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The purpose of this paper is to establish the extent to which Porter’s five competitive forces (PFCF) framework, among other factors drive the choice of response strategies adopted by public universities in Kenya.

The study design was descriptive and utilized a cross-sectional survey of all the public universities in Kenya by administering a structured questionnaire to the top management team. Additional primary data were collected through observations and interviews. Secondary data were also collected in order to corroborate the data collected from the primary sources.

PFCF framework influenced the choice of response strategies adopted by the public universities “to a great extent”, the most influence being the threat from new entrants. The influence of the choice of response strategies by PFCF framework was independent of the age and category of the universities. Pressure from stakeholders, changes in government policies and regulations, reforms in higher education, unethical response strategies by some universities and university location also influenced the choice of response strategies.

The study collected data from the top management team only; however, other stakeholders could have given additional information not reported here. Further, the research only considered public universities and not all higher education institutions (HEIs) in Kenya, and was cross-sectional, hence generalization and application of the results over a long time, respectively, may be limited.

The value of this study lies in HEIs achieving a competitive advantage and shaping strategic policy direction in the face of changing environment and global commodification of higher education.

Current public universities in Kenya have adopted a business-like approach in their operations in view of changing environment and have adopted coping strategies. Therefore, understanding the factors that influence the choice of response strategies is important for improvement of quality, efficiency and effectiveness as well as in policy formulation and serve as a guide to strategic management.

The study design investigated the leadership behavior of deans of education that addresses an important aspect of leadership – leadership is created when there is alignment between the organizational leadership behaviors needed by the institution and the leadership behaviors provided by the organizational leader. A survey of a selected group of deans of education from 35 institutions addressed the questions: what do deans self-identify as their prominent leadership behavior and to what extent do deans use multiple leadership behaviors. The research of Bolman and Deal (1984) provided the frames for analysis: structural, human resource, political, and symbolic frames. The study response rate was 50%. The findings of the study indicated that the majority of respondents perceived their primary leadership behavior as most closely matching the human resource frame. Results also indicated that a majority of respondents did not perceive that they

Medical education is an evidence-driven professional field that operates in an increasingly regulated environment as compared to other fields within universities. The purpose of this paper is to establish the extent to which Porter’s five competitive forces framework (Porter, 2008) can drive the management of medical schools in Australia.

Drawing on data from semi-structured interviews with over 20 staff from 6 case study Australian medical schools, this paper explores Australian medical education, by looking at the current policy context, structure and interactions between organizations within the system.

The findings provide evidence that environmental forces affect the nature of competition in medical education, and that competitive advantage can be gained by medical schools from a sustained analysis of the industry in which they operate in. Consequently, it is possible to apply a pre-dominantly profit-oriented framework to higher education.

As an industry facing increasing pressure toward marketization and competition, the findings provide sufficient evidence that an analysis of higher education as an industry is possible.

The findings provide evidence that strategic leadership and management in higher education should encompass greater levels of delegation and decision making at all levels. Effective leadership should focus on creating an inspiring vision of the future through a sustained analysis of the industry in which they operate.

The study has made a key contribution through an industry analysis of Australian medical education, which provide important implications for leadership and management in higher education. The study is of significant value to researchers as well as senior management in higher education.

The purpose of the development of the paper was due to the seemingly endless searching for deans to replace the former dean of three to four years.

The paper was developed around the present relevant secondary data.

The key findings of the paper were that deans were being replaced due to the difference in expectation of the various constituents (e.g. students, faculty, administration, parents) in the performance of the SBA.

Limitations of the study were not providing primary data to support the theory based hypotheses of the study.

Deans need to recognize that there will be conflicting expectations relative to the performance of the dean and that deans have a very short time to effectuate change in academic organizations.

Not having such high turnover in dean's positions should provide the stability of management to bring about change need in institutions of higher education.

Identification of key mistakes made by deans as well as the mistakes made by faculty undermine the performance of deans.

The purpose of this paper is to identify higher authority organizational stressors encountered by higher education deans.

This current research employed a qualitative approach utilizing a contextual paradigm with a multiple case study methodology.

Out of ten investigated deans in a public higher education institution in Malaysia, nine reported experiences of organizational stressor elements arising from higher authority. Three non-overlapping subthemes were systematically discovered.

Successful identification of these higher authority organizational stressors has implications for higher education management policies. Policies that reduce or eliminate these stressors may create a positive and progressive environment for deans and the higher education field.

This study will thus serve to promote a deeper understanding of higher authority organizational stressors encountered by higher education deans.

The purpose of this study is to explore the extent to which working in a management team in which leadership functions are shared impacts the role clarity, job overload, stress and job satisfaction of team members. It also aims to explore the moderating influence of organizational encouragement for team work.

The study uses data obtained from 200 top management team members working in Christian church organizations in the USA. Structural equation modeling was used to examine the relationship of shared leadership with the role conflict, role ambiguity, job stress, and job satisfaction of the management team members. These relationships were also evaluated for team members in organizations with both higher and lower levels of encouragement for team work.

