Administration and Science – Competing or Complementary Rationalities?

Universities as organizations primarily aim to produce outstanding scientific results, to provide excellent education for students, and to achieve a whole range of secondary goals. To reach these aims universities split, by function, in science and administration as well as, by sector, in faculties. Thus, to attain their organizational goals universities crucially depend on the successful cooperation of their specialized parts. Combining the perspectives of political science, public administration, and sociology, the project looks at the question of how such processes of coordination within universities work. We assume that, given the strong division between administrators and scientists due to different tasks and careers, the administration works well if it has a high knowledge about scientific processes, which hence contributes to the overall goal attainment of the organization. Measuring the scientists’ satisfaction with administrative services and the administration’s knowledge about the scientists’ work, we test this claim via qualitative case studies and quantitative surveys drawing on the same German universities.