Conceptualising the impact of risk management on UK higher educational institutions (HEIs) a critical assessment of the impact and practices in Scottish HEIs
Year: 2025
Type: dissertation
Abstract: Universities before now have always regarded themselves as unique entities different fromcorporate businesses and other non-for-profit organisations thus due to their collegiate enclave,they were generally thought to be free from risk. However, changes to the university structuredue to globalisation, technological changes, New Public Management (NPM) and other factorshave brought about competition, internationalisation as well as reports of natural disasters andscandalous events from some universities across the globe have made these establishments torethink their stance on risk and risk management and also brought about increased scrutinyfrom the public and regulatory directives for greater accountability from these HigherEducational Institutions (HEIs). Therefore, it is on this premise that this thesis intends to‘Conceptualise the impact of Risk Management in Scottish Higher EducationalInstitutions (HEIs), with the aim to critically assess the impact and effects of risk managementon the structures and practices of Higher Institutions in the UK with a direct focus on ScottishHEIs only.The study was founded on the pragmatist philosophy and mix-methods research design wasadopted; using the explanatory sequential mixed-method approach, quantitative data wasinitially gathered from every university across Scotland in order to evaluate the structures andpractices of risk management in the HEI context and also to determine which institutions thathave established and institutionalised risk management framework as required by regulatoryauthorities. Establishing this context was essential towards the selection of case institutionsand participants for the qualitative phase of the study. Thus, in-depth interviews wereconducted with risk experts as well as documents sourced from six case institutions and thesequalitative data were analysed thematically.Findings from the study were integrated at various stages of the study: ‘the design stage’,‘methods stage’ and at ‘interpretation and reporting phase’, majorly through ‘common uniqueidentifiers or overarching themes. Through these key themes (‘Policies and Procedures of RiskManagement’, Attitudes and Approach Towards Institutional Risk Management’ andStrategies to Manage Institutional Risk’) the researcher was able to simplify and successfullyintegrate the findings (both quantitative and qualitative) of the research to achievement of eachspecific research objective (enumerated in chapter 6.1) for greater understanding and clarityand validity of the study.Thus, some key findings revealed that although HEIs have been mandated by regulatoryauthorities to adopt a risk management framework for more accountability, howeverenhancement of decision-making seems to be the overarching objective while HEIs haveactually taken the step to adopt a risk management framework – however, most institutions areyet to fully entrench risk management into their University-wide and governance process. Thestudy also revealed that although there is an increased level of confidence from stakeholdersbrought about by their risk management practices, however, uncertainties regarding Brexit isaffecting HEIs strategic planning, administration and implementation programs.Risk management in the academic world is quite a new phenomenon and thus there has beenno academic research to this effect in the UK prior to this study. Therefore, this research hascomprehensively and critically evaluated and discussed all aspects of risk and risk managementas it affects HEIs thus it would be useful to both HEIs and regulators as it would be a referencedocument for them to gauge their risk management process and practices and understand howthey might continuously improve on their risk management models. The researcher alsobelieves that this study would motivate academics to research further on risk management inthe academic cycle. Furthermore, further research would be to examine how administrativebureaucracies due to compliance and risk management may impact and affect the teachingresearchquality in HEIs.Finally, the future focus of this study is to investigate on how best to institutionalise riskmanagement practices and processes into the basic fabrics and culture of the institution whilealso developing a risk management model or framework that is unique to the universityenvironment as against the current generic frameworks that have been designed specificallyfor firms within the financial and non-financial organisations without considering theuniqueness of academic establishments.
Author: Egbele, Augustine. I.
Institution: University of the West of Scotland
Language: English
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7106645994
Cites:
Cited by:
Related to: