During the half century of the AUA's existence UK universities have experienced the fastest rate of growth and most far-reaching changes in their history. Funding arrangements in particular have changed radically. Since 1961 the finance office has been transformed from a small group of bean counters into a key management group at the heart of all…

The issue of stakeholder identification and management is relatively well understood in the literature for private sector organisations, and its importance is increasing across all developed countries. However, whilst stakeholder theory has been advanced in commercial arenas, there is less research in the public and non-profit areas, particularly…

Globalisation is transforming the international marketplace and accelerating unprecedented socio-economic, cultural, social, political and educational change across the globe. This global transformation has served as a catalyst for increasing deliberation, dialogue and consensus among government, business and higher education to create, attract…

UK higher education has a proud tradition stretching back centuries, with St. Andrews almost 600 years old, and teaching having existed at Oxford for more than 900 years. There is no reason why universities established more recently should not demonstrate similar longevity. The management of stakeholders has always been central to the successful…

The emergence of "managerialism" in the governance and direction of UK higher education (HE) institutions has been led by government demands for greater accountability in the quality and cost of universities. There is emerging anecdotal evidence indicating that the estimation performance of HE spreadsheets and regression models are poor. The…

This article is based on sessions at AUA Conferences in 2006 and 2007, which looked at some factors to take into account when considering the structure of the administration. Roughly, "administration" is defined as the "non-academic" management and operations that support the delivery of teaching and learning, research, and enterprise--in old…

Like it or not, an institution's IT infrastructure is a matter with which institutional strategic planners must concern themselves. Information systems represent a significant investment, they perform mission-critical functions, and the appropriate use of information and learning technologies can have a critical part to play in delivering against…

In the 21st Century, IT Governance is, within the broader corporate governance context, critical for all organisations. Those without an IT governance strategy face significant risks; those with one perform measurably better (Calder 2005). There has been little field based research on IT governance, and few publications help managers understand…

Professional managers in UK universities represent an increasingly diverse grouping of staff. As boundaries blur between academic activity and the contributory functions required to deliver that activity in mass higher education systems and markets, their roles have become more fluid. Quasi-academic territories are developing in which professional…

Strategic planning and quality management have been developed independently of each other, but they meet in practice in many kinds of organisations. Strategic planning and quality assurance integrate different aspects of higher education institutions (HEIs) to ensure high-quality educational outcomes. This paper investigates the role of these two…

Over the last few years there has been increasing interest in process-based approaches in higher education administration, including "business process modelling" for development of information systems, "process redesign" to remove duplication and bottlenecks, and "process management" to improve operational performance. The process perspective is…

The "Times Higher Education Supplement" of 9 February 2006 briefly reported that the Privy Council, tasked with approving the statutes of universities, was now going to leave their internal arrangements in their own hands. These underlying policy directions need to be set in the context of the important change of emphasis from "audit" to "risk…

This paper explores the following questions: (1) What do those who appoint V-Cs (Vice-Chancellors) look for? (2) What is the empirical evidence regarding whom they choose? (3) What do V-Cs say one needs to do as a V-C and what do they actually do? and (4) What are the fundamental tasks now facing V-Cs as leaders? In answering these questions, the…

Although the world is changing, quality management remains an area of relative calm. Many institutions continue to use elaborated versions of a model that is developed by the Council of Academic Awards and conceived at a time when higher education was not so exposed to market forces, when the policy and regulatory environment was relatively…