A recent trend in funding programmes of the German Ministry of Education and Research in the last decade was to promote multi-institutional higher education networks aiming on the maintenance and further development of higher education quality. Current challenges such as digitalisation and diversity were addressed and innovative solutions fostered. Change processes were initiated by e.g. establishing further education programmes for lecturers or developing teaching materials or infrastructures.  Funding was provided for professional support staff and discipline-based educational development. Funded projects open new opportunities for higher education institutions but also come alongside with challenging conditions like start-up or time-limited funding for specific project applications and additional staff members that are employed on time-restricted contracts. Many funded higher education networks do not survive the end of the funding period which often comes alongside with the loss of experienced staff, of established innovative solutions and of practical institutional knowledge. This arises questions about the factors that influence the success or the failure of such networks.

Regarding these general conditions, it is necessary to assume that different organisational logics of action (e.g. educational orientation at the project level, strategic logics of action at the governance level) must be balanced so that conducive structures for the further development of teaching and learning can be established. How this is achieved in the collaborative work of management and staff member from several higher education institutions has not been investigated sufficiently so far.

In a collaborative research project, we aim to clarify the conditions for successful cooperation in such multi-institutional higher education networks and to provide knowledge about promising actor- and governance-constellations for future initiatives and projects. We focus on formalised bodies, in which several higher education institutions hold membership.               

Our understanding of educational quality is derived from the idea of Bildung. From this perspective higher education should be oriented towards universalistic values of the common good. Educational quality, thus, is social value-based and it is related to democratic citizenship. This educational theoretical stance allows to derive general goals of higher education: Student’s development of academic identity and personality; education for maturity and solidarity; and reflection skills necessary for scientific communication, for taking social responsibility and a commitment to democracy (cf. Merkt, 2021, pp. 93-96). Such an education cannot be decreed from above and cannot be sufficiently be expressed in performance indicators. We therefore ask: How can multi-institutional projects contribute to foster educational quality in higher education?

Drawing on the educational-governance-approach (Altrichter, 2018, 2010), we analyse multi-institutional higher education networks’ effort to contribute to an organisational learning process for improved teaching and learning conditions. Such processes are explained from the perspective of negotiating different logics of action in specific actor constellations in the multi-level system of educational organisations: Organisational and teaching development processes are analysed in terms of the extent to which the objectives and logics of action of different actors (e.g. administrative staff, third-space professionals, lecturers and students) take part in negotiating and making decisions that frame the conditions of teaching and learning.

• To what extent do education-oriented logics of action prevail in negotiation processes and become established?
• What strategies and considerations do leaders and staff members pursue with/in their projects?

The empirical model of the collaborative research project includes both qualitative and quantitative research methods, which are interwoven through triangulation. The poster focuses on results obtained with a qualitative-reconstructive research approach. Our reconstructions delve into the practices of three multi-institutional higher education networks that serve as illustrative examples for the broad field of such networks. In the sampling process, we ensured that different network constellations were represented and that the different groups of actors were considered in data collection. Narrative interviews with actors working in networks and supplementary document analyses serve as the data basis for the reconstruction of logics of action and necessary coordination practices. Data collection, analysis and interpretation are based on the grounded theory approach and proceeded in iterative phases of continuous change between data collection, analysis and interpretative theory building (Mey & Mruck, 2011). Both authors coded the interviews for aspects that the interviewees addressed with regard to their activities in the multi-institutional higher education networks. Abstraction from initial codes to open categories took place by comparing the data material according to commonalities and differences. This took place in joint interpretation sessions (cf. Mey & Mruck 2011, pp. 24-26). In order to reconstruct the range of activities, developments, everyday challenges and conflicts within the multi-institutional higher education network, the interviews were openly categorised according to relevant topics set by the interviewees. Sensitising concepts stemmed from the educational-governance approach (Altrichter, 2018, Langer & Brüsemeister, 2019) and practice-oriented organisational (learning) theory (Göhlich et al., 2018). Further sensitising concepts were developed in the research process and serve as a "categorial framework for interpreting, describing and explaining the empirical world" (Kelle 2011, p. 249, translation by authors). The framework is constantly reflected and changed on the basis of the empirical material, so that no essential aspects are lost in the research process (ibid., pp. 249-251).

Leaders and staff members of multi-institutional higher education networks are confronted with a diverse set of areas of tensions. Value-conflicts are thematised by the interviewees that bring to the fore education-oriented stances. In several episodes, education-oriented stances and logics of action clash with strategic-political aims. Within this clash, several areas of tensions are intermingled with each other. We want to illustrate this, by unravelling concrete struggles between convictions based on educational theory and criteria for acquiring funding. The specific case goes beyond concrete multi-institutional higher education networks and addresses the funding structure and interpretation of those.

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