An Empirical Study on the Relationship between an Institutional Research Office and Management Support Functions

An Analysis Using a U.S. Published Dataset

Abstract

　 Using data from 185 U.S. universities, this paper sets out to provide an empirical analysis of the extent to which an IR office is required for the provision of management support functions. The paper hypothesizes, on the basis of previous studies, that the working experience that a president has had, prior to appointment, within the university concerned, has the effect of increasing the channels through which the president can accumulate information necessary for management decision-making within the organizational structure. Using this hypothesis as a basis, the paper examines the relationships between on the one hand the working experience of the president within the institution and, on the other, the size of the IR office as well as the circumstances of the establishment of management information systems. The main conclusion of the paper is that, in the U.S., the wider the range of channels feeding information to the president at the top of the university, the stronger the tendency for the IR office to be reduced in size or for an information management system to be dispensed with. This result suggests that in many universities in which top management is recruited from within the institution concerned, there is not necessarily a need for an IR office acting as a specialist management support structure or for the training of specialist IR staff, and that it is desirable for an IR office to concentrate its functions on collecting and circulating empirical data.