University governance and meaning production: planning and management in a religious context

Gobernanza universitaria y producción de sentido: planificación y gestión en contexto confesional

Karina Beatriz Puente*

Introduction

Thinking about university governance from a complex epistemological perspective involves understanding it as a network of structural, discursive, and symbolic relationships. In this sense, the articulation between Pierre Bourdieu's field theory and Eliseo Verón's social semiosis offers a powerful framework for interpreting the university as a space for the production of meaning, where power and knowledge are discursively configured. Both authors converge on a relational view of meaning: for Bourdieu (1994), it arises from the encounter between habitus and field, while for Verón (2011 [1998]), meaning is a product of social semiosis, inseparable from the historical conditions of production and recognition: "all production of meaning is social" (Verón, 2011 [1998], p. 126). The author's hypothesis admits that meaning does not reflect reality, but rather constitutes it discursively within a network of power relations.

This theoretical convergence allows us to understand university governance beyond its organizational dimension, that is, also as a symbolic field in which legitimacies, hierarchies, and meanings are contested. In Bourdieu's framework, the scientific field, and by extension the university field, constitutes a system of positions fighting for the monopoly of symbolic authority: "a system of objective relations between positions acquired in previous struggles, the site of a competitive struggle for the monopoly of scientific authority" (Bourdieu, 1994, p. 131). The field is, therefore, a space of forces and struggles, where agents occupy different positions according to the capital they possess (economic, cultural, symbolic) and where the principles of legitimacy are the subject of constant dispute. In this sense, García Gil and Hernández (2020) consider it necessary to analyze not only the rules of government, but also the strategies and practices of power that university actors deploy in their daily interactions.

The university field, as a subfield of the field of power, is configured according to a logic of relative autonomy, strained by pressures from the state and the market. In the words of Bourdieu (2002), the intellectual field is:

"like a magnetic field, constitutes a system of lines of force: that is, the agents or systems of agents that form part of it can be described as forces that, when they arise, oppose and aggregate, giving it its specific structure at a given moment in time. On the other hand, each of them is determined by their belonging to this field: in effect, they owe to the particular position they occupy in it properties of position that cannot be reduced to intrinsic properties and, in particular, a certain type of participation in the cultural field, as a system of relations between themes and problems, and, therefore, a specific type of cultural unconscious, while at the same time being intrinsically endowed with what will be called a functional weight, because of its own "mass," that is, its power (or rather, its authority) in the field (Bordieu, 2002, pp. 9-10).

This relative autonomy does not imply isolation, but rather a constant tension between the internal logic of academic capital and the external logics of political and economic domination. Hence, discourses on "excellence," "quality," or "efficiency" are not neutral, but rather ideological expressions of positions in dispute over what is legitimate within the academic field.

However, these structural struggles gain visibility and effectiveness through the discursive production of meaning, which is where Verón's perspective comes in.

"It is evident that, from the point of view of the analysis of meaning, the starting point can only be the meaning produced. Access to the semiotic network always involves a work of analysis that operates on fragments extracted from the semiotic process, that is, on a crystallization of the three functional positions (operations-discourse-representations)" (Verón, E., 1993, p. 124).

According to Verón (1984), these discourses function as traces of the social relations that produce them, since "a discourse sketches a field of effects of meaning and not an effect and only one" (p. 48). Thus, discourse does not reflect university reality, but rather constructs it, shaping its symbolic legitimacy.

Verón's perspective provides a decisive key to understanding how power is inscribed in discourse through ideological effect. This does not refer to false content, but to the process by which the historical conditions of production are erased, presenting discourse as natural or universal (Verón, 1984).

"At the same time, to assert that the ideological, that power, is everywhere, is radically different from saying that everything is ideological, that everything is reduced to the dynamics of power. In the social universe of meaning, there are many other things besides the ideological and power. By this we mean to point out that "ideological" and "power" refer to dimensions of analysis of social phenomena, and not to "things" or "instances" that would have a "place" in the social topography." (Verón, 1984, p. 44)

This ideological operation converges with Bourdieu's (1994) notion of symbolic violence, understood as the imposition of meanings that are recognized as legitimate even by those who suffer them. In both cases, power acts as a producer of belief: Bourdieu calls it "illusion," Verón, "belief effect." University authority is thus sustained not only by institutional hierarchies, but also by a symbolic consensus that naturalizes forms of government and academic legitimacy.

