2. Aims of the Paper
To evaluate the internationalisation of
HE using a managerial lens.
•Combining three literatures:
– HE management,
– Internationalisation of HE,
– Strategic management,
•I suggest that there are three major
challenges to internationalisation.
•Conclude that internationalisation
strategy needs effective
implementation, it can’t be left to a few
enthusiasts to sort out.
3. Global competition in HE
Also known as Academic Capitalism
(Slaughter and Leslie 1997):
•The best research reputation,
•Attract international research income,
•Attract the best academic staff,
•Secure the best position in international and
domestic league tables,
•Recruit the best home and international students.
4. Defining Internationalisation
• International,
• Global,
• Trans-national Education (TNE),
• Globalisation – the catalyst for changes,
• Internationalisation – the organisational response.
• The generally accepted definition of
Internationalisation in HE is…
‘… the process of integrating an international, intercultural or
global dimension into the purpose, functions or delivery of
post secondary education’ (Knight 2003: 1).
6. Internationalisation in UK HE
• Progress is slow.
• Many universities have had an international
strategy for 10 years,
• Emphasis remains on student recruitment.
• Still a gap between web site pronouncement and
classroom delivery.
• Some new modules or programmes with a few
international case studies is not enough, there is…
“…a tendency to talk the talk but to baulk at the walk”.
(Grant 2013: 3)
8. Managing complexity
• Fast moving external environment.
• Multiple stakeholders and customers.
• A consumer paradigm.
• Professional service organisations.
• Change negotiated not imposed.
9. Player Managers
• Managerial skills, knowledge and experience.
• VC appointments.
• Weaknesses implementing strategy.
• Top team can struggle to see the linkages.
• Muddling-through is very common.
11. Leadership and management
• Upper Echelon Theory and Stages Theory.
• Organisations with international experience more
likely to go off-shore.
• Organisations with international top team members
more likely to consider the needs of international
staff and students.
• Universities with a prestigious reputation are more
likely to be risk averse.
• Universities with a weaker reputation are more likely
to take on a higher level of risk.
12. Literature review findings
• Internationalisation is ill-defined and often misunderstood.
• Done well, it will transform the organisation
– Enhancing the learning environment,
– Produce internationally focussed research and teaching,
– Students ready to work in the global economy.
• UK universities lack the management knowledge and
experience to lead this type of transformation.
• Rather than engaging staff, top teams tend to focus on student
recruitment and research reputation.
• The internationalisation of teaching and learning and the
student environment tends to be led by small groups of
individual enthusiastic internationalisers.
14. Four Case Studies
• HE context could potentially distort the focus on process and
content.
• Minimise the impact of context by careful case selection,
• A discrete set of seven UK universities set up in the 1960s
(not the Redbricks, Civics, ex Advanced Colleges of
Technology, or Post 92s) – but the Plateglass group of
universities:
Sussex, Lancaster,
York, Kent,
East Anglia, Essex,
Warwick.
15. Findings
• The definition of internationalisation
varies widely
• Implementing the strategy is
problematic
• Most universities do not have the
management capacity to do it properly
16. Conclusions
• It is not a lack of enthusiasm, rather poor
management practice that is the cause of faltering
internationalisation strategies in UK universities.
• Academic staff do not share a universal understanding
of what internationalisation actually entails.
• The case studies suggests that possession of the pre-requisite
organisational qualities will improve the
implementation of internationalisation
• Internationalisation enthusiasts need to work in
partnership with the organisation to achieve their
aims.
17. Done well internationalistation will
enhance the whole organisation.
Unfortunately the evidence suggests it
is not being done well!
If it contributed to NSS rankings would
it attract more attention?
18. Selected references
Breakwell G and Tytherleigh M. 2010 University leaders and University performance in
the United Kingdom, is it who leads or where they lead that matters most, Higher
Education 60: 491-506.
Friedman T. 2005 The World is Flat, a brief history of the globalised world in the
twenty-first century, London: Penguin.
Grant C. 2013 Losing our Chains? Contexts and Ethics of University Internationalisation,
Stimulus Paper Series, London: Leadership Foundation for HE.
Hambrick D. 2007 Upper Echelons Theory, an update, Academy of Management
Review 32, 2, 334-343.
Knight J. 2003 Updating the definition of Internationalisation, International Higher
Education, 33, Fall, available at
http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/soe/cihe/newsletter/news33/textoo1.htm (accessed
18/10/2007).
Preston D and Price D. 2012 I see it as a phase: I don’t see it as the future, academics
as managers in a UK university, Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management,
34, 4, 409-419.
Slaughter S and Leslie L. 1997 Academic Capitalism, Baltimore: John Hopkins
University Press.
Warwick P. 2014 The international business of higher education – a managerial
perspective on the internationalisation of UK universities, The International Journal of
Management Education, 12, 81-103
Notes de l'éditeur
Motivations for the study
Been involved in projects to enhance T&L for international students since 2003.
New enthusiasts all the time but little organisation wide progress.
Why is this the case?
