The symposium addresses transitions in educational organizations focusing the multilevel-interplay between macro-, meso-, and microlevel. In Education, we observe substantial shifts in administrative policy to New Public Management: In order to achieve a new level of effectiveness, flexibility and responsiveness to consumers of academic training and research (citizens, customers and clients), bureaucracies are confronted with market principles. The development of educational institutions, of research and innovation in society as a consequence has to be analyzed as a reorganization of knowledge production, opening up the education sector to market mechanisms within a global knowledge economy. What are the underlying ideas of “useful, valuable, relevant and true” knowledge? Elzinga (1985) described the “epistemic drift” – which today is closely related to the supply-and-demand definition of quality. Students are regarded as a consumer, universities as supplier, of certification and degrees, education becoming a commodity: What is the normative consequences of, and implicit values behind, schemes for assuring the quality of education generally and higher education and its role in the knowledge society? What are the social, political, cultural and cognitive implications of this knowledge regime for organizing education?

The first contribution by Nesta Devine (New Zealand) discusses the given problematical trends starting from epistemologies and the political drifts into New Public Management and marketization in education. She discusses the case of New Zealand´s major conflicting political discourses: the ‘old’ one of social equality and the ‘new’ one of public choice theory. In her paper, she shows how these discourses interact in two recent developments in government education policy. The second contribution of Chihyu Chan (Taiwan) addresses structural conditions, programatics and semantics within research funding and the problem of structural inequality for the natural and the social sciences. Resource allocation between social/Humanity and natural/technology fields of higher Education will be addressed critically. The third presentation by Susanne Maria Weber (Germany) deals with the transitions from creative economy to an economy of happiness: Here, the future of the university in multistakeholder arrangements and platform based strategies like innovation labs and living labs are addressed.

The contributions of this symposium in general address programatics and semantics of organizing education and educational research. They are based on discourse-analytical and practice-theoretical perspectives and present empirical research on transitions in the nexus of Programatics and semantics as well as their relevance for educational organizations.

Elzinga, A. (1985). ‘Research, bureaucracy and the drift of epistemic criteria’ in Wittrock, B. et al. (eds.), The University Research System, the Public Policies of the Homes of Scientists. Stockholm: Almqvist and Wicksell.