The epistemological bridge between the two authors is consolidated in the homology between the social field and the discursive field. Both are relational spaces where meanings are produced and contested. The field defines the structural conditions of possibility of meaning; discourse actualizes them, reproducing or transforming power relations.

Analyzing university governance from this perspective involves examining how institutional discourses and management narratives express, legitimize, or strain these structures, especially around concepts such as autonomy, accountability, or excellence. From a methodological point of view, this theoretical integration allows for a dialectical analysis of the relationship between structure and discourse. The Bourdieuian approach makes it possible to map power relations in the university field, while the Veronian approach offers the tools to examine how these relations are materialized in discourses.

The findings on the discursive corpus reinforce the theoretical assumptions held thus far. Three nodes of meaning were identified around the semantic field of "university planning and management": (i) strategic planning as a form of institutional rationality; (ii) collaborative work as a device for internal legitimation; and (iii) community leadership as a balance between authority and participation. These meanings reveal that university management is not conceived solely as a technical procedure, but as a symbolic practice of governance that produces identity and consensus. Planning appears as a sign of modernization, management as a space for symbolic dispute, and participation as a moral and community value.

In this discursive framework, confessional governance is configured as a hybrid model (Brunner, 2024), where managerial rationality is combined with moral legitimacy. It coincides with the typology of participatory governance with strategic leadership (Ganga-Contreras, 2024), where institutional values operate as a principle of cohesion. Thus, planning and management act as meaningful practices that sustain a complex institutional rationality: efficiency with mission, control with participation, leadership with consensus.

In short, the articulation between Bourdieu and Verón allows us to approach university governance as a field of meaning where social structures and discursive practices co-constitute each other. The university is thus presented as a space of symbolic struggles where governing is also producing meaning.

Materials and methods

The study adopted a qualitative approach based on discourse analysis. The empirical sample consisted of an in-depth interview with a member of the University Board (who plays an active role in the construction, implementation, and re-signification of university management between 2020 and 2025), transcribed in its entirety. This corpus was analyzed from its semiotic and discursive dimension in order to reconstruct the meanings attributed to the field of "planning and management strategy," as one of the fields defined in the general project of the doctoral thesis.

The methodological approach is based on the perspective proposed by Magariños de Morentín (2002), who argues that analytical operations in the social sciences should constitute a specific metalanguage of the social discourse being studied, aimed at identifying the rules by which a community produces its own representations and interpretations. Within this framework, semiotic discourse analysis is understood as a practice of reconstructive reading that seeks to describe the ways in which subjects produce and legitimize meanings through their statements. As the author states, "methodological operations come from a synthesis between cognitive semiotics and discourse analysis" (p. 234), recognizing that all production of meaning involves a network of syntactic, semantic, and social relationships.

The analytical process applied to the interview was structured in four operational stages. The first was normalization, understood as the procedure of adapting the oral text to the written register, respecting its syntactic structure and avoiding any modification that would alter its meaning. According to Magariños de Morentín (2002), normalization requires "particular care to avoid (or warn, when appropriate) the addition or elimination, in the text under study, of terms or expressions considered respectively appropriate or inappropriate according to the (semantic) interpretation made by the analyst" (pp. 36-37). In this phase, the necessary anaphoric and cataphoric recoveries were made to ensure the syntactic coherence of the discourse without distorting its enunciative texture.

The second step was segmentation, aimed at identifying the elementary discursive units of the text. This operation was based on syntactic rather than semantic criteria, as recommended by the author, since "the adoption of syntactic criteria provides a more objective foundation" (Magariños de Morentín, 2002, p. 238). Each segment was defined on the basis of a base sentence and its modifiers, which made it possible to establish an analytical structure that respects the internal logic of the discourse produced.

The third methodological step consisted of developing contextual definitions, understood as transformations of textual segments through which the meaning of a term is established based on the context in which it appears. According to Magariños de Morentín (2002), "contextual definition consists of the transformation of a given complete textual segment, such that a given name is effectively used in that textual segment" (p. 240). This operation made it possible to identify how the intervie r articulated concepts such as planning, management, authority, or participation, revealing the logics of meaning that underpin their institutional discourse.

