ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a brief overview of the Russian system of higher education, highlights major events in the development of economic education in that country, and introduces the first case in the study: the Higher School of Economics. In the case, I offer an account of HSE events assembled primarily from HSE documents (syllabi, academic plans, university brochures, newsletters, and websites) and reflecting the narratives officially recognized and accepted by the University. The information from the periodicals Kariera and Argumenti i Fakti is used to place the described events in a larger social, political, and economic context. The case is supplemented with an analysis of HSE stories and enthymemes. In this part of the chapter I draw exclusively on the interviews to present the three most prevalent organizational stories and examine organizational beliefs and assumptions expressed in the enthymemes uncovered in the stories with the help of the rhetorical analysis technique. The stories highlight salient features of the HSE organizational identity as it is projected in the respondents’ narratives. The enthymeme elements reconstructed as the result of the rhetorical analysis represent taken-for-granted knowledge and assumptions underlying the HSE faculty and administrators’ participation in the development of economics at their university. This tacit knowledge illuminates the symbolic aspect of transformations taking place at HSE and complements the accounts of change presented in the first part of the case.
