Universities As Complex Enterprises: How Academia Works, Why It Works These Ways, And Where The University Enterprise Is Headed

This book explores the nature of academic enterprises, including why they work the way they do and where such enterprises are headed. The goal, however, is not prediction. Instead, the objective is insights into where change can and will happen. Understanding the relationships among practices, processes, structure, and ecosystem provides the basis for transforming academia, leveraging its strengths and overcoming its limitations. More specifically, this architecture helps us to understand how various elements of the enterprise system either enable or hinder other elements of the system, all of which are embedded in a complex behavioral and social ecosystem. Each topic is explored in terms of the levels of the architecture at which it primarily functions. Levers of change within each area are discussed, using many experiences of pursuing such issues in a range of academic enterprises.