The Efficacy of Strategy in Higher Education--A Methodology. Professional File. Number 27

All research intensive universities (RIU's) want to expand their scope of operations. Research performance is a key driver of institutional reputation which underpins a university's ability to generate revenues from all sources. Achieving an accelerating rate of growth of the virtuous cycle, in which increasing research performance enhances institutional reputation which, in turn, facilitates increasing research performance, is the desired objective of RIU's. This shared objective is contributing to an intensification of the competition for research funds. Successfully competing for research funds depends on realizing an increasing share of the federally financed research funding that is available to academic institutions. To this end, RIU's are using strategic processes with varying degrees of intensity and formality in an effort to achieve their objectives. The question arises as to whether these strategies produce desirable outcomes. That is, are some expressions of strategy more closely associated with an increased share of federally financed research funding than others? This methodology provides insight into this question by presenting a model that exposes the strategic emphases of individual RIU's which are correlated with the changes in the shares of federally financed research funding actually realized by the institutions. Using this method, the relationship between strategy and institutional performance is observable which can be used to inform the process of strategy formation. Appended are: (1) A list of universities that are defined as research intensive in this study; and (2) Procedure for Accessing RIU Research Data. (Contains 7 figures.)