Isomorphic tensions and anxiety in UK social science doctoral provision

ABSTRACT

Scholars assert that, worldwide, doctoral provision is increasingly characterised by accelerated scales of production, competitive funding, centralised administration, and interdisciplinary, cohort-based training. The situation in the UK appears to mirror this picture but scholars have long noted that national settings mediate the forms that broader trends take. We therefore examined the case of the UK’s social science doctorates, which have seen both marked growth and a range of policy changes, to explore the potential extent of alignment with these trends. Invoking institutional isomorphism, a conceptual framework which asserts how convergence can be driven by different factors, we interviewed senior staff at a range of UK HEIs to examine the activities and underlying rationales behind their social science doctoral provision. We were able to establish that, while there is a degree of isomorphism around their social science doctorates, this is a complex and uneven situation because different kinds of HEIs are subject to a varying combination of simultaneous and often conflicting forces. Our analysis highlights not only how the relationship between national policies and higher education culture can be fraught, but also how organisations’ individual positioning and history has implications for how they are able to act in policy contexts.

KEYWORDS:

• Institutional isomorphism
• doctoral policy
• higher education policy

Introduction

A rapid expansion in doctoral production worldwide, associated with knowledge economy goals, has been evident since the 1990s as nation states pay greater attention to doctoral training (Thune et al. 2012; Nerad 2020; Sarrico 2022). This has been largely driven by science and engineering disciplines in the interests of international competition, and is perceived to represent a shift away from the lone scholar model of doctoral study towards a more structured, cohort-based training approach (Bao, Kehm, and Ma 2018; Mountford et al. 2020). The logic underpinning this centres on sharing expensive research equipment and infrastructure, but it has also spread across other academic domains and is observed to serve broader political and managerial objectives (Delamont, Atkinson, and Parry 1997; Lunt, McAlpine, and Mills 2014). Concomitantly, control of postgraduate research appears to be moving upwards at both the sectoral and organisational level, with universities more beholden to policy directives (Bao, Kehm, and Ma 2018), and departmental provision dictated from more central loci within university administrations (Lunt, McAlpine, and Mills 2014).

Empirically, this article examines the case of doctorates in the social sciences in the UK. As we will outline, the UK appears to mirror the broader global direction of travel through significant growth in doctoral numbers, a centralisation of control over postgraduate research, and the emergence of interdisciplinary, cohort-based doctoral training (Smith-McGloin and Wynne 2015). Increasing political and economic influence over social science PhDs has been noted there for some time (Mills 2009) and the cohort model was introduced from 2010 by the main state funding body for social sciences, the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). Research indicates that these cohort models are not friction-free, imposing constraints and barriers in differing ways across the sector (Harrison, Smith, and Kinton 2016). There is some research which details the experiences of those within the ESRC fold (Lunt, McAlpine, and Mills 2014; Deem, Barnes, and Clarke 2015), but these represent a limited proportion of doctoral provision overall. Furthermore, the number of social science doctorates across the sector has continued to rise (Budd et al. 2018), some of which is accounted for by a growing popularity of structured or professional doctorates (Jones 2018). We therefore interviewed senior staff across a range of institutions to explore whether these trends are playing out in uneven ways in the social sciences.

To determine the extent and nature of convergence, we invoke the notion of institutional isomorphism (DiMaggio and Powell 1983). This suggests that homogeneity in organisational sectors is the result of different processes: the enforcement of formal or informal rules (coercion), peer imitation (mimesis), adherence to convention (normativity), and the pursuit of cost or efficacy gains (optimisation). The assertion here is that not all organisational decisions follow the ‘common sense’ logic of considering all alternatives and acting independently to enhance outcomes, but that activity can be constrained and shaped through those processes. This has been widely used in higher education policy studies (e.g. Shin and Chung 2020; Meyer and Powell 2020; Krücken 2003) as it provides a way of understanding how organisations, in this case universities, act and what underpins that.

The first section of this article discusses the convergent characteristics of doctoral reform globally, in the UK, and in its social sciences. We then elaborate on institutional isomorphism and how it has been utilised in higher education policy/organisational research, and justify its application here. The methodology follows whereby we outline how we collected and analysed interview data from senior academics and research managers in different types of UK university, after which we present and interrogate the findings.

The dynamics of doctoral reform

Global trends

Literature on doctoral education regularly asserts converging trends in its scale, structure, and modes of governance (Bao, Kehm, and Ma 2018; Ruano-Borbalan 2022; Sónia Cardoso et al. 2022). These align with accelerating researcher development as part of a heightened state commitment to knowledge production in the interests of innovation and international competition within the global knowledge economy (Smith-McGloin and Wynne 2015; Molla and Cuthbert 2019; Nerad 2020). Heavier government investment in research and doctoral production is often accompanied by enhanced accountability mechanisms and targeted, concentrated funding allocations through selective performance-based funding (Hicks 2012; Bloch and Mitterle 2017). Alongside this, we are seeing an internal centralisation of oversight and control around doctoral production as it becomes an object of increasing strategic interest for university management (Thune et al. 2012; Bao, Kehm, and Ma 2018; Deem 2022).

This structuring and standardisation around postgraduate research (PGR) provision extends into the doctorate itself, with more emphasis on professional training (Smith-McGloin and Wynne 2015; Bao, Kehm, and Ma 2018; Molla and Cuthbert 2019). This includes an emergent model of PhDs which are cohort-based, delivered through organisational partnerships, and with a focus on interdisciplinarity and structured training curricula. This can be seen, for example, in EU-funded pan-European health consortia (Mountford et al. 2020) and in areas of designated skill shortage and commercial potential in Australia (Smith-McGloin and Wynne 2015), as well as in a proliferation doctoral training centres and partnerships in the UK (Harrison, Smith, and Kinton 2016; Budd et al. 2018). Increases in the number of doctorates have led to concerns about an ‘oversupply’ of doctoral graduates which in part assumes that higher education is their chief/preferred destination (Deem 2022), but many changes to the content of doctoral training are geared towards wider labour market relevance and working in other sectors (Molla and Cuthbert 2019). That being said, there are still increasing concerns about precarity for early career researchers which in particular impacts women more punitively (Ivancheva, Lynch, and Keating 2019).

