Organizational culturein private higher education: a case study of a new private universityin post-soviet azerbauan

VI. ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE

Beginning with my first impressions of the institution in 1994 and ending with my final visit in 1997, the character of organizational life there was unique and very different from any I had previously experienced. The fact that this culture was emerging within the national culture of a new-nation state in a region undergoing a radical transformation was foremost in my mind. The Soviet past, in which Azerbaijan lived for seventy-plus years, was bound to have lingering effects on the kinds of institutional cultures emerging in the few years following the collapse of the former Soviet Union.

It was not surprising, therefore, that I found Khazar's culture - its mission, practices, rituals, stories, identity, and self-belief - influenced by the legacy of top-down, authoritarian, controlling mecbanisms. These elements of its culture were constmcted from "the top down," centrally controlled by the top administrative officer. It was not a coincidence that the nature of Khazar's culture was - also -improvisational and evolving. There was a sense that the old ways of doing things were being used, but that different structures and

mechanisms (along with different attimdes and behavior) were acceptable and welcomed because Khazar was a new model of higher education. This combination of authoritarian values and improvisational values was peculiar and characterized the tension which I saw as Khazar was struggling to see its way through the chaos of the transition they were experiencing.

Other aspects of Khazar's that shaped and strategically shaped by the combination of authoritarian values and openness to innovation is its desire to be an institution that pursues the twin ideals of teaching and research, with research being its overarching priority. Closely attached to this mission is it's choice of English as the medium of instruction, the foreign institutional support it has developed, and the target of its academic programs.