Strategic Governance 83
is of decisive importance. Strategic leadership as a method and discipline offers
a way to integrate the mechanisms of governance and management to respond
effectively to the hard realities of the world.
In this context, strategic governance refers to the development of the delibera-
tive bodies, processes, and procedures that are required to carry out a continuing
process of strategic decision making as part of a larger governance system. The
issues rise to the level of governance because the strategy process and its vehicles
require formal definition, legitimacy, and authority. As the institution’s highest
governing authority, the governing board will ultimately be called upon to endorse
a formal strategy process on the recommendation of the president after collabora-
tion with the faculty and administration.
STRATEGY COUNCILS
Given the collaborative norms and forms of decision making in higher educa-
tion, one of the central questions about strategic governance focuses on the nature
of the deliberative body that will lead the strategy process. In Strategic Governance,
Schuster, Smith, Corak, and Yamada (1994) trace the issues related to institution-
wide planning committees and councils at eight universities.
In doing so, they are responding to an idea expressed by George Keller (1983)
in Academic Strategy that a “Joint Big Decision Committee” of senior faculty and
administrators is an effective vehicle for strategic planning. Schuster and his
colleagues found that one of the goals in the creation of each of the committees
they studied was to provide a basis for engaging the big strategic issues facing the
institution, although they were strikingly different in composition, purpose, and
effectiveness. Even though none of the eight institutions used the exact term, and
most of them did not consistently do comprehensive strategic planning, the authors
chose the generic term “Strategic Planning Council” (SPC) to designate the role
of these committees and to capture their apparent intent. Although the aim of
these SPCs was purportedly to provide a venue for faculty and staff participation
in important fiscal and planning issues, a continuing focus on strategic matters
is often hard to find in their activities. In spite of this, such bodies often came to
meet other important institutional needs and were appreciated for the work that
they did. In half of the eight cases studied, members of the campus community and
participants in the process gave a positive or highly positive appraisal of the SPC’s
work. In the other half of the institutions, the evaluation was decidedly mixed
and, in two instances, strongly negative. In three institutions the SPC eventually
went out of business or substantially changed its form, typically with the arrival
of a new president (Schuster, Smith, Corak, and Yamada 1994).
Schuster and his colleagues analyze four primary factors that they believe will
contribute to the effectiveness of SPCs as vehicles for strategic governance:
(1) the SPC should demonstrate that it does not intend to circumvent or replace
existing forms of academic governance or administrative authority; (2) the SPC
must focus on the genuine strategic issues facing the institution, and not be