Integral Strategy 121
The university has become:- The two-core university: by offering an unusual combination of programs in
both applied science and applied social science - The campus university: by creating a beautiful verdant campus with a self-
sufficient living and learning environment, distinctive in the Dutch context - The responsible university: through its commitment to the development of its
region both economically and culturally - The university without frontiers: by means of its international character in
both teaching and research - The focused university: by providing in-depth study in a number of fields
- The flexible university: by using a variety of methods of governance and decision
making, and creating various streams of funding to achieve its goals
The Critique of Stories
Often stories take on mythic status and become miniature paradigms that work
like magnets drawing everything toward them (cf. Simsek and Louis 2000). It can
then become nearly impossible to get behind the myth to see events in fresh and
novel ways. As a result, it often falls to new leaders or to crises to do the hard
work of demythologizing the stories of a community that have hardened into
orthodoxy or have become defensive and stale. The task of criticism is a part of
strategic leadership.
Both for good and ill, not everyone in an academic community interprets the
story in the same way or embraces the one they know. In every organization,
there are different accounts about what the founders meant and did, and the
true content of the place’s values. Some of the story may be flawed and include
memories of exclusion and discrimination that need to be brought to awareness
and addressed. Yet even when there are defects and discord, to position strategy
within a narrative of identity is to give it a point of departure that creates a sense
of common enterprise. Differences in values are often disagreements over their
specific content, not their intent, so they can be resolved through dialogue and
deliberation about the authentic meaning of educational quality. The story will
enrich the strategic conversation and debate, deepen involvement in the process,
create more coherent insights, and build credibility. It will, most importantly,
define and illuminate the shared commitments that are needed to transcend the
structural tensions in academic decision making and to define an inviting trajec-
tory for the future.
Story and Leadership
Our effort to find the roots of strategy within narratives has also given us a
clear glimpse of the relationship between story and leadership. Consistent with
our earlier characterizations, it has become clear that some of the essential tasks