the analysis illuminate others’ experiences and understanding of strategy in terms
of the motifs of organizational values, sense making, and leadership? I try to show
that a good strategy process builds a case for change from many sources, including
the organizational narrative. In doing so it may persuade and engage a good cross-
section of a campus community about the organization’s identity and prospects
(cf. H. Gardner 2004).
The book also includes advice and a large number of recommendations for
effective and useful ways to develop a strategy process. In many instances, these
claims are supported by the study of cases or have become part of the research
and literature on strategy. Many of the suggestions about best practices have been
shaped and reinforced by my professional experience as a faculty and staff member,
college president, corporate and nonprofit board member and chairman, seminar
leader, and consultant on strategy.
I am fully aware that the book’s arguments and recommendations add up to a
significant reorientation of the work of strategy in academic settings. Although
the argument is emphasized consistently to make the case for strategic leader-
ship, I know that the effort is exploratory and that many of its claims need to
be confirmed by a variety of forms of experience, research, and analysis. My aim
is to integrate a variety of insights about strategy and leadership that have been
developed in various contexts, and to encourage others to explore this and other
models.
CONTENTS OF THE STUDY
The work is divided into four parts and thirteen chapters. Part I, Issues in
Leadership and Governance, is an effort to provide the conceptual foundations
for strategic leadership in higher education. In chapter 1, I offer a brief analysis
of the portrayal of leadership in recent scholarship. In doing so, I seek to discover
some of the defining elements of leadership as a relationship of mutual engage-
ment and influence, an understanding that will guide my orientation to the tasks
of strategy. Then, in the second chapter, I analyze leadership in higher education
by focusing on presidential leadership, which introduces us as well to the chal-
lenges and conflicts of collegial governance and decision making. Subsequently,
in the third chapter, I offer my own interpretation of values as standards of choice
and explore the structural conflict between the values of academic autonomy and
organizational authority in the culture of academic decision making.
Part II, Preparing for Strategic Leadership, consists of two chapters that set
the stage for the practice of strategy. Chapter 4 analyzes recent understandings of
strategy in business and higher education, situates strategy in the value system and
paradigms of the academy, and provides an outline of an integrated approach to
the strategy process. I propose the paradigm of responsibility (or “response-ability”)
as a way to think about and situate the work of strategy effectively within institu-
tions of higher learning. Chapter 5 provides a detailed description of the ways
that strategic planning can be successfully related to the governance of colleges
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