A model in which role conflict and ambiguity mediate the relationship between shared leadership and job stress and job satisfaction provides the best fit with the data. Shared leadership within a management team was negatively related to team member role overload, role conflict, role ambiguity and job stress. Shared team leadership was positively related to job satisfaction of team members. The relationship of shared leadership with team member job outcomes is stronger in organizations with lower levels of encouragement for teamwork.

A practical implication of these results for leaders of management teams is that sharing some leadership roles and responsibilities within their teams with other members may have positive effects for the effectiveness of the team as well as the satisfaction of the team members. The generalizability of the results may be limited by the team size studied and the tendency of church pastors to be pre‐disposed to helping their management team members.

This is one of the few studies that have examined the effects of shared leadership within management teams on team members. Although shared leadership within teams may increase job demands on members and require team members to take on new roles, it seems to have positive effects on team member perceptions of their jobs. In addition, the extent to which an organization encourages teamwork makes a difference in the relationship of shared leadership with team member jobs.

This paper aims to examine how libraries can create relative bargaining power and presents a methodology for analyzing collections and preparing for negotiations.

A brief literature review of the current state of collection budgets and electronic resource prices is presented prior to proposing a methodology based on business analysis frameworks and techniques.

Electronic resource subscription prices are increasing at a rate significantly higher than inflation, while collection budgets grow slowly, remain stagnant or decrease. Academic libraries have the ability to counteract this trend by creating relative bargaining power through organizational efforts that take advantage of size and concentration (e.g. consortia), vertical integration through practices such as library publishing and open access and through individual efforts using information. This paper proposes metrics and methodologies that librarians can use to analyze their collections, set negotiation priorities and prepare for individual resource negotiations to create relative bargaining power.

The proposed methodology enables librarians and buyers of information resources to harness the information available about their electronic resource collections to better position themselves when entering negotiations with vendors.

This paper presents metrics, some not commonly used (i.e. average annual price increase/decrease), that aid in understanding price sensitivity. Pareto analysis has been traditionally used to analyze usage, but this paper suggests using it in relation to costs and budgets for setting negotiation priorities.

Lease contracts at the time of sale influence buyers' expectations about future returns of farmland ownership and may thus contribute to price dispersion. This paper investigates the conjecture that existing land lease contracts influence buyers' and sellers' costs of being information deficient and thus their bargaining position, their expectation formation about future returns, and thus ultimately the farmland price.

The authors link different levels of information, search, and bargaining costs to three buyer types and their land use intentions. Relying on a rich dataset of farmland transactions in the German Federal State of Saxony-Anhalt from 2014 to 2019, the authors use a hedonic pricing model to investigate five hypotheses applying multivariate one-sided tests.

The authors find buyer-specific effects related to lease status and lease term of a lot. Tenant buyers pay less than non-farmer buyers for leased lots, whereas non-tenant farmers pay a markup. While prices decrease for all buyer groups with an increasing lease term, this effect is the strongest for non-tenant farmer buyers. This study’s results suggest that an existing lease contract impacts buyers' costs of being information deficient, their bargaining positions and expectation formation, and ultimately the price discovery process.

To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that decomposes the effects of tenancy on farmland prices by buyer type and lease term. The study provides insights into price dispersion for identical characteristics of farmland and explains why empirical studies have found mixed or no empirical evidence that lease contracts influence the price discovery process.

The purpose of this paper is to review the strategic management of Vietnamese higher education institutions.

The paper examined the external environment of the country’s education system based on the five forces framework by Michael Porter and inspected the strategies of universities and colleges.

It was concluded that lack of environmental analysis from both the government and higher education institutions themselves diminishes the intended effectiveness of the reforms; problems of skill shortage in the labor market, staff insufficiency and poor quality are prevalent; and that strategies developed by the institutions are purely responsive to the State’s direction without considering sustainability.

Lack of literature on Vietnamese higher education limits timely analysis.

Strategic planning based on a thorough investigation of the environment is imperative to enhance the performance of the education system generally as well as of academic institutions individually. The government plays a key role in developing initiatives to enhance staff capabilities and improve quality of educational outputs.

There has not been any paper that approached Vietnam’s higher education management under such an analytical framework.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how a foresight project supports institutional positioning efforts through joint sensemaking.

This paper describes a case study that investigated the design, implementation, and outcomes of a foresight project at a Finnish higher education institution that selected sales and services as its institutional focus areas. According to the institutional strategy, all students should have acquired solid sales and service skills before the completion of their studies. The foresight methods used in this study were e-Delphi, futures workshops, and futures narratives. The data gathered in this iterative foresight process resulted in the delineation of eight future sales and service roles and their related competences, which were subsequently used for redesigning curricula, new programme development, and personnel training.

With the careful choice of foresight methods, the organisation was not only able to define future competence needs based on the collective wisdom of its stakeholders, but also fostered the organisation’s strategic transformation process.

This paper gives insight into how to use a foresight process to foster institution-wide change.

This is one of only a few studies on how higher education institutions could implement their positioning strategies.