State-driven policies alone, though, do fully account for convergence around doctorates. Some of this relates to moves from within the academic community such as the ‘Salzburg Principles’ for doctoral programmes which assert the importance of career development, interdisciplinarity, and mobility (Christensen 2005; Kovačević, Bitušíková, and Dagen 2022; Mathies and Cantwell 2022). A proportion of the expansion in doctoral provision is also not resourced from state funding (Smith-McGloin and Wynne 2015; Bloch and Mitterle 2017). With doctoral education being seen as a status marker, Thune et al. (2012) observed an ‘upward spiral’ across several European states, where some HEIs establish a pre-eminence for research and augment it by attracting a greater share of funding and doctoral researchers. The existence of sectoral hierarchies and organisational histories may, it seems, impose limits on the achievement of homogeneity in university systems, rather triggering a diversity of models (Bloch and Mitterle 2017). Recent scholarship supports this, asserting that while there are increasing commonalities in doctoral provision across Europe, for example, ‘harmonisation of advanced education has not been fully realised’ (Mathies and Cantwell 2022, 231). Variation is due in part due to the influence of national and disciplinary traditions (Kovačević, Bitušíková, and Dagen 2022, 385) but there is relatively little detailed examination of how this transpires within countries (although see Molla and Cuthbert 2019 for a notable exception).

Doctorates in the UK

At the national level, the UK – which is recognised as having a strongly marketised, stratified, and competitive HE sector (Evans et al. 2019) – does show signs of broader level convergence in its doctoral provision. Analysis of national doctoral completions in the UK showed a 37% increase from 2008/09 to 2016/17, with two thirds being awarded in Science, Technology, Engineering, Maths (STEM) disciplines, which aligns with the apex position of STEM in the knowledge economy (Budd et al. 2018). Alongside this, social science doctoral awards – comprising a fifth of the total – rose by 45%. Overall, the generally higher status and more research-oriented ‘pre-92’¹ universities – who make up about half of the sector – awarded 89% of doctorates, reflecting the extent to which this is a hierarchically differentiated sector (Boliver 2015; Evans et al. 2019). This is reinforced by the allocation of direct funding – as well as eligibility for many competitive grants – through the UK’s periodic Research Excellence Framework (REF) that comparatively evaluates research quality and capacity in a way that overwhelmingly favours larger, older universities (Torrance 2020). The REF incorporates a number of indicators such as publications and impact, as well as ‘research environment’, which includes doctoral completions (Kelly 2016). It should also be noted that there is an equity issue here, in that higher status HEIs are more socially exclusive and this creates issues around a lack of diversity in doctoral, and subsequently academic staff populations (Pásztor and Wakeling 2018).

UK universities have also seen changed organisational structures around doctorates, with an increasing presence of graduate schools and/or doctoral colleges for coordinating quality assurance, skills training, and supervision practices (Smith-McGloin and Wynne 2015), which appears to be an international trend (Deem 2022). This connects with research degrees being framed as more than a research project and academic career entry point, incorporating wider skills development, applied research, knowledge translation, and progression into non-academic careers (Deem and Dowle 2020), again a more widely observed phenomenon (Molla and Cuthbert 2019). This intersects with a proliferation of cohort-based centres for doctoral training (CDTs) and doctoral training centres or partnerships (DTCs/DTPs) sponsored by state or other major funders, of which there are now over 300 (Budd et al. 2018). The rationale for these relates ostensibly to the benefits of establishing a critical mass of researchers that suits laboratory-based disciplines (Delamont, Atkinson, and Parry 1997), as well as to equipment sharing in science and engineering (Harrison, Smith, and Kinton 2016). It has, though, been transferred to other disciplinary areas where these arguments carry less weight (Lunt, McAlpine, and Mills 2014).

DTCs in the UK social sciences were first heralded in a 2009 policy launch by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), the UK’s primary state funder for social science research.² DTCs were then launched by successful applicants the following year, but this fell on the other side of a government review that had reduced the ESRC’s budget and significantly curtailed the scale of the awards made (ESRC 2011). This effectively meant that the number of those who continued to receive ESRC patronage was halved overnight. The exclusion impacted post-92 institutions disproportionately, even after a more inclusive 2016 policy update which included a move to mostly multi-university Doctoral Training Partnerships, or DTPs (ESRC 2021b); bids for the next ESRC DTP phase were submitted in early 2023 (UKRI 2022). Scholarship had identified some time before that the ESRC was becoming ‘increasingly dirigiste’ (Mills 2009) over the content and shape of the doctorates it funded. This appears to have been further compounded during the DTC phase, with stipulations being reported as far-reaching and unwieldy (Lunt, McAlpine, and Mills 2014), with multi-university consortia in particular operating as politically awkward ‘forced marriages’ (Deem, Barnes, and Clarke 2015).

While this suggests that the UK’s social science doctoral provision is aligning with broader trends such as sectoral growth and more centralised organisation (Harrison, Smith, and Kinton 2016; Smith-McGloin and Wynne 2015), it is difficult to assert this with conviction because little has been written about life outside the ESRC group. Its DTC/DTP scheme may be the main social science-specific doctoral policy in the UK, but its reach is not absolute: only a third of potentially eligible³ HEIs have an ESRC DTC/DTP, and ESRC doctorates represent a limited proportion of the social science PGR population overall. Other related policies, such as the Research Excellence Framework (REF), on the other hand, have more widespread impact, as they relate to all UK HEIs with a research function. Furthermore, analysis has revealed that the excluded ‘post-92s’ in fact doubled their social science doctoral numbers between 2008 and 2017 (Budd et al. 2018), so there is clearly more going on here than an ESRC focus can tell us.