Finally, conceptual axes, sequential networks, and contrastive networks were identified, as proposed by the method. Conceptual axes group contextual definitions according to the semantic regularities detected, while sequential networks reconstruct the causal or progressive links between concepts. The contrastive networks, for their part, revealed the tensions and contradictions that shape different discursive formations within the university field: "the sets thus constituted are representative of the different ways of attributing meaning to the corresponding terms by the community or social sector that produced the discourses under study." (Magariños de Morentín, 2002, p. 241)

In short, the methodology adopted combined analytical rigor and epistemological reflexivity. The process of reading and interpretation did not seek to impose external categories, but rather to reconstruct from the text the rules of meaning production that the actor himself enunciated. As Magariños de Morentín (2002) points out, this practice allows us to identify the discursive formations available in a community. In this sense, the method enabled a complex understanding of university governance as a discursive field where the meanings of power, management, and institutional identity are negotiated.

Results

Discursive axes on university planning and management

In the interview with the member of the Board of Directors of the private religious university, the socio-semiotic discourse analysis identified three nodes of meaning linked to the semantic field of "planning and management strategy." Applying Magariños de Morentín's (2022) logical-operational model, these nodes were reconstructed as conceptual axes, and sequential, contrastive, and causal networks were detected for each one through which the discourse constructed its meaning. Below is an interpretive synthesis of the findings, articulating the perspective of Eliseo Verón and Pierre Bourdieu's field theory.

Conceptual axes and networks of relationships (logical-operational analysis)

The conceptual axes identified—strategic planning, teamwork, and community leadership—revealed how a managerial, , and participatory vision of university management was discursively constructed, framed by the Catholic institutional identity. From Verón's (1984) socio-semiotic perspective, the discourse of the Board representative could be understood as a strategy for producing meaning in which ideological and institutional dimensions were articulated: the interviewee established a reading contract with his internal audience (the university community), outlining what it means to be a "well-managed university" in his context. This contract was based on shared values and legitimate references, including confessional identity, which operated as a symbolic anchor. In fact, he made it clear that Catholic identity acted "as a kind of beacon within the university," providing permanent guidance aligned with the Church ("the Church gives you a permanent reference"). This allowed him to present the university's strategic direction as something that was not arbitrary or subject to daily fluctuations, but rather backed by a higher moral authority. In Verón's terms, this discursive positioning reinforced the legitimacy of the constructed meaning: planning and strategic decisions appeared justified by a horizon of transcendent and stable values, which reduced possible internal questions about "where we are going."

From Magariños' logical-operational approach (2002), the discursive operations identified played a key role in constructing the meanings of the discourse of authority. The sequential operation, visible in the historical enumeration of the strategic plans implemented, temporalized management and showed institutional progress: the interviewee narrates a positive linearity (first plan, second, third) that implies learning and continuous improvement. This narrative sequence was not neutral, but rather constructed the idea of a university in constant evolution, organized and guided by the current strategic plan. Thus, the plan becomes a sign of modernization and rationality in university management. It is worth noting the metaphor used: "the strategic plan is a map," a "common thread" that guides everyone. On a denotative level, this metaphor reinforced the causal operation: having a plan (map) causes certainty and coordination, while not having one causes confusion ("without guidance... everyone goes their own way... the results are incompatible"). Consequently, the discourse constructed the meaning of planning as synonymous with teleological order: one knows where to go and how to measure progress, in line with the precepts of contemporary strategic management in higher education.

For its part, the focus on teamwork complemented the notion of planning by adding an organizational dimension: the interviewee stated that "there is no management without a team," declaring horizontal collaboration to be indispensable for institutional success. This idea, which was operationally , was based on a clear causal relationship: the trust placed in teams of competent people results in a "multiplication... of performance" at the university. Here, the interviewee's discourse activated a democratic managerial ethos, attributing achievements not to the individual leader but to the collective. However, this apparent democratization coexists with a hierarchical distribution of responsibilities: note that he spoke from the role of someone who "lets his people work" after having provided them with "trust and resources." In Bourdieu's terms (2000), we could interpret this as a form of delegated authority: he possesses the institutional capital to grant relative autonomy to members of the educational community, which in turn legitimizes his leadership position because the positive results (the "100*1") symbolically reward him for this successful delegation. The discourse thus reinforces the inverted power structure: leadership involves enabling others to act, consolidating the leader's authority not through direct imposition but through the effectiveness of the collective body he has formed.

