University Merger Reforms: Rational, political, institutional or incidental processes? The case of Denmark: Paper prepared for the panel" Mergers in Higher education: Lessons from the Nordic Countries" at CHER 28th Annual Conference, Lisbon, Portugal, 7-9 September 2015

Mergers have for some years been popular within the public sector in many countries this includes mergers between higher education institutions. In the Danish university and Government Research Institutions sector a process of merger took place in 2006. ‘University merger reforms’ is an analysis of this process and not at least the post-merger processes from the actual merger and up to 2015. Empirically the paper focuses on three of the Danish universities: Copenhagen, Aarhus and Aalborg. Theoretically the analysis is based on a combination of four models for understanding such reforms within the HE-sector and some of the conclusions made from other kinds of merger studies. Important conclusions of the study of the three universities are that mergers and especially post-mergers processes are much more than linear, straight forward rational processes and that understanding merger processes on an organizational level demands the use of more than one conceptual model for agenda-setting - decision making and institutional restructuring,