Strategy as Practice

For higher Ed market:The basis of this book is an in-depth empirical study of strategy and strategizing in universities. It provides insights into how strategies of research, teaching and commercial income are shaped over time, as well as considering the problems of size and scope faced by modern universities. Theoretically, the study is robustly framed within the strategy literature, while the detailed empirical analysis makes a clear contribution to our understanding of putting strategy into practice in both the university and wider contexts. Many practical stories and exhibits about doing strategy in universities are included that will be evocative and thought-provoking for those researching, studying or managing higher education institutions. With its unusual combination of a strong strategy framework and rich empirical insights into strategizing in universities, this book is of interest to students of higher education management, as well as to practising managers in higher education.’This volume will appeal to researchers, students and those engaged instrategic management in higher education. The case study materialprovides a detailed portrait of the ways in which senior managers engagein strategic development. Overall, the volume provides rich insights onstrategic management in higher education’-Professor Bob Burgess, Vice-Chancellor, University of Leicester’This is a completely original account of three contrasting universities’ approach to creating and managing strategy in modern conditions. The problem of multiple strategies which interact with one another will be recognised by every practitioner but have not been described in this way before.' Strategy as Practice' represents an important contribution to higher education literature because it theorises decisions and strategies which are for the most part instinctive responses to external realities’- Professor Michael Shattock was Registrar of the University of Warwick before taking up his Visiting Professorship at the Institute of Education, University of London, where he is Director of the MBA in Higher Education Management. ’Strategy is something all organizations are encouraged to have. Many that do get it wrong. Their strategies are empty black box ’diamonds’ or other modish schemes. In this book Jarzabkowski argues, cogently, that strategy should be seen in terms of practice - in terms of what it is that organizations and strategic actors do when they do strategy. The book signals a major re-orientation and intellectual maturation of a field that is too important for organizations to leave to the odd blend of occasional scholarship, analysis based on aggregate data, and inspired prescription that has characterized much of strategy to present. In addition, it charts how organizations in one of the most important institutional areas of contemporary societies, the universities, actually do strategy’Stewart Clegg, University of Technology, Sydney, Australia