With regard to the driving force behind the university community, the interviewee explored the tension between authority and participation, which he resolved discursively through contrastive operations. We identified a contrastive network that opposed two forms of university governance: on the one hand, the metaphor of the "army" represented an authoritarian, vertical style, and on the other, the "permanent assembly" symbolized an extreme horizontal style. This constructed opposition was not merely descriptive, but evaluative: both extremes were dismissed as dysfunctional ("it's not the same passion" in the case of military command without consensus; "it doesn't... move forward" in the case of endless deliberation). Here we see how the discourse appealed to a logic of the golden mean: by rejecting the undesirable extremes, a balanced third position is legitimized. In terms of discursive strategy, it is a move of ideological differentiation: the interviewee defined the identity of the administration by contrast with known models in the academic field (bureaucratic autocracy vs. collegial assembly).

This operation redefined authority as guiding and non-authoritarian leadership, while framing community participation within productive and non-chaotic channels. Likewise, the causal operation operated within this construction: the interviewee insisted that a shared understanding of the objectives is a condition for the active commitment ("adherence") of the community members. This causal argument reflected what Bourdieu (2000) would call the efficacy of symbolic power: authority (in this case, the member of the Board of Directors) achieved adherence when it got the subjects to internalize the foundations of action as legitimate . The discourse shows awareness of this by pointing out that in an "intellectual community"—as he calls the university—one cannot govern by mere coercion but by "conviction." Here, discursive semiosis connects with the academic habitus: teachers and administrators, bearers of cultural capital, needed to rationally recognize the decisions in order to commit themselves with "passion." This appeal to rational understanding and collective coherence can be read as an attempt to align the habitus of university agents with institutional strategies, producing consensus. However, the interviewee also balanced this participatory emphasis with the warning that too much participation without centrality would lead to stagnation ("every step forward is two steps back"). Consequently, a subtle hierarchical relationship was discursively established: the community contributes and takes ownership of the plan, but within a normative framework set by the leadership (and ultimately backed by the higher religious authority, the Grand Chancellor, as he mentions).

In short, the speech by the member of the University Board of Directors shaped a model of university management in which long-term strategic planning, teamwork, and community participation were integrated under a shared vision. From a socio-semiotic perspective, we can affirm that this speech produced meaning by articulating an institutional ethos: the university represents itself as a modern, efficient, and cohesive organization, guided by a common project and firm values. The constant reference to Catholic identity and the "view" of the Grand Chancellor (a figure of the Church) provided a principle of vision and division that delimits what is legitimate to discuss and what is not within the university field. By not having to "discuss every day what the values are... where we are going," the institution was able to devote 90% of its efforts to execution and only 10% to discussion, which was valued as a strength in comparison with other universities. In this way, the institutional habitus (Bourdieu, 2007) that has been promoted combines strategic discipline (typical of the business world, according to his own comparison) with community conviction (typical of an academic community with a shared identity). The joint discursive operation of sequentiality (history of achievements), contrast (opposing models), and causality (justifications of beneficial effects) worked persuasively to naturalize this hybrid vision: planned and participatory management appears in the narrative as the "natural" and successful path for a confessional university in the contemporary context.

The discursive analysis carried out allows us to observe that the private confessional university studied constructs an institutional narrative of hybrid governance, in which religious identity and managerial rationality are integrated as complementary dimensions of the same institutional project.

In this section, based on the reference frameworks of Ganga, Brunner, Contreras, Clark, and Lamarra, the findings are discussed in order to raise new research questions and lines of inquiry.

Theoretical reflections and implications for further research

Firstly, the meaning attributed to the semantic field analyzed reveals a hybrid model of governance, where confessional identity and managerial reason are not seen as mutually exclusive but as converging elements of a consolidated institutional project. This is consistent with the notion of "hybrid governance" emerging in Latin American studies that assume environments of tension between academic autonomy and external demands. In particular, the multigovernance approach proposed by Alarcón and Brunner (2023), which considers multilevel, multi-actor, and multi-agenda dimensions in higher education, offers a useful lens for interpreting how the institution positions its authority in times of internal pressure and external demands from an international context. A balance can be inferred between external dynamism and internal symbolic sovereignty based on confessional identity, which raises questions about how these margins are negotiated in contexts of high regulatory pressure.