Exploring this gap provides an opportunity to make two contributions. At one level it provides an extension to the UK’s national story around its social science doctorates which thus far has focused on the more elite institutions. More importantly, though, it allows us to examine whether internationally observed commonalities around doctoral provision are reproduced in a particular national context with pronounced vertical differentiation. With this in mind, the guiding research question is: to what extent is doctoral provision in the UK’s social sciences convergent with global trends, and (how) does organisational positioning mediate this?

Institutional isomorphism

The conceptual framing of this work draws on neo-institutionalism, a theoretical approach concerned with the behaviour of actors (usually organisations) within fields, i.e. sectors. While neo-institutionalism encompasses a wide array of theorisations (see Hall and Taylor 1996 for an overview), we adopt the position that considers actors as cognisant of the rules while being embedded within cultural, legislative, and other structures, thus presenting fields as spaces for subjective sense-making, power relations, and varied agency. In this way, as Schneiberg and Clemens (2006, 214) state, institutional fields are characterised by ‘multiple and competing models, logics, and organisational forms’. Sectors thus consist of a broad homogeneity (indeed neo-institutionalism is predicated on this) within which a certain heterogeneity may exist. What matters is where the commonalities, contrasts, and tensions lie. This section examines how this homogeneity is purported to come to pass, highlights the application of this approach in higher education policy literature to date, and then justifies its use here.

Isomorphic processes

Further developing this understanding of somewhat homogeneous sectors, we invoke scholarship which examines how organisations within a field come to ‘resemble other units that face the same set of environmental circumstances’ (DiMaggio and Powell 1983, 149), a phenomenon termed ‘institutional isomorphism’. Crucial here is that action may not only be driven by optimising outcomes, but can be the result of other factors. Organisational change and isomorphism, it is argued, may be related to improving performance, but it can also be driven by other, analytically distinct processes: coercion, mimesis, and normativity.

Coercion is present in regulative frameworks or informal expectations, which pre- or proscribe certain activities, and include factors such as policy or donor stipulations. Defectors are likely to suffer consequences, which in formal terms takes the shape of litigation or sanctions, while informal non-compliance triggers negative peer responses such as exclusion or public shaming (Kondra and Hurst 2009).

Mimesis involves activity modelled on one’s peers, often those which are more successful, and is most likely to take place where an actor is unable to address new, externally-imposed problems through current practice (Hoffman 1999). It may not be known whether the model being copied is viable, but additional legitimacy can be gained by publicly mimicking high status players (DiMaggio and Powell 1983).

Normativity reflects the embeddedness of accepted ideas and practices, which, over time, become institutionalised, i.e. constitutive of the instution. These diffuse and embed through professionalisation and training, establishing values, standards, and ways of operating associated with a particular professional base to which new entrants are socialised (Corby and Latreille 2012). Normativity encourages conformity through enactment being taken for granted, in contrast to the threatened or actual enforcement of informal coercion.

Isomorphism in higher education policy

Exploring the mechanisms of institutional isomorphism has a long tradition across different sectors, from the chemical industry (Hoffman 1999) to professional rugby union (O’Brien and Slack 2004). Its application in education is also well-established (see e.g. Benavot et al. 1991), and it has more recently proliferated in higher education as scholars continue to unpack the spread and effects of marketisation and commodification (Meyer and Powell 2020).

Research focused on the international level evinces within education more broadly a marked diffusion of shared logics and discourse, or ‘policy talk’ (Ramirez, Meyer, and Lerch 2016) and the emergence of something of a ‘global template’ for higher education in particular (Zapp and Ramirez 2019). Rakic (2001), for example, identifies convergence in higher education policies across a number of European Union countries. Scholars do, though, warn against assuming from macro level studies that progress towards isomorphism is inexorable and uncontested, as ‘what appears as institutional convergence at first glance may well reveal profound differences upon closer examination’ (Powell, Edelstein, and Blanck 2016, 232). Divergence between and within countries is likely, due to domestic political and cultural influences (LeTendre et al. 2001). As Hüther and Krücken (2016) explain, organisations such as HEIs are embedded within often idiosyncratic national and local fields that to some extent ensure differentiation, with diversity being further enabled where organisational autonomy exists (Powell, Edelstein, and Blanck 2016).

In terms of identifying how and where isomorphic processes operate, coercion through policy is often identified as the core feature, but it is also clear that the processes can interact, and may support or counter each other (Puttick 2017). Governments may seek to stimulate diversity under the auspices of promoting choice but existing structures around funding and accountability can stifle the profusion of alternative models (Robson, Randhawa, and Keep 2022; Burke 2016). We can see this in market-oriented policies in higher education that drive HEIs towards adopting a comprehensive, research-intensive profile while simultaneously imposing a need to be distinct from the competition (Croucher and Woelert 2016). In these cases, coercive forces are promoting homogeneity but also heterogeneity, albeit within certain boundaries.

Normative processes can be powerful, such as in internationally shared professional values and practices in professions (Brown and Stevick 2014), or disciplinary conventions mediating how external accreditation is implemented (Cardona Mejía, Pardo del Val, and Dasí Coscollar 2020). Established normativity can lead to outright resistance to change, such as in the case of the imposition of nationally standardised university admissions processes in South Korea, which was only defeated through heavier coercion in the form of threatened defunding and reduced enrolments (Shin and Chung 2020). It can also result in conformity only being skin deep: technology transfer offices established at German universities were found to have been largely ignored by academics, in part due to their normative understandings of higher education being socially rather than economically oriented (Krücken 2003).

