Relevance of Strategic Management for Universities

This article tries to identify the crucial dimensions of strategic management in universities. To do so, the author looks at some practical cases of successful strategic decisionmaking in European universities. This case study approach is motivated by the conviction that in universities strategic management should be done with a permanent eye on their specific organisational environment rather than by an analysis of the applicability of yet another prescriptive model from yet another management school. As a result, special attention goes to the astonishing power of networking: more and more a modern university appears as a set of overlapping networks kept together by a broadly shared mission. Also important is the delicate task to strengthen the steering core without losing the innovative and mobilising benefits of decentralised decision making. Looking at the strategic management models in the literature, undoubtedly the learning school offers the best guidelines for a successful steering of academic institutions.