(How) Do Formal Organizational Commitments Work? the Case of Inclusion Organization in the UK Higher Education System

In the UK, virtually all universities have formally committed themselves to inclusion, despite little empirical evidence of weather (and if so, how) equality and diversity can be achieved through purposive organizational action (Author 2019, 2020, 2023). This research project explores the role of universities’ formal commitments in the process of inclusion organisation. Drawing on new institutionalist theory elaborated by DiMaggio and Powell and advanced by John W. Meyer, and on earlier sociological analyses of institutions à la M Weber and P Selznick, I reconsider formal organization in the pursuit of inclusion as merely one type of (culturally validated) social action. I argue that by formalising organisational commitments to inclusion universities do not only pursue the inclusion of people in higher education, but also their own inclusion into the organisational field in which they operate. This argument is explored empirically with organizational indicators and textual data collected and refined from 2017 to 2020, from the websites of app. 100 UK universities and other governmental and non-governmental organisations, such as the Equalities Office and the Equality Challenge Unit (UK). Using big data analytical techniques such as Latent Dirichlet Allocation, and descriptive analyses of keyword-frequencies on a sub-set of data, I map discursive similarities between how different universities talk about inclusion, and how inclusion is being framed by governments, charities, and other third-party organisations. The results show how organisationally embedded universities have become by virtue of their formal commitments to inclusion. This raises important questions about the role of organizational commitments in strengthening institutional legitimacy as opposed to delivering meaningful change at the structural level in relation to their formally articulated goals (in this case, making universities more inclusive). The findings are discussed in relation to early and new sociological institutionalist perspectives and in relation to equality and higher education policies.