Translating government digitalisation policy in higher education institutions: the Danish case

Abstract

The Danish national government (2018) prioritises a proactive digitalisation of the public sector, including higher education institutions (HEIs). HEIs are facing major changes and need to integrate increasingly advanced digital technologies, and might soon be significantly different from what they are today. The mechanisms linking national policy discourses and the implementation of actual, new practices are not well documented. Drawing from the insights of Scandinavian neo-institutionalism and discursive institutionalism about the travelling and translation of ideas in specific national and organisational contexts, the article investigates one aspect of this broader problem— that is, how national digitalisation policy is discursively translated into institutional policy at the level of HEIs. We focus on three large, comprehensive research universities and on two of the profession-oriented university colleges. Based on our analysis of digitalisation policies, we conduct a comparative analysis to illuminate the translation of national policy ideas into the digitalisation policies of HEIs Findings indicate that the what, the how and the why of Danish HEIs’ digitalisation policies do not come together in a coherent order of discourse. Rather, Danish HEIs catch on to singular elements of national policy ideas in an eclectic and fragmented manner. This might also be connected to the vagueness of definitions of digitalisation in national policy documents, which might be acting as an obstacle for more coherent translation processes at the HEI level.