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Understanding Strategy Practices in Universities

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Managing Universities

Abstract

The key questions in this chapter are: What strategy practices are actually in place at contemporary European universities? Is strategic action largely top-down, with much emphasis on design and execution of strategic plans? Or is strategic action much more characterized by an organic (bottom up) flow of events in which emergent strategies are key? In this chapter, we explore strategy practices by analysing six case studies compiled by the TRUE team. The discussion of the cases is structured in light of two perspectives on organisational strategy as respectively, planning and design, and as sense making . The major source of data consists of interviews with key persons from six different higher education institutions in six different countries.

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Correspondence to Nicoline Frølich .

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Frølich, N., Stensaker, B., Huisman, J. (2017). Understanding Strategy Practices in Universities. In: Bleiklie, I., Enders, J., Lepori, B. (eds) Managing Universities. Palgrave Studies in Global Higher Education. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-53865-5_7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-53865-5_7

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-53864-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-53865-5

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