The Vulnerable University. Exploring Organizational Resilience and the Common Good in Higher Education.

Universities can be considered among the most resilient and resistant organizations, while their expansion around the world seems to be incessant (Frank & Meyer, 2020). At least in recent decades and in the Global North, educational institutions, and universities in particular, are seldom threatened in their mere existence (but see Schofer et al., 2022; Young & Pinheiro, 2022; Zapp & Dahmen, 2023). Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic and other health emergency crises, enduring closures of schools and universities were often justified by declining enrollments and rising budget deficits (Tieken & Auldridge-Reveles, 2019). However, this does not imply that universities have not changed over time. Instead, they have demonstrated a high degree of adaptation to external pressures while keeping their academic core remarkably stable (Young et al., 2023). We live in times of multiple crises that have a profound effect for the organizational survival of the university (Marginson, 2024b). In this contribution we develop a conceptual framework that is situated within organizational theory, focusing on the literature streams of organizational resilience, organizational vulnerability, organizational sensemaking and new institutionalism, and proposes a holistic concept of organizational vulnerability that distinguishes between progressive vulnerability and regressive vulnerability. While the former focuses on curiosity, openness, and deep learning through reflection, the latter is best described by its closeness and ignorance without deep learning mechanisms (Schäfer & Saner, 2025). The contribution is anchored at the meso level and provides an insight into the politics of knowledge by taking up the discussion around the common good debate. The common good approach refers to human development in the context of universal rights (Aven, 2011; Liddle & Addidle, 2022; Marginson, 2024a). From the perspective of the capability approach the likelihood of the university’s survival as an organization is raised by situating the vulnerable organizations in the context of fundamental values of the society (Nussbaum, 2007; Sen, 2001). In this contribution, we will review and discuss two examples from the higher education literature to further strengthen our argumentation on the relationship between organizational resilience and vulnerability. The two examples, the lack of equal opportunities in universities and the COVID-19 pandemic, differ significantly in their temporality. The former represents a long-standing societal challenge with nation-state specific outcomes, while the latter is a rapidly developing global health crisis. However, both examples help us to shed light on the relationship between organizational resilience and vulnerability and the shifting legitimacies of universities as organizations. The outlook will address further empirical ideas on the operationalization of the concepts under study. The discussion will relate the holistic concept of vulnerability to the debate on the role of the common good and the question of what factors determine the continuity of the university. The aim of this paper is to further unpack and develop the theoretical concept of the vulnerable university on the basis of two historical cases. The holistic concept of vulnerability is also intended to contribute to the growing literature on the organizational resilience and adaptability of universities in the face of multiple crises.