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Looks at the changing face of education and where it is going. Sees many changes brought about as the global economy develops, IT moves on apace and there’s a widening range of education providers.

Discusses changes that will affect the Academy in the new Millennium. Explores the impact of the Internet on many aspects of academic life, including scholarly communication and publications, collaborative research, e‐education, and entrepreneurship in education.

This editorial continues the consideration of forces acting upon the university, both internally and externally. Particularly focuses on the impact of partnering. Suggests that outsourcing is now a firm part of the delivery of higher education and the issue is to what extent this has or will continue to occur. Looks also at the concept of “co‐opetition” where institutions in one country have partnered with those in another. Suggests that the nature and rate of change present difficulties in terms of future planning for universities.

This editorial looks at some of the forces that are acting on the university, both internally and externally. We look at the impact of globalization in this article.

This editorial continues our look at some of the forces that are acting on the university, both internally and externally. In this issue we look at the impact of lifelong learning. Universities use great expenses to recruit students, but are not retaining them as part of the community once they have graduated. The loss of alumni from the community is a great disadvantage to the institution and actively discourages collaborative learning.

ANOTHER Annual Meeting has come and gone. It was scarcely to be expected that the meeting at Bradford would be a record in the number of members attending, seeing that it is only three years ago since the Association met in the neighbouring city of Leeds, and that Bradford cannot boast either the historical associations or the architectural and scenic setting of many other towns. For the most part therefore the members who did attend, attended because they were interested in the serious rather than the entertainment or excursion side of the gathering, which was so far perhaps to the advantage of the meetings and discussions. Nevertheless, the actual number of those present—about two hundred—was quite satisfactory, and none, we are assured, even if the local functions were the main or an equal element of attraction, could possibly have regretted their visit to the metropolis of the worsted trade. Fortunately the weather was all that could be desired, and under the bright sunshine Bradford looked its best, many members, who expected doubtless to find a grey, depressing city of factories, being pleasingly disappointed with the fine views and width of open and green country quite close at hand.

A discussion on the need for integration of distance learning into regular courses to ensure quality of education for all. Face‐to‐face students and distance learners should exist in the same communication environment, and faculty who introduce new technology in this way should be rewarded.

Sir Ben Lockspeiser, Secretary of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, opening a Conference on Chemical Engineering Methods in the Food Industry at the Wellcome Research Institution, London, recently, said:—

This chapter looks critically at the changed language of education due to the adoption in the last two or three decades of a ‘business model’ for improving education. It briefly traces the history of these changes which have rarely been brought to the attention of the public.

This chapter delves more deeply beneath this language in order to explore the unacknowledged philosophical assumptions – referring to Wittgenstein’s aim which was to help people to pass from a piece of disguised nonsense to the recognition of it being patent nonsense.

This points out how, given the managerial language, this distorts our understanding of what it means to educate – there is an inappropriate ‘logic of action’.

The ethical dimension to educational leadership gets distorted or ignored. There is a need therefore to examine more carefully what is meant by an ‘educational practice’ – otherwise leadership coursed might be good at teaching ‘effectiveness’ in teaching to the test, but have little to do with education.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a quantitative model to help managers diagnose what dynamic capabilities a firm needs to address the demands of a rapidly changing environment.

A two-firm model based on the VRIO framework is built using quantitative techniques to assist top management in formulating and implementing strategies regarding when and how to develop a firm’s dynamic capabilities for achieving a competitive advantage. This model is developed by considering both internal and external competences, with the former measured by the features of the organizational capabilities of the focal firm and latter evaluated by comparing the relative utilities of the dynamic capabilities of the two competing firms.

Three resource allocation strategies are introduced to guide a firm to leverage dynamic capability that generates strong organizational performance. The first two strategies are, respectively, synergy oriented, focussing on acquiring various knowledge or experiences of a capability, and uniqueness oriented, emphasizing the depth of knowledge and technology of the capabilities. The third one is a hybrid of the first two strategies.

The proposed model is useful to help top management determine how and when to renew, bundle, and leverage resources and capabilities in a dynamic environment. It enables decision makers to detect changes in the competitive environment and take corrective action in a timely and appropriate manner.