Mimesis has been discerned in global education policy (Massey 2009), such as the spread of more coercive models of teacher training around accountability and standards (Helgetun and Dumay 2021). In higher education, the adoption of elite or other group membership, professional association accreditation, and the projection of rankings positions can be seen to reflect an anxiety within competitive market conditions (McQuarrie and Kondra 2016; Zoljargal 2019). While these may require certain (somewhat coercive) benchmarks to be achieved, the chief purpose is signalling legitimacy rather than improving performance, and is particularly attractive when high status institutions already engage in those activities.

In review, convergence is recognised as a feature of contemporary higher education because ‘a variety of overlapping social forces actively promote homogeneity within the university sector especially, driving actors to adopt similar forms and practices’ (Pizarro Milian 2018, 88–89). However, it is also important to examine how (and whether) that isomorphism transpires and how those forces operate. Literature shows that isomorphism depends on power dynamics and potentially an interplay between processes, such as policy, tradition, image, expedience, and strategy. An analysis of UK social science doctoral provision through this framework is appropriate, we argue, because there is evidence of wider convergence at the sectoral level. However, the conditions suggest a likelihood of variation due to – among other things – pronounced status and historical differences between HEIs and policy interventions with manifestly uneven impact (see e.g. Evans et al. 2019).

Methodology

In order to investigate how HEIs approached their social doctoral provision, we recruited a non-representative but purposive sample (Robinson 2014) of 32 senior academics and research directors, from different HEIs, who had responsibilities associated with social science doctorates and often research strategy more generally. We targeted staff working at HEIs across UK higher education and in all four countries of the UK, seeking to ensure a varied sample, based on the literature-informed expectation that their histories, experiences, and approaches to doctoral provision might differ. Although the ESRC is not the only source of social science state funding in the UK, it is the main actor in this space, and were therefore used eligibility for its funding over time (ESRC 2010; 2021a) as an indicative proxy of the profile (i.e. size/history) of an HEI’s PGR provision. This allowed us to observe that most of the 120 UK HEIs who offered postgraduate research in the social sciences could be divided into three distinct groups:

• ‘Insiders’ with a historical and continued association with ESRC doctoral funding;

• ‘Leavers’ with a historical ESRC association but who – usually temporarily – lost access to its patronage in 2010, and;

• ‘Outsiders’ who had never benefitted from ESRC largesse.

Table 1 provides an overview: the Insiders were all pre-92 institutions and the Outsiders all post-92s, suggesting that the pre-/post-92 distinction has some validity, but the Leaver group included both pre-92 and (invariably older) post-92 institutions. The participant ratio of male to female was almost exactly 2:1, which perhaps reflects the long standing issue of gendered progression to senior positions in UK universities (Bagilhole and White 2008; Doherty and Manfredi 2006).

Table 1. Participant sample by HEI type and group.

HEI type/Group	Insider	Leaver	Outsider
Pre-92	12	7	0
Post-92	0	7	6

Institutional ethics approval was obtained from our host university’s ethics committee before recruitment took place. Data was collected through semi-structured discussions with participants lasting up to an hour that ranged across their view of the broader policy context around doctoral provision and their institution’s specific actions and underpinning rationales related to this. The timing of the interviews is also important, in that they took place in 2016 in the period when the original version of the ESRC DTC/DTP policy was being overhauled. As mentioned earlier, the next iteration of the policy is under development, with bids submitted in early 2023 (UKRI 2022).

The interviews were professionally verbatim transcribed before being anonymised - although due to ethical issues data underpinning this publication cannot be made publicly available. The data was coded and analysed, using NviVo software, according to a coding scheme which was constructed in part a priori according to the doctoral activities undertaken (growth, organisation, training, cohort models) and their underpinning rationales – i.e. the isomorphic processes – with emergent subcategories (Elliott 2018). This allowed us to examine the between- and within-group differences around HEIs’ social science research degree activity.

Findings

Across all three groups we saw evidence of considerable dynamism – as well as anxiety – in relation to their social science doctorates, which did indeed reflect a strong degree of convergence around their doctoral activities. Participants invariably described their HEI as actively implementing significant changes, but this was most pronounced in the Leaver group, those who had lost ESRC patronage. Table 2 details which doctoral-related activities the HEIs were involved with, including an indication of the core features and underpinning rationales of those activities by group. We can see that across all groups there were concerted moves to increase their social science (and other) doctoral populations and impose changes to their doctoral organisational/administrative structures and training/supervision. Interdisciplinary cohort-based training, however, was seen almost exclusively (bar one exception) in the Leaver and Insider groups. There were similarities between the groups, but also important differences in how they sought – or were able – to achieve their goals. This was to some extent driven by the influence and interaction of the different isomorphic processes, which we will now explain, firstly by describing where and how and each of the processes was evident.

Table 2. Overview of HEI groups’ social science PGR activities and rationales.

Activity	Group	Active	Core Features	Primary Rationale/s
Doctoral Population Growth	Outsiders	Yes	Internal funding Low cost	REF
	Leavers	Yes	Internal funding International students	REF
	Insiders	Yes	External funding International students	REF
Organisational Changes around Doctoral Provision	Outsiders	Yes	Centralisation	Coordination Cost
	Leavers	Yes	Doctoral colleges Restructures DTCs/DTPs	Funder stipulation Coordination PGR benefits Status
	Insiders	Yes	Doctoral colleges Restructures DTCs/DTPs	Funder stipulation Practice sharing PGR Benefits Status
Doctoral Training Changes	Outsiders	Yes	Training and supervision reviews	PGR benefits
	Leavers	Yes	Training reviews	Funder stipulation PGR benefits
	Insiders	Yes	Training updates	Funder stipulation PGR benefits
Interdisciplinary Doctoral Cohorts	Outsiders	No	–	–
	Leavers	Yes	DTCs/DTPs	Funder stipulation
	Insiders	Yes	DTCs/DTPs	Funder stipulation

Coercion

The clearest sources of imposed alignment were in the ubiquitous presence of the Research Excellence Framework (REF) across all groups, and external funder stipulations for those receiving it. All participants regularly described doctorates as fitting into an overall institutional research strategy that was closely aligned with the REF, such as M7 (Insider) who described how their senior leadership:

has made strategic decisions over the last eight to ten years that they want to increase the size of their PGR population, particularly in the social sciences … not only in terms of [doctoral] completions in how that influences our REF, but actually co-publication with supervisors.

