The regional mission in a merged multi-campus university college: a case study from Western Norway.

Recent years have seen an increasing institutionalisation of the regional mission of universities, coinciding with mergers of institutions from different regions to form large multi-campus universities that span across them. This study examines how such a merger has shaped the regional mission of a polycentric higher education institution in Western Norway. We find that even when the regional mission is at the core of a merged HEI’s identity, translating it into practice can be challenging because the regional mission can be understood and implemented in very different ways within the merged institution. These differences can emerge from the geographical stretch of merged multi-campus HEIs, exposing such institutions to several regional eco-systems with varying needs; from the identity stretch of old institutional structures, where pre-merger HEIs may have taken different roles in their respective regions; and from differences in modes of regional collaboration across faculties. Whilst managing the tensions that arise from these differences, merged multi-campus HEIs must also create synergies within the institution to serve regional needs better, on which the legitimacy of such mergers may critically depend. This in turn leads to a tricky balancing act between local adaptation and the harnessing of synergies within multi-campus HEIs. We conclude that managing these tensions effectively is key to successfully solving the regional mission for such institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]