Page 61 - Azerbaijan State University of Economics

Sh. Bayramov:Continuing to build a “global penn state”

may conclude that Penn State has a clear vision in terms of adaptation to the
mentioned environment in a macro level, and it makes Penn State to be isomorphic
to global higher education environment. Of course, isomorphism is mainly
accompanied by a criterion of selection and by a competition theory (Hannah &
Freeman, 1977, p. 939).
Simply saying, Penn State tries to be selected in by global higher education
environment where extremely high competition exists. Penn State‘s main
expectation is to become more efficient institution by getting more tools and
opportunities, in other words, to optimize itself as an organization. Of course, Penn
State‘s decision is fully supported by Hannah & Freeman (1977) who believes that
―[f]rom a population ecology perspective, it is the environment which optimizes‖ (p.
932). We may claim that, for now, Penn State is still in the process of selection by
other organizations being a part of global higher education environment. And Penn
State faces continuously growing competition from ―already globalized‖ HEIs who
are playing a leading role in creation of new global trends and in designing
perspective architecture of global higher education. It makes difficult Penn State to
compete with them and it increases risks for implementation of Penn State‘s
internationalization strategy successfully. This situation can be explained by
argument offered by Hannah & Freeman (1977) who suggest that ―[o]rganizational
forms presumably fail to flourish in certain environmental circumstances because
other forms successfully compete with them for essential resources‖ (p. 940).
As a result, Penn State is getting a completely new environment within the
university that requires corresponding changes in internal units. In other words, we are
getting another environment within Penn State which we may call Global Penn State
environment. It is completely different from the above-mentioned global higher
education environment. Global Penn State environment is much more complicated due
to Penn State‘s current decentralized university administration mechanism.
In general, we may argue that campuses, colleges, and departments are non-
isomorphic to entire Penn State. All units may be too independent and it allows them
not to follow all university-level strategies or centrally implemented initiatives. It
means, it is very difficult to talk about selection in this environment. Logically, we
have less competition among different units who are loosely coupled to each other.
However, some units (Penn State Harrisburg, College of Agriculture, College of
Engineering, Smeal College of Business, Department of Economics) may be
considered to be isomorphic to entire university in case of Global Penn State
environment. These units have own international offices or separate staff member
authorized to deal with global affairs. They get more international students and
visiting scholars compare with other campuses and colleges. They have more working

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