Secondly, based on the studies by Ganga-Contreras (2019/2024) on Latin American university governance understood as a field of tension between government, management, and governance, the expression "making the plan one's own," that is, building internal adherence through shared meaning, points to the need to build symbolic legitimacy as a central component of governance. In future research, it would be relevant to explore how the dialectic between formal control (institutional structure) and symbolic control (shared meaning) is established in university governance processes.

Thirdly, the studies by Clark (2023) and Lamarra (2022) on organizational governance in higher education, emphasizing the role of strategic leadership, accountability, and institutional monitoring systems, complement the reading of the identified nodes of meaning. The interviewed actor builds authority not only through their formal position, but also through their ability to share the fundamentals of the project. This finding suggests that future research should include discursive variables that capture not only "what is said" but also "how actors from different levels of the university community are persuaded" and what kind of narratives of symbolic legitimacy are used. The relevance here lies in the emphasis on authority and legitimacy.

Based on these theoretical links, some research questions emerge that could guide further stages of the study: How does the discursive centrality of the identity-project axis (confessionality, institutional mission) vary among confessional universities in different regions or countries? What discursive strategies build management legitimacy in contexts where institutional authority is weaker (for example, in universities with less symbolic capital)? How are the margins of autonomy negotiated and disputed in the discourse between external managerial references (state, accrediting agencies, rankings) and internal university mission identities? And how does the adoption of digital technologies and educational innovation reconfigure the old semantic nodes of the "strategic plan" and "participatory management" in contemporary university governance?

These questions could give rise to comparative research, longitudinal analyses, or multiple case studies that contrast the discourses of university authorities in different institutional configurations (public, private, religious) to see the consistency or variation in the semantic nodes of planning and management.

Principle of the form

Conclusions

Discursive evidence shows that university governance is a relational category that articulates dimensions such as the symbolic, organizational, and strategic aspects of the institution. In the case studied, the interviewee's discourse reveals that university planning and management are not mere technical procedures, but rather semiotic practices of constructing institutional meaning and configuring the field of academic power. (Bourdieu, 1994; Verón, 1984/2011; Magariños de Morentín, 2002/2022)

From the perspective of field theory, governance appears as the result of a symbolic struggle for the legitimate definition of university goals and the ways to achieve them . In this sense, strategic planning—understood as a technical and discursive device—operates as an organizing principle of positions within the field, establishing hierarchies of authority, legitimacy, and belonging. This finding coincides with Brunner's (2011) thesis, which states that higher education systems are reconfigured through forms of multigovernance, where actors dispute control of the symbolic and technical instruments of institutional management. The confessional university analyzed embodies this dynamic in the conjunction between religious identity and managerial rationality, constituting itself as a hybrid model of governance that combines spiritual symbolic capital with technical-administrative capital.

Along the same lines, Ganga-Contreras (2024) argues that university governance should be analyzed as a network of interactions between government, management, and participation, where discursive practices play a fundamental role in the construction of legitimacy. The results obtained in this study reaffirm this hypothesis: the interviewee's statements build the support of the university community through discursive operations of consensus, rationality, and shared meaning, which legitimize institutional leadership not as a hierarchical imposition but as the result of the symbolic convergence of wills. This empirical finding reinforces the need to broaden the view of university governance toward its semiotic-discursive dimension, an aspect still scarcely explored by contemporary literature on educational management (Valdés-Montecinos et al., 2021; Acosta-Silva et al., 2023).

Likewise, the scientific argumentation of the results allows us to affirm that discourse generates a naturalization effect on planning as a "necessary" practice and management as a "condition of efficiency." This effect, analyzed based on Verón (1987), implies that the categories of rationality and efficacy constitute values of truth in the university field, displacing other principles of legitimacy. However, in the confessional case, these categories are reinterpreted in light of Catholic identity, transforming efficiency into virtue and planning into a form of service. This semantic shift, which we could call moralized rationality, is a discursive strategy that allows for the compatibility between the imperatives of the educational market and the institutional religious mission.

