INCHER Brown-bag-lunch: Administrative justice: How universities deal with complaints, appeals and lawsuits

Professor Dr. Sylvia Veit and Professor Dr. Tanja Klenk (Department of Economics, University of Kassel / Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences, Helmut Schmidt University - University of the Federal Armed Forces Hamburg):

The lecture will present a planned research project that deals with the internal handling of complaints, objections and grievances by students at universities. The project will link the concept of administrative justice, which has so far been anchored primarily in the Anglo-American and legal literature, with organizational theoretical considerations of sociological neo-institutionalism by investigating the extent to which organizational learning processes and structural adjustments triggered by complaints, contradictions and complaints aim to strengthen administrative justice. The project will also examine the extent to which informal practices and logics of action shape the content of complaints, objections and grievances in universities and the conditions under which complaints, objections or grievances are interpreted as a legitimacy deficit in the first place and, if necessary, manifest an organizational pressure for change. Six comparative case studies of universities in Germany are planned.

Cited publications:
Klenk, Tanja/Antonowicz, Dominik/Geschwind, Lars/Pinheiro, Rómulo & Anna Pokorska: Taking women on boards - A comparative analysis of public policies in Germany, Norway, Poland and Sweden in regards to gender balance in university governance, paper prepared for the NoPSA Congress 2021, 10 - 13 August, in Reykjavik, Iceland.

Banafsche, Minou/Klenk, Tanja (2020): "The administrative practice in basic income support for jobseekers. A legal-statistical investigation using the example of municipal job centers", Zeitschrift für Rechtssoziologie 40 (1-2), pp. 151-78.

Klenk, Tanja/Seyfried, Markus (2016): "Institutional isomorphism and quality management: Comparing hospitals and universities", in: Pinheiro, Rómulo/ Ramirez, Francisco O., Vrangbæk, Karsten/ Byrkjeflot, Haldor (Eds.): Towards a Comparative Institutionalism? Forms, dynamics and logics across the organizational fields of health and higher education, Emerald, 217-242.

The lectures are planned as hybrid events. Attendance and Zoom participation only after prior registration (koch@incher.uni-kassel.de). You will receive the dial-in information shortly before the respective lectures. The Corona regulations of the University of Kassel apply to attendance. https://www.uni-kassel.de/uni/corona/umgang-mit-dem-corona-virus