Academic planning and strategic planning: strangers in the night or potent weapons for strategic competitive advantage?

Abstract

Planning has been shown to be a key ingredient in organisational success. However, the challenges confronting contemporary organisational management are making it increasingly difficult for senior managers to allocate sufficient time and focus to substantive strategic thinking and planning. As well, in higher education settings such as universities, extensive government reforms are compelling academic and general managers to integrate approaches to corporate planning and management with academic planning and management. This creates difficulties and challenges in reframing past ways of doing things, but at the same time affords significant opportunities to those institutions that are able to harvest the benefits of these synergies. This paper explores those elements of strategic planning which are unique to university settings and, in so doing, puts forward a methodology for integrating the needs of faculty and academe with that of enterprise and institution. This exploration reveals the centrality of program management and portfolio analysis in relation to academic offerings and considers what may be necessary to further develop these techniques as universities seek to simultaneously increase the market appeal and academic rigour of their courses and programs