Alison is undertaking PhD research at UCL's Institute of Education, exploring the roles of English university governing bodies. Alison works on a project basis as an Associate with Advance HE on a number of governance-related projects.
Before embarking on her PhD, Alison led one of the UK's largest private providers of higher education, GSM London, and served on HEFCE's Leadership, Governance and Management Strategic Advisory Committee and the UK-wide Standing Committee for Quality Assessment.
Previously, Alison worked at Executive Director level for over 20 years, successfully leading sizeable organisations and a variety of central functions. Working with her teams, they developed and delivered strategies that significantly improved performance through strong consumer insight, brand development, focus on effectiveness, and good stakeholder management. Alison has a proven track record of building organisational capability in both executive, non-executive, and consulting roles.
PhD research
Professionalising university governance? An investigation of influences on and dimensions of English university governing body roles
There is little academic literature nor empirical data regarding English university governing bodies. That which exists is either out of date, primarily conceptual in nature, or focusses on perceived institutional governance failures. Scholarly work on board effectiveness identifies the need to develop a better understanding of governing body roles. As such, Alison Wheaton’s doctoral research addresses two questions: how are English university governing body roles characterised at sector level and how do English university governing body members perceive their roles and why? The analytical framework incorporates governing body attributes, including governing body size, member types, member characteristics and committee structures. Her research explored, from governors’ perspectives, influences on and perceptions of their roles. She deployed a range of governance theories from outside of higher education including managerial hegemony, agency, stewardship, and others, as explanatory tools.
Alison conducted the research over the past four years at system and institution level. At system level, she aggregated governing body attribute data across 120 English universities, resulting in a new dataset. She also thematically reviewed relevant documentary evidence and captured insights from interviews with thirteen expert informants, including sector regulators, funders, advisors and practitioners. At institution level, Alison conducted five university case studies which included a Russell Group university, two other Pre-1992s and two Post-1992s. She interviewed over sixty governors, including all of the case study Chairs, Vice-Chancellors, Secretaries/Clerks, many committee chairs and a cross-section of other lay, staff and student members.
English university governing body composition has become more homogeneous both in size and member types but member characteristics have become more varied. Institutions are recruiting lay members, in particular, for their skills and experience. The majority of governors across at least four cases identified nine governing body roles, aligned to strategy, oversight and support clusters. An emerging role with regard to institutional culture was also identified. Governors also identified six key internal, external and individual influences. Three cross-cutting themes relate to influences; the importance of governing body composition, the emergence of ‘new’ stakeholders and the significance of external and internal context. Two pertain to roles. Governors largely agreed regarding their strategy and oversight roles. Views differed amongst governors, and compared to sector expectations, regarding governors’ support roles.
Alison developed a conceptual framework of dimensions of governing body roles, including the degree of integration in the key role areas, the nature of involvement, and the level of legitimacy. The research also prompts reassessment of internal and external member skills requirements, ways to improve academic governance and performance monitoring, how to best codify governing body support roles, consequences of new regulation including capital funding mechanisms and what happens in a crisis.