Need to make connections between international business, strategic management and internationalisation.
Rapid expansion of the international business of HE 2000 onwards
Manifests itself through competition for research reputation
Attracting international research income
Attracting the best academics from around the world
Attracting the best students
IN PARALEL WITH unprecedented scale of international trade:
Based on issues such as:
China entry into WTO
Growth of: off shoring, out-sourcing and supply chaining
International – implies a presence in more than one country,
A Global entity has a worldwide reach.
Transnational activities are processes and/or institutions that exist or work across borders – so TNE implies the provision of HE by one institution in more than one country.
Globalisation is conceptualised as the intensification of economic, social and cultural relations across international borders - a loaded word which can and does imply something quite different for historians, economists, geographers, sociologists, politicians and political activists.
In the HE context globalisation is the catalyst for changes to HE systems and institutions and the process of internationalisation is how individual HEI’s respond to the globalisation of their operating environment
Defining Internationalisation:
IB perspective a trade across borders – therefore international HE becomes about cross border movements
But in a HE context internationalisation is more nuanced and implies something more about the way HE is delivered and constituted.
One of the reasons we don’t get a lot of disagreement about the need for internationalisation is because there are so many different view about what it is.
For some it is just recruitment
For others it is about international research
Supporting international students
A global perspective.- staff and students
Koutsantoni – 50 percent had strategies in 2006.
Nearly all in 2010 but no great progress
Universities operate in complex environments and have complicated internal arrangements, all of which create significant management and leadership challenges
External environment
Global competition
Political changes
Multiple stakeholders, local community, tax payers, research funders, students, parents, employers.
Consumers – choice competition and choices informed by REPUTATION rank, job prospect and price – not academic endeavour
Academic staff often more loyal to a discipline or a department than their employer. Therefore university managers cannot take organisation support for granted – cannot assume support of managed academics.
Change has to be negotiated and not imposed
EX Polytechnics and Colleges of HE are more amenable to managerialism then research led universities (Is this true?)
EVEN SO – a complicated and difficult organisation to manage
In the complex environment managers need skills knowledge and experience – but likely to be Player Managers poorly equipped with the skills needed to fulfil their role. Duck conflict – concentrate on the wording of written documents rather than communicating – sense giving
Dearlove 1998 and Preston and Price 2012 use the term player manager.
Breakwell and Tytherleigh (2010) studied VC appointments others such as Goodall 2006 and Gillies 2011 looked at aspects of governance – all seem to conclude that UK universities are fishing in the wrong pool for managers of international businesses (they usually appoint top researchers equipped to manage in a steady state and likely to have the respect of top academics)
Energy is put into agreeing the strategy document not communicating it
The emphasis is placed on the understandable:
Research reputation
Recruitment targets
Changing the curriculum and pedagogic practice is far more difficult to implement (needs staff engagement)
Missing elements:
Explaining (sense-giving) the need for change
Communicating a vision
Pointing the way
Rewarding the successes
Reinforcing the need for change are often missing elements
Staff engagement
Need 15 – 25 percent of staff engaged
Childress and Knight’s suggested percentages
Upper Echelon Theory - it is possible to predict a firm’s strategy and performance by assessing the social and cultural background and perceptions of the top executives. A narrow range of backgrounds limits the knowledge and understanding of the organisation and leads to bounded rationality. It can be inferred that internationalisation is likely to be approached very cautiously by TMTs whose experience is rooted in UK academia.
By implication, UK universities need to consider appointing their VCs and members of the TMT from a wider range of backgrounds than has traditionally been the case if they are to avoid making costly and reputation damaging mistakes based on the limited global knowledge and experience of their TMT (Howe and Martin 1998).
Done well, university internationalisation, will enhance the learning environment for all students; it will give a more international focus to research and through the vehicle of an internationalised curriculum will help graduates to develop a global rather than blinkered domestic focus as they prepare to enter employment in the global economy.
In the paper I suggest Pre-requisits for successful internationalisation.
Four of which were developed into anonymised case studies,
Based on 25 interviews, a diagonal slice of the organisation. Opinions of student representatives through to PVC and DVC level top management team members. Backed up by secondary data collection.
No clearly understood definition of what it is,
Makes comparison very difficult,
Narrow definition/wider definitions,
Can you be successful with a narrow definition?
Internationalisation centred on a few departments. Apart from attending international conferences, many untouched by internationalisation
Senior managers do not lack enthusiasm for internationalisation,
But there are weaknesses in the knowledge and skills needed to lead change in a large professional service organisation.
My study
Multi-disciplinary approach – using a managerial perspective to assess and evaluate internationalisation strategy
Synthesis of ideas contribute to an understanding of HE management
Done well, university internationalisation, will enhance the learning environment for all students; it will give a more international focus to research and through the vehicle of an internationalised curriculum will help graduates to develop a global rather than blinkered domestic focus as they prepare to enter employment in the global economy.
Unfortunately, it is not being done well in many UK universities at present.
If it contributed to NSS rankings it would be done well.