology of universities will be produced according to the capacity of universities in anticipating the crisis, their reactivity, their role as leader or follower in the implementation of solutions, their participation to coordinated reflection on solutions or their stand-alone behaviour.

Part 2: in-depth study of four universities (November 2020 to September 2021)

This in-depth monographic and comparative study will be led on four universities that would have followed different trajectories in managing the crisis and focuses on university governance. The universities will be chosen according to the typology mentioned above. The students of the Master in sociology of Sciences Po will lead the interviews. A comparative report will be written by September 2021.

COVID-IN-UNI : French universities facing COVID (ANR 2020)

In March 2020, the ANR is launching a new call for Research-Action projects on COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019) responsible for an epidemic that started at the end of 2019 and caused by the coronavirus pathogen SARS-CoV-2. The project on French universities facing COVID directed by Christine Musselin and Stéphanie Mignot-Gérard, associate professor in management at UPEC (IAE Gustave Eiffel and Institut de Recherche en Gestion) is selected. 

Duration : September 2020 to September 2021

Summary

This project is in line with previous research that addressed the issue of how organizations cope with crisis. Studies on high reliability organizations and analyses of disaster crisis management have both outlined the efficiency of loose coupling in confronting crisis, but little is known about how organizations depicted as structurally ‘loosely-coupled systems’ behave when facing a major crisis. Universities, which are considered as loosely-coupled organizations using weak technologies, thus offer an interesting case in point to investigate this issue. The lack of research on crisis management in universities, in France as in other parts of the world, does not allow to answer this question.

This project therefore aims at providing novel insights into this topic by observing French universities during the COVID-19 pandemic through the following questions.

Question 1: Do the organizational peculiarities of universities weaken or strengthen them during a crisis?

The research mentioned above concludes that loose coupling is a critical factor for reactivity to crisis. Is it still the case for universities? Do low functional interdependency and weak technologies, weak hierarchical relationships, or lack of crisis management plans, have destabilizing effects by making coordination efforts more difficult, by making information unclear or by slowing the implementation of shared processes? Or, on the contrary does it improve the resilience of universities and make them more sensitive to weak signals or alerts, thus allowing the emergence of diversified but accurate solutions that strengthen their innovation and adaptation capacity?

Question 2: Does the crisis transform university governance and power relations?

Such a major exogenous event as COVID-19 is such a crucial challenge that many actors may try to take advantage of it in order to strengthen their position by imposing their definition of the problem, by proposing innovating solutions or by demonstrating that they master the situation. We will therefore look at the reconfiguration of power relations, how they evolve during the crisis, and the extent to which they persist over time.

Question 3: How do universities arbitrate between health security and the continuation of their institutional strategy?

Universities are nowadays expected to develop long-term strategies and to be accountable for their performance. But, as any other organizations facing crisis, with the COVID-19, they are confronted with a delicate equilibrium between the maintenance of their activities and the preservation of the health and security of their staff and publics. How do they articulate the management of the crisis and the implementation of their collective strategy? Does the crisis accelerate the conduct of the pre-existing strategies or are they redefined? Do we observe different answers and trajectories according to the specific local organizational contexts?

Transversal questions

By contrast with natural catastrophes or industrial accidents, the COVID-19 crisis is characterized by its unforeseeable duration, many rebounds and high uncertainty about the future. It is therefore important to take into account the effects of this temporality on the dynamic and management of the crisis.

The breadth of the crisis also require a comparative research design in order to compare the answers developed over the same period by many similar organizations, what was rarely possible in previous studies on the organizational management of crisis.

Research program

Part 1: collection of data and follow-up of the crisis on the whole French territory (May 2020 to September 2021)

Data will be collected in order to get a general overview of the problems faced by French universities, how they have evolved, what answers have been given and how varied they are, and to grasp the role of the vertical (Ministry) and horizontal (professional networks and Conference of university presidents) national coordination in the regulation of the crisis.

A typology of universities will be produced according to the capacity of universities in anticipating the crisis, their reactivity, their role as leader or follower in the implementation of solutions, their participation to coordinated reflection on solutions or their stand-alone behaviour.

Part 2: in-depth study of four universities (November 2020 to September 2021)

This in-depth monographic and comparative study will be led on four universities that would have followed different trajectories in managing the crisis and focuses on university governance. The universities will be chosen according to the typology mentioned above. The students of the Master in sociology of Sciences Po will lead the interviews. A comparative report will be written by September 2021.