HE-D02 — University Strategy and Leadership

Course Code: HE-D02  |  School: School of Higher Education  |  Cluster: Institutional Development

Level: Advanced  |  Estimated duration: 6 weeks (approximately 40 hours)  |  Language: English  |  Certificate: Professional Certificate (non-degree)  |  Format: Self-paced with AI support under human supervision

Overview

Universities are among the most difficult organisations to lead. Authority is divided between academic and managerial hierarchies, the people doing the core work hold professional autonomy as a right rather than a privilege, goals are contested and often deliberately ambiguous, and the timescales of academic work exceed the tenure of most leaders. Cohen and March famously described the university presidency as leadership in an organised anarchy, and the description has aged well.

This course takes the distinctiveness of academic organisations as its starting point and refuses the transplantation of generic corporate leadership models. Robert Birnbaum’s account of collegial, bureaucratic, political and anarchical models of university functioning gives learners four lenses through which any institutional problem can be read, and the discipline of using all four before acting.

On strategy, the course follows Richard Rumelt’s distinction between good strategy, which diagnoses a problem, chooses a guiding policy and specifies coherent action, and bad strategy, which is a list of aspirations with numbers attached. Most university strategic plans are bad strategy by this definition, and learners will be asked to demonstrate that on a real document before writing a better one.

Learning outcomes

On completion, a successful learner will be able to:

1. Analyse a university through collegial, bureaucratic, political and organised anarchy models and identify what each reveals.
2. Distinguish good strategy from strategic aspiration and diagnose the failure mode of a real institutional plan.
3. Construct a strategic diagnosis, guiding policy and coherent action set for a named institution.
4. Exercise leadership through influence and legitimacy where formal authority over academic work is limited.
5. Manage shared governance, senate relationships and the negotiation of academic consent.
6. Analyse and respond to institutional crises, including reputational, financial and governance failures.
7. Assess personal leadership practice against evidence and develop a defensible development plan.

Who this course is for

Deans, heads of school, directors of professional services, pro-vice-chancellors and their equivalents, senior leaders in ministries and system bodies, and academics preparing to move into institutional leadership.

Prerequisites

Substantial experience of working within a higher education institution. This is an advanced course; learners without leadership experience should complete HE-F02 The University as an Institution first.

Syllabus

Module 1 — How Universities Actually Work

A leader who reads every problem through a single organisational model will misdiagnose most of them. This module builds four lenses and the habit of applying all of them.

Lessons. 1.1 Collegial, bureaucratic, political and organised anarchy models  ·  1.2 The garbage can model of decision making  ·  1.3 Loose coupling and why directives dissipate  ·  1.4 Applying four lenses to a single institutional problem

Deliverable. A diagnostic note analysing one real institutional problem through all four organisational models and stating what each lens uniquely reveals.

Module 2 — Strategy and Its Counterfeits

University strategic plans overwhelmingly consist of aspiration, metrics and adjectives. This module applies Rumelt’s kernel of good strategy and requires a genuine diagnosis before any objective is written.

Lessons. 2.1 Diagnosis, guiding policy and coherent action  ·  2.2 The signature failures of bad strategy  ·  2.3 Mintzberg on the limits of strategic planning as a process  ·  2.4 Choice, trade-off and the refusal to do things

Deliverable. An analytical brief dissecting one real published university strategy and identifying precisely where and why it fails as strategy.

Module 3 — Authority, Influence and Shared Governance

The formal power of academic leaders over academic work is weak, and effective leaders operate through legitimacy, coalition and agenda control. The module treats these as learnable techniques.

Lessons. 3.1 Sources of academic legitimacy and how it is lost  ·  3.2 Senate, council and the architecture of shared governance  ·  3.3 Coalition building, agenda setting and committee craft  ·  3.4 Leading colleagues who cannot be instructed

Deliverable. A design artefact: an influence and governance strategy for one contested institutional change, mapping stakeholders, coalitions and decision routes.

Module 4 — Resources, Prioritisation and the Politics of Cuts

Strategy becomes real at the budget, and reallocation between units is the hardest political act in university leadership. This module rehearses it.

Lessons. 4.1 Resource allocation models and their incentive effects  ·  4.2 Cross-subsidy, transparency and the politics of visibility  ·  4.3 Managing reduction: closure, merger and redundancy  ·  4.4 Communicating decisions that will not be welcomed

Deliverable. An evaluation report proposing a resource reallocation for one institution, with the political consequences and mitigation set out.

Module 5 — Crisis, Risk and Institutional Reputation

Institutional crises follow recognisable patterns, and the damage is usually done by the response rather than the event. The module builds capability before the crisis rather than during it.

Lessons. 5.1 Financial, reputational, safeguarding and governance crises  ·  5.2 Early warning signals and why they are ignored  ·  5.3 Crisis communication, transparency and the cost of concealment  ·  5.4 Recovery, accountability and organisational learning

Deliverable. An implementation plan comprising a crisis response protocol for one plausible institutional crisis, with roles, decision thresholds and communication sequence.

Module 6 — Capstone: A Strategic Leadership Case

The capstone applies diagnosis, strategy, influence and resourcing to a real institutional challenge, and is assessed on whether its proposals could survive contact with a senate.

Lessons. 6.1 Diagnosing the real problem  ·  6.2 Formulating the guiding policy  ·  6.3 Designing the coherent action set  ·  6.4 Planning the politics of implementation

Deliverable. A 3,000-word strategic leadership case for one named institution, including a four-model diagnosis, strategy kernel, resource implications, stakeholder and coalition plan, and a personal leadership development statement.

Assessment

Pass mark 70 per cent. All assessed components must be attempted. Every mark in this course is issued by a human assessor; no assessment outcome is generated automatically.

Rubric criteria

Each assessed artefact is marked against four criteria at four levels (distinction, pass with merit, pass, fail).

1. Organisational insight. The institution is analysed through multiple models with evidence, not through a single preferred lens.
2. Strategic quality. A genuine diagnosis precedes the policy, and the actions cohere and involve real trade-offs.
3. Political realism. Resistance, coalition and legitimacy are addressed as central rather than as afterthoughts.
4. Reflective honesty. The learner’s own leadership limitations are identified with evidence.

Reading list

Core. Birnbaum, R. (1988) How Colleges Work: The Cybernetics of Academic Organization and Leadership. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

• Cohen, M. D. and March, J. G. (1974) Leadership and Ambiguity: The American College President. New York: McGraw-Hill.
• Rumelt, R. (2011) Good Strategy/Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters. New York: Crown Business.
• Bolman, L. G. and Gallos, J. V. (2011) Reframing Academic Leadership. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
• Clark, B. R. (1998) Creating Entrepreneurial Universities: Organizational Pathways of Transformation. Oxford: Pergamon and IAU Press.
• Mintzberg, H. (1994) The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning. New York: Free Press.

Academic integrity and use of AI

Generative AI may be used in this course as a drafting, translation and critique aid, and its use must be disclosed. Every submission carries a short use-of-AI statement naming the tools used, the tasks they performed and the checks the learner applied to the output. Using AI to fabricate data, invent sources, impersonate an interview participant, or produce an artefact the learner cannot explain in a live viva is prohibited.

All citations are verified before submission; a reference that cannot be located by the assessor is treated as fabricated. Fabrication, plagiarism and undisclosed ghost-authorship result in failure of the component and referral to the academic integrity panel. Marks in this course are issued by human assessors, and any learner may be asked to defend a submission orally before a mark is confirmed.