Adaptation and higher education institutions: concepts and challenges for management

Abstract

This work aims to delimit the concept of adaptation in order to shape a stage that allows to understand the interactions between the concept and the administrative practices in private higher education institutions (HEI). The management is often assigned the task of achieving the adaptation of the organization; however, no work can be found that indicates clearly how adopting a notion of adaptation can impact on decision making and on the construction of management indicators in HEIs.  The systematic review of the literature shows that adaptive and administrative phenomena are usually addressed independently, so the state of theory in this field is insufficient. The methodological route responds to the characteristics of a heuretics that makes possible the construction of a field of problems for research and the understanding of the adaptation of Latin American universities, from the perspective of their management. The discussion allows delineating stages for research and points out challenges at the level of the elaboration of public policies and of the HEIs’ management.