CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY
The African higher education system has grown significantly over the past twenty years in response to
demand for admission spaces by secondary school leavers. From about 700 universities, polytechnics,
colleges of education and other postsecondary institutions classified within the higher education group
in the early 1990s, the system now has well over 2,300 of such institutions. The growth of the system
with respect to enrolment is judged to be one of the fastest in the world (UIS, 2010).
This impressive performance on access has failed to be matched by improvement in quality (Materu,
2007; Okebukola and Shabani, 2007; World Bank, 2008). As a way of clustering the good from the bad,
stakeholders, especially potential students, employers and parents, have turned to the ranking of these
institutions to provide a basis for selection. The first ports of call are typically global ranking league
tables such as Webometrics, Times Higher Education (THE) and the World University Rankings and
Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU), commonly called the Shanghai Ranking (Salmi,
2011). These rankings are regularly updated and readily available in the public domain, hence individuals
or groups desiring relative standing of their national institutions find them to be an easily accessible
resource. Unfortunately, these global ranking schemes provide little help for the locals, especially
potential undergraduates, since over 90 per cent of the higher education institutions in Africa are not
captured in the top leagues (Salmi and Soroyan, 2007). A sprinkling of universities in Africa shows up in
the top 500 of all global league tables. For instance, in the 2010 Academic Ranking of World
Universities, only three universities, all from South Africa, were listed in the world’s top 500 and only
two in the 2011–2012 Times Higher Education best 400.
The practice of university rankings dates back to around 1900 in England. The explosion of university
rankings perhaps signals the reality that we live in a compared and ranked world. The twentyfirst
century is increasingly compared and ranked along a myriad of dimensions. Based on levels of GDP,
countries are designated as part of either the first, second or third worlds, and are ranked as developed,
developing or leastdeveloped, based on a complex cluster of indicators. They are accorded human
development rankings – low, medium, mediumhigh or high – and are ranked on income as being low,
middle, middlehigh or highincome countries. Comparisons and rankings go far beyond the macro level
of ‘worlds’ and countries, to the meso level of institutions such as restaurants, schools, hospitals, airports, banks and, of course, universities.
Universities are among our canonical twentyfirst century institutions. In and of themselves, they are
standard setters for how other aspects of our ‘worlds, countries and institutions’ are compared and
ranked. It therefore seems inevitable that universities would themselves be subjected to comparisons and
rankings. However, being complex institutions and being part of complex systems, it seems equally
inevitable that comparisons and rankings of universities would be anything but polemical. Comparing
and even ranking our ‘worlds, countries and institutions’ impels the construction and use of common
‘yardsticks’ along whose gradations these entities can be placed. Yet, unlike length, height and width,
these ‘yardsticks’ are used to measure very complex, often multifaceted, fastchanging, contextually
varied and even conceptually contentious phenomena.
A lot of factors are considered as ranking indicator, they includes percentage of academic programmes of
the university with full accreditation status, compliance with carrying capacity (measured by the degree
of deviation from carrying capacity), proportion of the academic staff of the university at professorial
level, foreign content (proportion of the Academic staff of the university who are nonNigerians) and
foreign students. A closer look at these factors will reveal that they can be influenced by the way things
are been done (organizational culture) in the university.
Organizational culture as defined by Lundy and Cowling (1996) is “the way we do things here.”
Organizational culture is the deeply rooted values and beliefs that are shared by personnel in an
organization. Various organizations have differing terms used to collectively refer to the values and
beliefs of its members. Most organizations term these guiding principles that dictate behavior and action
(Core Values). However, this study is examining organizational culture and ranking of universities in South Africa and Nigeria.
1.2 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
Every organization has a survival objective and what differentiates organizations is the method through
which this survival objective is achieved, usually through maximum utilization of available resources. It
is within this context, that organizations are conceived as little societies characterized by social norms
and structures, commonly allegorized as organizational culture. These management strategies adopted by
these institutions including African University also affect their performances which determine their
position when ranked.
Moreover, Okebukola (2011) showed that labour employers were quite excited about the ranking, as they
seek ways of selecting graduates from the bestranked schools in the midst of the graduate glut. Parents
and potential students found ranking helpful in the selection of institutions and were quite happy to turn
to league tables showing universities with very good rankings in the programmes desired for study. The
researcher is curious about how organizational culture has affected the ranking of universities in South
Africa and Nigeria.
1.3 OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY
The following are the objectives of this study:
1. To examine the relationship between organizational culture and ranking of Universities in Nigeria.
2. To examine the relationship between organizational culture and ranking of Universities in South
Africa.
3. To examine the differences in Organizational culture and ranking of Universities in Nigeria and
South Africa.
1.4 RESEARCH QUESTIONS
1. What is the relationship between organizational culture and ranking of Universities in Nigeria?
2. What is the relationship between organizational culture and ranking of Universities in South
Africa?
3. What are the differences in Organizational culture and ranking of Universities in Nigeria and South
Africa?
1.5 RESEARCH HYPOTHESIS
HO: There is no significant relationship between organizational culture and ranking of Universities in
South Africa and Nigeria.
HA: There is significant relationship between organizational culture and ranking of Universities in South
Africa and Nigeria.
1.6 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY
The following are the significance of this study:
1. This study will educate the management of universities in Nigeria and South Africa, students
seeking admissions, employer of labour and the general public on how organization culture has
affected the ranking of Universities in Nigeria and South Africa.
2. This research will also serve as a resource base to other scholars and researchers interested in
carrying out further research in this field subsequently, if applied will go to an extent to provide
new explanation to the topi.
1.7 SCOPE OF THE STUDY
This study will cover the universities in Nigeria and South Africa. This study will also cover the
organizational culture or cultural practices that are specific for universities in Nigeria and South Africa
considering how it has affected their ranking.
1.8 OF THE STUDY
Financial constraint Insufficient fund tends to impede the efficiency of the researcher in sourcing for the
relevant materials, literature or information and in the process of data collection (internet, questionnaire
and interview).
Time constraint The researcher will simultaneously engage in this study with other academic work.
This consequently will cut down on the time devoted for the research work
REFERENCES
Lundy & Cowling. (2001). Organizational Behavior. (9th ed). SouthWestern. pp. 523 .
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Okebukola, P.A.O. 2011. Nigerian Universities and World Ranking: Issues, Strategies and Forward
Planning. Paper presented at the 2011 Conference of the Association of ViceChancellors of Nigerian
Universities, Covenant University, Ota, 27–30 June.
Okebukola, P.A.O. and Shabani, J. 2007. Quality assurance in higher education: perspectives from subSaharan
Africa. GUNI (ed.) State of the World Report on Quality Assurance in Higher Education, pp.
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Salmi J. and Saroyan, A. 2007. League tables as policy instruments: uses and misuses. Higher Education
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Salmi, J. 2011. If Ranking is the Disease, is Benchmarking the Cure? Keynote address presented at the
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Factsheet No. 10. December
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