Confronting the balancing act of educational design, development and innovation in large universities: An explanatory model to inform strategic management

Elements in the core business of teaching in all universities are educational design, development and innovation. Strategies are particularly needed to facilitate these necessary activities both university-wide and at local level in very large comprehensive research-intensive universities.

This paper presents an explanatory model built around three key concepts: expertise, location and relationship which can be used to underpin strategic management thinking in such complex systems. The concepts and their dimensions were developed from an analysis of the multiple factors in play observed in two case study research-intensive universities. Expertise is wide-ranging and has been regularly consider in the guise of emphasising the need for teams with multiple expertises. Location has physical, organisational and temporal dimensions while relationship has social and organisational dimensions. Both have been inadequately considered in other models.

Strong institutional support for a communities of practice approach which takes account both of multiple expertises and issues raised by location and relationships is proposed as one possible strategy. A rhetoric of commitment must be associated with policies and practical tools to support it. Acknowledgement of the time required for reflection and communication activities in a community comprising individuals with disparate role duty statements, contexts and professional aspirations, however, is an essential element of such an approach.