Fumasoli, T; (2011) Strategy as evolutionary path. Five higher education institutions on the move. Doctoral thesis , University of Lugano, Switzerland.

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Abstract

Strategy in universities has been a controversial issue in the last decades of scholarly debate, at least in relation to continental European models. On one side higher education institutions have been considered specific organizations whose essential nature hinders strategy and the coordination and control functions thereby entailed. On the other side, new public management reforms requiring strategic capability to be developed have been the object of critical scrutiny with respect to their underlying ideology and their implications for the functioning of academia. Against this backdrop, little empirical research has been conducted in order to understand how universities develop their strategy and what this consists of at the organizational level. This research aims at contributing to this discussion by providing an analytical framework in order to observe strategy and its dimensions and, accordingly, by presenting the analysis of five higher education institutions. Strategy is conceived as a coherent pattern of actions at the organizational level, which must be recognized as such by relevant actors. This definition allows us to look retrospectively at the combination of deliberate and emergent strategies that produce organizational undertaking as a continuous stream of actions that are consistent over time. Two central dimensions of strategy are considered: actors’ interactions in producing strategic organizational actions and the impact of strategy on university positioning. Strategy is the result of several actors’ interests and endeavors which eventually converge: in fact, deliberate strategies may be modified, integrated or substituted by emergent strategies, continuously developed by central administrators, academics and public authorities advocating their interests and responding to new environmental conditions. Furthermore, strategy impacts the position of universities within their national higher education system, influencing its trajectory, its linkages and resource acquisition in relation to other higher education institutions and public authorities.

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