Where the groups differed was in how they supported that growth. While nearly all had established professional/structured doctorates, the story on solely research-based doctorates varied. Insiders, being large, well-established, high status institutions, were able to attract domestic applicants to externally funded – and some supplementary internal – scholarships, and also recruited a steady stream of fee paying international ones. With much less (or even no) access to domestic state funding, some Leavers looked to industry for support, but all leant on international markets while simultaneously investing heavily in their own scholarship schemes: ‘our experience is that these bursaries dramatically increase the application rate’ (M8, Leaver). Those recruiting from outside the UK, though, ran into issues in the coercive form of ever-changing and tightening immigration requirements, which was particularly acute for those Leavers whose chief source of PGRs was from overseas. As M9 (Leaver) explained, ‘we do rely a lot on international students in our recruitment so the [student] visa policy over the past few years … apart from being largely counter-productive but also very erratic, has been a huge problem for us.’ Outsiders, on the other hand, having lower international visibility, tended to be more varied and financially prudent in their funding approaches:

we run several schemes … a whole raft of different studentships. All new colleagues joining the university … have to achieve or be near to achieving doctoral status as part of their contract of employment. There’s a fee waive for that. (M17, Outsider)

The coercive nature of aligning with funders was cited as the main driving force behind organisational and training changes and the development of interdisciplinary cohort models, and was widely reported across the Insider and Leaver groups – although for the Leavers this tended to involve pre-emptive changes to re-access funding. For Insiders, being involved with a DTC/DTP invariably meant adapting current training provision, but also potentially profound changes to processes as centres/partnerships crossed internal departmental lines as well as external ones for those in multi-institution arrangements. The resource implications of this were reported as considerable, particularly for larger consortia: ‘we have a DTC management group. Each institution puts forward two [senior] academics … also the admin lead for each institution … and a [full time] DTC manager’ (M6, Insider).

ESRC directives in particular were regularly cited by Insiders as excessive to the point of hampering effectiveness; these ranged from training audits and changes to amending reporting mechanisms, scholarship allocations, and DTC/DTP eligibility criteria. The ESRC was described as ‘capricious … a real downside [to DTCs is that] the individuals involved have this mountain of work, and ESRC are not very considerate in the way that they manage it … they’re very happy to just dole out more’ (F3, Insider). This was, it was recognised, in part due to enforced budget cuts at ESRC that devolved administration out to the HEIs themselves.

Another form of coercion related to the funders’ criteria for DTC/DTP membership eligibility, which was aimed at the departmental rather than institutional level; in later iterations this included REF scores. Because the REF is arranged on a disciplinary basis, some departments in the same university could be eligible for inclusion while others were not, and some had to be removed when HEIs applied to renew a DTC/DTP. For those seeking to regain or retain patronage, this meant for ‘some difficult conversations with the units who aren’t part of it’ (F5, Leaver) while others saw ‘casualties in terms of departments that didn’t play the REF game quite as cannily … some parts of the DTC are now no longer part of the DTP’ (M4, Insider).

Most Outsiders were ineligible from applying for DTCs/DTPs, and they (as well as some Leavers) had been rebuffed from the outset when making enquiries about partnerships: ‘the pre-1992 universities around here were not interested in including their neighbours’ (M16, Outsider). Outsiders’ continued exclusion enhanced a sense of ongoing disenfranchisement: ‘we’re just stuck in this Catch-22 position where we want to improve, and we need funding to improve, but we can’t’ (M19, Outsider). One strategic solution was to channel resources into a small number of stronger areas to develop their REF profiles in the hope of joining a partnership in the future: ‘we can’t have excellence all round, because of resource, time, and practicality, so what I’m trying to do here is identify then grow pockets’ (M20, Outsider).

Mimesis

Emulation on legitimacy grounds was mostly evident in relation to the status associated with having a DTC/DTP. This featured prominently in the Leaver accounts in that the loss of ESRC and/or other patronage was felt keenly, being regularly referred to as the revocation of a prestigious badge: ‘Colleagues thought they’d lost something, not that they were doing anything different [and] not on any grounds of quality.’ (M11, Leaver). Importantly, while the funding through a DTC/DTP was considered a boon, many saw this as not being their main benefit: ‘The badging is more important than the money’ (M8, Leaver). It represented an external symbol of good quality doctoral provision which enabled them to not only attract postgraduate researchers but also to develop relationships with other HEIs for research and in particular large grant applications. For M13 (Leaver), being awarded a DTP ‘would open up really important opportunities for us to network on a scale that we hadn’t been able to do in the past with … other universities.’

The importance of the ‘badge’ can be seen in how institutions responded to its loss: ‘the consequence of that was a sense in the institution that we needed to make sure that that didn’t happen again’ (F5, Leaver), with many conducting a thorough review and reform of their doctoral organisation and provision. In some cases existing research training was under threat as, without a DTP/DTC, managers ‘started to ask questions [related to] the business model of funding it. Suddenly it became a problem’ (F10, Leaver). Some Leavers were able to retain theirs but others were not; an irony is that those who made deep cuts to their research training could subsequently be considered ineligible when it came to regaining access to DTCs/DTPs further down the line. Two Leavers even independently established what they called a ‘shadow DTC’ which replicated the ESRC model. These did not carry the legitimacy of accreditation, but were a pre-emptive move to ensure readmission when the opportunity arose, ‘to make it clear that, when the next thing [i.e. DTPs] started to happen, we wanted to fully be part of it’ (F9, Leaver).

