Creative adaptation or ceremonial compliance? Senior leadership agency and institutional capacity building under hybrid governance

Higher education systems are increasingly shaped by state regulation and market pressures. This leadership study examines how senior academic leaders in Türkiye's foundation (private non-profit) universities translate regulatory and market demands into institutional capacity building. Drawing on the translation perspective in institutional theory, it analyses semi-structured interviews with ten senior professors at five institutions, together with strategic plans and national evaluation reports. Reflexive thematic analysis identified a recurring tension between reputational signalling and investment in staff and organisational development. Leaders facing the same regulator translated the same instruments differently: strategic planning, accreditation, and evaluation were edited into developmental routines in some institutions and handled as audit obligations in others. Three descriptors organise these differences: professional identity integration, implementation quality, and internalisation. Creative adaptation labels a developmentally oriented form of translation in which requirements are reworked into obligations that bind successors and trustees. Because all participants were senior professors, the variation did not track individual seniority; it tracked institutional experience of quality cycles. Foundation universities share the public sector's regulator but differ in the stakes and audiences of translation.