With increased competition for talented students and academic staff, many universities have recognised the importance of brand building to better position in the field. This study selected a recently founded public university in China as the case to explore in what way a young university's brand is constructed and to what extent such a brand is…

Few issues have attracted as much policy interest in the tertiary sector as graduate employability. Graduate employability positions universities and their students as key players in the national economy. At the same time, the standard conception of graduate employability, as it has evolved from human capital theory and modified by neoliberal…

Appreciative inquiry is a strength-based organisational transformation approach developed in 1987 by David Cooperrider at Case Western Reserve. It is based on the idea that organisational change is more effective when the approach focuses on the positive attributes and experiences within an organisation instead of the challenges. Several studies…

Leadership teams have the potential to be extraordinarily effective bodies, undertaking institutional-level decisions and driving performance. There has been limited exploration of the nature of leadership teams in higher education and specifically those at the forefront of academic units where teaching and research is undertaken. This study…

Referring to failures in policy-driven public governance research this paper looks at strategising in higher education. It expands horizons for understanding university strategies in a more nuanced way than hitherto has been done. Deploying systems theory, it shows how different temporalities co-exist in strategies and how their change reflects…

This paper analyses the extent to which intersectionality is considered in university strategic approaches to equity, diversity, and inclusion, and how intersectionality is expressed within strategic plans. Intersectionality is a framework for understanding compounding experiences of those who identify with multiple diversity areas and how these…

The paper employs a glonacal agency heuristic to explore how certain research-intensive Chinese universities exercise agency in response to global and national impacts in creating the world-class university. Two global forces (international scholarly discussions on the world-class university and global university rankings) and one national force…

Institutional league tables, such as the Academic Ranking of World Universities, have become part of the global higher education landscape. This article discusses findings from a longitudinal study examining four Australian universities over a fifteen year period which traces how international rankings have come to be articulated in university…

Strategic planning was introduced to Australian universities as part of the Commonwealth Government higher education reforms of 1988. The 'Dawkins Reforms' implemented extensive structural reform, changed executive leadership roles and responsibilities, commenced the 'managerialisation' of the Australian university sector, introduced the Higher…

Most scholarly work on internationalisation in Chinese higher education institutions has been conducted on top-level universities but prior research does not necessarily apply to regional universities that are pursuing a strategy of internationalisation and recruiting international students. This research has selected a Chinese regional university…

The perception of academic researchers on management instruments has generated significant controversy in the literature. Studies have highlighted that these perceptions affect research performance more than management itself. This work addresses this issue by proposing a subjective measurement that explains research incentives in a public…

In 2017 Universities Australia (UA), the peak body representing Australian universities released its "Indigenous Strategy 2017-2020." The document unites universities together in common goals for Indigenous achievement, filling a notable gap in the Australian higher education landscape. The "Strategy" outlines a comprehensive…

Service transformation is an increasingly common pursuit in the higher education sector, with university strategic plans frequently featuring a "service excellence" objective and the adoption of leaner and more sustainable service models. Previous studies agree that service excellence is intentional not incidental, and systematic not…

With the majority of undergraduate teaching in Australian higher education being undertaken by casual academics, ensuring adequate support for these staff to access support and professional development relating to teaching and learning is imperative. In this article, we profile the development and implementation of a university-wide strategic…

We analyse the internationalisation process in business schools as a response to the globalisation phenomena and argue that environmental pressures, isomorphic forces, the pool of internal resources and the alignment of the process with the institution's general strategic plan are the main determinants of a successful internationalisation process.…