Holding on to DTCs/DTPs was not taken for granted, either, and several Insiders cited being placed under significant pressure to ensure that they retained patronage when the policies were renewed, as F3 (Insider) articulated:

In terms of status, the university would feel, I think, thoroughly pissed off if we didn’t get it, which is why I would feel I would have to resign … I have been told by the [leadership], “You’re getting this, and this is critically important that we’re successful in it.”

Alongside this, a number of Insiders ‘match funded’ (i.e. subsidised) their externally funded places, which allowed them to increase the number of badged scholarships to ‘spread the kudos of an ESRC award’ (M3, Insider). This, incidentally, was optional in the early iterations of the DTC policy but later became compulsory.

Normativity

Internalised logics were chiefly evident in participants’ accounts of the frictions created by changes around their doctoral provision. In addition to the specifically DTC/DTP-oriented adjustments, all of the universities across our sample had restructured (or were in the process of restructuring) their postgraduate systems in some way. Most Leavers and Insiders had established graduate/doctoral colleges to coordinate training and administration while Outsiders tended to make more modest, cost-sensitive alterations, centralising functions rather than creating new internal units. Tensions related to changes across the sample could be grouped into three main categories: administrative, political, and disciplinary.

From an administrative perspective, new procedures and roles inevitably took some time to adapt to, particularly where established, previously dispersed functions were moved towards the centre. A number of participants reported that the new structures could have overlapping jurisdictions and responsibilities, which meant that decision-making was ‘always a bit messy’ (M2, Insider). Some of the difficulties related to a general ‘inertia’ (M4, Insider) around amending current practices but was notably amplified when partners in doctoral consortia needed to align procedures or systems across universities, as F1 (Insider) explained:

Just think about what it means to have three completely different credit systems … trying to manage timetables between three institutions to get an interdisciplinary research methods unit to run is an ongoing nightmare … there are always things, big things and little things … completely different timescales and processes for managing modification of programmes, or creating new programmes … It’s never-ending.

Political issues could be seen in resistance to losing longstanding autonomy. The establishment of doctoral schools, or other forms of centralisation, required faculties and/or academic departments to relinquish some aspects of their own doctoral management: ‘it’s still a struggle in a sense because I think the existing schools, the discipline schools, do feel that they want to keep their own control over their PGR’ (M10, Leaver). For those in a DTC/DTP that crossed departmental and/or institutional boundaries, overcoming historical and embedded logics of independence and competition, to develop trust, took time and patience: ‘We did have a lot of birth pains trying to work out how we were going to work with each other’ (M6, Insider).

Finally, disciplinary differences meant that broad, compulsory research training for funded students as stipulated by DTC/DTP funders was not universally welcomed. In earlier policy iterations, this had been somewhat flexible and delivered by individual departments, but it became increasingly standardised. In addition to requiring changes to the Master’s programmes through which much of the training was delivered, this pushed against epistemological norms in those fields which had particular orientations towards or against certain research methods. This was most often noted where economists queried the relevance of qualitative approaches, but they were not the only source of resistance, as M5 (Insider) explained:

We have the economists saying to us, “Well, how and why are we going to do loads of qual training?” [and] the history people are saying, “How on earth would some quant training benefit … the people that we’re trying to attract?” (M5, Insider)

Optimisation

Planned cost, efficiency, or other gains from organisational and training changes were almost exclusively seen in the Outsider and Leaver groups, with benefits accruing to the institution and/or doctoral researchers themselves. For these, a combination of the desire to grow their PGR populations, and in response to (or in anticipation of) having larger doctoral communities, required an upgrade of the associated administrative and support structures. Outsiders were notably more concerned with managing tighter budgets while still improving the outcomes for their PGRs. Many of their changes, though, were still extensive, with M17’s (Outsider) university being illustrative, as they introduced a new, institution-wide approach to their doctorates that was:

almost like an undergraduate experience at a higher level. We developed quite intricate systems which are largely based around support and recognised the fact that many of our [PGRs] have the potential … to be successful. As a small university with minimal funding, how we can utilise our resources best and a cross-university approach seems to be mostly successful.

Leavers also regularly talked about ensuring good standards of support across the university, bringing about changes to ensure that ‘every student is getting the same minimum. There was no system to capture it … it would have been happening really well in some areas, but [in others] it wasn’t’ (F9 Leaver). What differed from the Outsiders, though, was that reducing duplication rather than costs was a central concern – ‘It’s much more efficient very often to run this training across departments.’ (F5, Leaver). Optimisation rarely featured as a rationale in Insider accounts, perhaps because their overall structures were well established and their changes primarily related to what funders demanded.

Discussion

In this section we will first assess the extent to which isomorphism was evident in social science doctoral provision in the UK, as understood through the accounts of senior, strategically placed staff at 32 HEIs. Following this, we will take a closer look at how HEI profile featured through examining how three groups of HEIs – that we termed Insider, Leaver, and Outsider – fared based on the interaction between the four processes of coercion, mimesis, normativity, and optimisation. This, we argue, highlights how isomorphism within this policy context is both enabled and hindered in different ways that largely varied according to the profile and positioning of the HEIs in those groups.

Common trends – with variations

The wider literature suggests convergence in doctoral practices internationally (Bao, Kehm, and Ma 2018; Nerad 2020; Mathies and Cantwell 2022) and in the UK (Smith-McGloin and Wynne 2015; Harrison, Smith, and Kinton 2016), notably around growth in the production of doctorates, more central organisation, formalised training, and structured, interdisciplinary cohort models. At the same time, it has been argued that factors such as national setting (Hüther and Krücken 2016), and within that, organisational history and status (Croucher and Woelert 2016; Bloch and Mitterle 2017; Evans et al. 2019) are likely to play mediating roles. A relative diversity between and within countries in terms of doctoral models and understandings has already been observed at different levels, such as the regional (Kovačević, Bitušíková, and Dagen 2022; Mathies and Cantwell 2022) and national (Molla and Cuthbert 2019). This paper extends this observation through a closer examination of social sciences doctorates in the UK, with the general trends being present but with variations that can be associated with national context and institutional profiles within that.

