Management in universities has had to change, as the demands on universities have demanded different skills. One consequence has been a backlash against what is perceived to be an emerging culture of managerialism. This conceptual article argues that a balance is needed between collegial and more corporate style management if a university is to protect its academic work while surviving in an external environment that could be perceived to be increasingly hostile to the traditional collegial model. It is argued that the best of both should be harnessed in protection of the academic project and that it is naive to assume that it is possible to revert to a purely collegial model and indeed, that the collegial model itself may be an abstraction rather than a reality.