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Breaking Through and Converging: Organizational Model Innovation and Legitimacy Construction in New-Model Research Universities from an Institutional Theory Perspective

Author(s)

Xiaoyue Wu

Affiliation(s)

School of Marxism, Wuhan Institue of Technology, Wuhan, Hubei, China

Abstract

Since the 21st century, China's higher education system has undergone profound transformation in pursuing "world-class" status, with new-model research universities such as SUSTech (public) and Westlake University (private) emerging as bold institutional experiments and "testing grounds" for higher education reform. Drawing on institutional theory, this paper conducts a comparative case study of SUSTech and Westlake University, examining their "breaking-through" innovations in organizational models and "converging" adaptations to the institutional environment through document analysis and comparative institutional analysis. The study finds that the survival and development of new-model research universities is not a unidirectional process of innovation or disruption, but rather a dynamic process of legitimacy construction through continuous interplay between breaking through and converging. These universities demonstrate distinctiveness through innovations in governance structures, personnel systems, talent cultivation, and resource acquisition, securing pragmatic and moral legitimacy, global academic norms, and mainstream models to gain cognitive and regulative legitimacy. This practice of "strategic coupling" reveals the complex logic of organizational innovation in transitional societies and offers insights for the development of emerging universities both in China and globally.

Keywords

New-Model Research Universities; Institutional Theory; Organizational Innovation; Legitimacy; Southern University of Science and Technology; Westlake University

References

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