Across all accounts we saw HEIs enacting a strategic commitment to increasing their social science (and other) doctoral numbers, precipitated principally by the UK-wide Research Excellence Framework (REF). There were, though, variations in how they were able to support this, which depended largely on their relative ability to leverage external funding through grants or fee-paying international PGRs. This was far easier for the larger and older, high status HEIs than newer ones with less international visibility and a shorter track record of hosting postgraduate researchers. This growth was accompanied by – and to some extent necessitated – changes in the management and administration of doctorates. This included, as the literature suggests (Deem 2022; Sarrico 2022), more centralised coordination through existing structures as well as more nascent doctoral/graduate colleges and doctoral training centres/partnerships (Lunt, McAlpine, and Mills 2014; Smith-McGloin and Wynne 2015). Again there were differences related the age and status of the institution, with newer universities undertaking more modest and cost-oriented changes because they were usually excluded from obtaining external support for them. There was, too, further evidence of more coordinated and broader training elements being incorporated into doctoral study, again corroborating previous work (Bao, Kehm, and Ma 2018; Deem and Dowle 2020). However our findings highlight how, in this context, mid-range institutions in particular directed the most energy into reviewing and revitalising their doctoral provision in order to (largely successfully, as it happens) rejoin the state-funded club. The interdisciplinary cohort model was less widespread, being concentrated in institutions which either received funding and a mandate to arrange their doctorates this way, or a handful who imitated the model with as a strategic move towards gaining funding to sustain it. This form of doctoral provision was, though, by no means the only type of postgraduate research programme being offered, with non-cohort PhDs and structured doctorates being widely offered; the growth of the latter in particular has been observed elsewhere (Jones 2018; Molla and Cuthbert 2019).

Interacting isomorphic processes

The key contribution of this work relates to how different HEIs are positioned within a particular policy context because it highlights that they are subject to different combinations of isomorphic processes. Some isomorphism scholarship suggests that convergence is inevitable, and asserts one or other process – usually coercion or mimesis – is the driver without actually establishing if this is the case (Mizruchi and Fein 1999). Our closer examination of HEIs’ actions in relation to their social science doctorates reveals a more nuanced situation. Coercion certainly played a role, but as other work also found (Powell, Edelstein, and Blanck 2016), so did mimesis, normativity, and optimisation, and they interacted in not always complementary ways. Furthermore, the expectation that histories and hierarchies matter (Bloch and Mitterle 2017) was realised as the interaction varied depending on the positioning of the university in question. In other words, while there is a degree of isomorphism because some processes promote certain activities across all research active HEIs, other factors actively further promote or hinder it, at least within our sample. This was particularly for newer, smaller institutions, a state of affairs that is unlikely to change unless policy addresses this and/or they can draw on greater volumes of expertise and funding. How this works is depicted in Table 3, which illustrates how different issues positively or negatively influenced the social science doctoral growth and development of the different groups. As we can see, some elements are common to one or more groups, some are specific to one, and they operate simultaneously. Importantly, the Insiders are subject to more promoting factors while the Outsiders face the most hinderances.

Table 3. Promoting and hindering factors to doctoral growth and development by HEI group.

Hindering Factors			Low Status
	HEIs/Departments Resisting Losses of Autonomy		Few International Applicants
	Disciplines Resisting Methodological Breadth	Status Impact of Withdrawn Patronage	Minimal External Funding
	Funders Enforcing Change	Loss of External Funding	Minimal Internal Funding
	Student Visa Regulations		Less Developed Doctoral Programmes
HEI Group	INSIDER	LEAVER	OUTSIDER
Promoting Factors	Research Excellence Framework
	Doctoral Production as a Norm
	Well Established Doctoral Programmes		Low Cost Approaches to Doctoral Funding
	Sustained International PGR Applications
	High Status	Some External Funding
	Major External Funding	Major Internal Funding
	Some Internal Funding

While not all HEIs offer postgraduate research, it is so widespread in higher education as to be taken for granted, i.e. it is normative (Kot and Hendel 2012). This means that the continued presence of doctorates is somewhat independent of policy. It was, though, clear across our participants’ accounts that coercion through the REF underpinned organisational strategies to increase doctoral numbers. Beyond this, however, each group of universities was subject to the processes in markedly different ways.

Insiders did face problems but were by and large able to thrive in spite of them. Their greater access to external funding allowed them to preserve their strong positions by maintaining elevated doctoral numbers and the legitimacy associated with the ‘badge’ (and resources) of funder recognition. They had a head start in that they already possessed elevated status and large, well-developed doctoral programmes that attracted significant volumes of domestic and international applicants. They were under severe mimetic pressure to retain their DTCs/DTPs, which they did, but were also subject to countervailing coercion and normativity. In terms of the former, the effort and resources associated with meeting funders’ extensive stipulations hampered them, as did the UK government’s ‘hostile environment’ towards immigration, which created complications around international student visas (see Luthra 2021). Having to align processes and collaborate across previously autonomous and competing departmental and institutional divides was particularly painful (Deem, Barnes, and Clarke 2015; Lunt, McAlpine, and Mills 2014) in that it met stiff normative resistance, as did imposing methodological breadth into some narrower disciplinary research training traditions. They evidently did face a range of issues, but their major advantages meant they were not insurmountable.

