Following up on the project “External Evaluation of Applicants in Appointment Procedures for Professorships”, this dissertation project focuses on an increasingly more important aspect of appointment procedures at German universities: officers for appointment procedures (OAPs).
Due to the legal framework as well as the importance of professorships for shaping university profiles, university leaders are concerned about the quality of appointment procedures and the legitimization of the personnel selection. One important element to ensure the quality of appointment procedures are formal appointment regulations. Besides these university-specific regulations German universities increasingly employ OAPs to monitor and ensure the quality of appointment procedures. However, OAPs are still not mandatory in most of the German states. The embedding of OAPs into the organizational structure and their responsibilities and duties vary since OAPs are treated differently in each university-specific appointment regulation.
The dissertation project aims to investigate why OAPs are increasingly becoming institutionalized as a new job position in the organizational structure of universities and how they shall contribute to the quality assurance of appointment procedures for professorships at German universities. The project draws on an analysis of HE laws of all German federal states and university-specific appointment regulations. Additionally, expert interviews with OAPs will be conducted.