On the other hand, Lamarra's (2022) and Clark's (2023) perspective on the functional differentiation of modern universities is relevant for interpreting the findings. These authors gree that the diversification of missions and organizational structures requires adaptive governance models. In this sense, the university analyzed seems to consolidate a form of governance centered on strategic leadership, characterized by unified management, accompanied by mechanisms of controlled participation. The discourse analyzed articulates both elements through a contrastive operation: it rejects both authoritarian verticality and absolute horizontality, proposing "participatory management" as the ideal model. From a scientific point of view, it can be argued that such a balance responds to a principle of functional rationality: maximizing decision-making efficiency without compromising symbolic legitimacy.

In summary, the study demonstrates that university governance, when analyzed from a socio-semiotic perspective, reveals a dual structuring dimension: a material dimension, linked to technical planning and control devices, and a symbolic dimension, referring to discourses that produce meaning, identity, and legitimacy. Both dimensions are mediated by discourse as institutional practice, confirming the epistemological value of integrating Veronian socio-semiotics with Bourdieu's field theory and Magariños' logical-analytical operations for the study of forms of university governance.

From a prospective perspective, the research opens up a theoretical and methodological horizon for investigating how institutional discourses, in different types of universities, produce regimes of truth about management and planning, legitimizing certain forms of authority, participation, and control. This line of argument allows us to maintain that the study of university governance cannot be separated from the institutional semiosis that sustains it, since it is at the discursive level that the very conditions of possibility of academic power and its social legitimacy are played out.

..........................................................................................................

References

Acosta-Silva, A., Ganga-Contreras, F., & Rama-Vitale, C. (2021). University governance: conceptual approaches and scope. Ibero-American Journal of Higher Education, 12(33).

Alarcón, M., & Brunner, J. (2024). Multigoverance in higher education: The case of Chile 2018-2023. In Education Research, 119(1), 97–118.

Bourdieu, P. (1994) The scientific field. Networks: Journal of Social Studies of Science. 1(2), 129-160. Available at RIDAA-UNQ Institutional Digital Open Access Repository of the National University of Quilmes http://ridaa.unq.edu.ar/handle/20.500.11807/317

Bourdieu, P. (1994). Practical Reasons: On the Theory of Action. Seuil.

Bourdieu, P. (2002). Field of power, intellectual field. Itinerary of a concept. Montressor

Bourdieu, P. (2007b) [1987], Social Space and Symbolic Power in: Bourdieu, Pierre. Things Said. Gedisa, pp. 127-142

Bourdieu, Pierre (2000a). On symbolic power. In Power, Law, Law and Social Classes. Desclée de Brower.

Brunner, J. J. (2011). University governance: typologies, dynamics, and trends. Santiago, Chile: Diego Portales University.

Clark, B. R. (2023). Creating Entrepreneurial Universities: Organizational Pathways to Transformation. Elsevier.

Ganga-Contreras, F. (2019). Governance and management of higher education in Latin America. Journal of Higher Education, 48(2), 33-52.

Ganga-Contreras, F. (2024). Governance, government, and management in higher education: current configurations. In Higher Education and Society, 36(1), 15–28.

García, M., & Hernández, M. (2020, January). Quality management and university governance. Configuration of discourses and practices in private universities in Colombia and Argentina. Presentation at the VIII Ibero-American Congress on University Governance Research, Institutional Repository - Universidad Santo Tomás, Bogotá, Colombia. https://repository.usta.edu.co/handle/11634/35248

Lamarra, N. (2022). Transformations and challenges in Latin American higher education. Miño y Dávila.

Magaríños de Morentín, J. A. (1998). Operational manual for the development of "contextual definitions" and "contrasting networks." Signa: Journal of the Spanish Association of Semiotics, 7, 233–253. https://doi.org/10.5944/signa.vol7.1998.32911 (The Semiotics of the Word).

Magariños de Morentín, J. A. (2002). The logical foundations of semiotics and its practice. Edicial.

Magariños de Morentín, J. A. (2021). Social semiosis revisited. Biblos.

Valdés-Montecinos, M., and Ganga-Contreras, F. (2021). University governance: Theoretical approaches to interest groups in higher education institutions. Revista de Ciencias Sociales (Ve), 27(3), 441-45

Verón, E. (1984). Semiosis of ideology and power. Journal: Spaces of criticism and production, 43-51.

Verón, E. (2011). Social semiosis. Fragment of a theory of discursivity. Gedisa