For the Leavers, considerable stress was initially inflicted through the coercively imposed loss of funding and – more importantly – its associated status, and they responded with alacrity in their mimetic desire to regain them. This highlights, as other researchers have done, that the lure of external validation in competitive HE environments is strong (McQuarrie and Kondra 2016). The counterforces for this group were, in the first instance, the coercive changes in policy that at least temporarily stripped them of the status of state patronage for social science doctorates, as well as the difficulties around student visas mentioned above. They were, though, able to start from a normative foundation of established doctoral provision, having largely been left out in the cold by fiscal changes imposed on state funders rather than by major shortcomings of their own. As such they were able to review and upgrade what they had to a level that subsequently met the inclusion criteria when the DTCs/DTPs were renewed and expanded, They did this in part as an optimisation of outcomes for PGRs and improved efficiency, but also with the aim of regaining the badge and its associated benefits. In the interstitial period their somewhat elevated status allowed them to continue to recruit international students, and they were fortunate to have the resources to establish sufficient numbers of their own doctoral scholarships. A number of Leavers, while they losing ESRC funding, were involved with other funders’ STEM or Arts and Humanities DTCs/DTPs and were able to transfer a great deal of learning from this. In short, the barriers they faced were significant at the outset but they were able to able to draw on a sufficient combination of historically accumulated resources, expertise, and status, to be able to regain entry to the elite club at the first available opportunity.

For the Outsiders, the story was quite different. As with the other groups, they were driven by normative and coercive pressures at the sectoral level to develop the size and profile of their doctoral provision. They had to be creative in terms of finding cost effective ways of supporting doctorates, but the counterforces they faced were too great to overcome, at least in terms of catching up with the other groups and gaining the status and funding of external patronage. Their coercive – and extended – exclusion represented a mimetic indignity in itself, and consequently curtailed their capacity to develop. In contrast with the Leavers, who at one level found themselves in the same excluded position, Outsiders lacked the accumulated wherewithal (status, finances, and track record) to bridge the gap, and as such are in danger of being left behind.

Conclusion

In review, we can see some convergence in doctoral provision in the UK social sciences in line with global trends, at least within our sample of 32 HEIs. However, within that there is evidence of a divergence underpinned by the interplay of push and pull factors that vary according to the profile of the institution. Furthermore, we can see that how this plays out depends on a nationally and locally specific constellation of inherited cultures and practices, policies, and sectoral hierarchies. Doctoral provision in the UK, as elsewhere, is part and parcel of the identity of higher education and this normative force, along with a combination of coercive policy and associated mimetic status gains, appears to be encouraging UK HEIs to increase the scale of that provision. Within this, the associated administration, training and support have been improved in order to meet policy goals, achieve greater efficiencies and cost savings, as well in the interests of enhanced and more equitable outcomes for doctoral researchers. We also saw a continuation of ‘lone scholar’ doctorates and and increasing prevalence other doctoral models, particularly those which are part taught/more structured. At the same time, though, funders are imposing certain shapes on ‘research-only’ doctorates and research training, as well as on how this is organised, in return for funding and the legitimacy of the ‘badge’ of being funder-approved. This engenders a number of tensions. For those in receipt of patronage, they are required to align existing systems and collaborate across the boundaries of historically autonomous academic departments, disciplines, and also HEIs. They also have to worry about losing patronage. For those rendered ineligible for funding, some were able to draw on reserves of expertise, status, and finance in order to regain eligibility, while others lacked those reserves and continued to be excluded. This reinforces what has been called an ‘upward spiral’ (Thune et al. 2012) where policy rewards and further promotes some institutions for having an historical head start in their doctoral provision while punishing and hindering others for being further behind.

This paper offers two contributions to the literature. The first is an extension of the documented story of doctorates in the UK, particularly beyond those who have always received state funding in the social sciences. Recognising the limitations of our sample, further research is needed to see how HEIs across the sector have fared, both within and outside the social sciences, not least through and beyond the Covid pandemic (Goldstone and Zhang 2022). Our core contribution, though, is that our analysis highlights how attention needs to be paid to the national idiosyncrasies of higher education policy spaces in order to establish if – and how – broader trends are replicated or refracted. We found, as the literature suggested, both convergence with wider trends and but also divergences that have their own country-specific flavour. What we have shown here is that, in a sector where status differences are pronounced and HEI profiles varied, policies interact with a range of factors that to some extent encourage isomorphism but at the same time can reinforce heterogeneity and hierarchies when they penalise ‘weaker’ players.

This raises a number of issues for higher education policy makers, as well as for universities. According to this theoretical approach, policy seeks to bring about change coercively, and we can see that the nature and speed of compliance or resistance may vary depending on whether it complements or creates tension with other isomorphic processes. Requiring organisations to enhance something they are already engaged in and believe in involves a different set of dynamics to imposing activities that are new and/or anathemic to them. We can also see coercive forces operating in tension, either internally through funders inflicting unwieldy, labour-intensive stipulations that impede the intended policy outcomes, or externally where postgraduate funding and immigration policies push against each other. Finally, these processes operate at different levels. From a sectoral perspective, literature suggests – and this paper corroborates – how policies run the risk of entrenching inequality where they persistently reward those who already have the advantages of greater material, experiential, and symbolic resources (Hicks 2012; Evans et al. 2019). Organisationally, what may be welcomed by senior leaders could be perceived as detrimental to the cultural orientations and practices of departments or disciplines, and so on. As this paper shows, how this plays out is likely to be complex and uneven, and these dynamics mean that isomorphism will perhaps always be fraught and partial.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Liverpool Hope University School of Education research fund.

Notes

1 University titles were extended to a wider range of tertiary institutions in 1992; the subsequent designation of ‘pre-92’ and ‘post-92’ is an informal and binary but recognised distinction in UK higher education, see Boliver (2015).

2 The Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) also funds some social science PhDs; it launched DTCs shortly after the ESRC (see Harrison, Smith, and Kinton 2016).

3 Not all UK HEIs have Research Degree Awarding Powers (RDAP)