62 Strategic Leadership
perhaps out of a mind-set shaped by defensiveness or arrogance. The “learning
organization” about which Senge writes is one that has found ways to think about
its own thinking, to penetrate fixed sets of assumptions with self-awareness, con-
ceptual openness, and continuing inquiry about its own effectiveness. Again, it
is the definition of reality that is crucial and that decisively connects to issues of
strategy and leadership (Senge 1990).
We have seen that institutions of higher learning have complex layers within
their identities, including value systems that are split at the root between aca-
demic and organizational commitments. These systems of values are interwoven
with narratives of identity, patterns of belief, and ways of constructing reality that
filter experience as to what counts as relevant, true, and worthwhile—thus the
tasks of strategic self-discovery, decision making, and leadership encounter para-
digms that precede them. Through our models of thought and judgment, we pick
out and privilege the features of our experience that are consistent with what we
value and tell in our stories, all within an integrated and layered process of sense
making. These deep paradigms are often unconscious and unquestioned assump-
tions of thought that shape the whole landscape of judgment and decision mak-
ing in academic organizations. They provide the hidden criteria for the ways we
think about mission and vision. They define as well the deep standards of moral
legitimacy for the exercise of authority and the criteria for evaluating performance
and programs. All these presuppositions are expressed through the intricacies of
each individual’s and institution’s enacted culture and thought world, so the web
of local reality is dense and complex.
Academic leaders and planners who understand paradigms and their con-
nectedness with values and narratives will be far better equipped to introduce
strategy as a discipline of change and sense making into a world where it is often
not welcomed or appreciated. They will be able to encourage thinking about
strategic thinking, and a process of continuous learning about the true terms
of collegiate reality as preliminary steps in a productive approach to strategic
decision making.
One way to begin to find a place for strategy is through the analysis of several
images that display different patterns of thinking about the purposes of higher
education. We shall offer three such images, each of which connects a set of
assumptions, values, and narratives to construct a paradigm or model of reality.
The models are stylized and fanciful versions of types of educational organi-
zations and are presented largely as narratives. Even with their whimsy, they
are intended to capture values and beliefs that are widely influential in both
traditional and contemporary higher education. Many of the current debates
about the purpose, worth, and future of higher education in a competitive
global marketplace echo in these sketches. Let us turn first to an examination
of the paradigms of the academy, the corporate university, and the educational
shopping mall. Subsequently we shall explore more conceptually the motif of
the responsive and responsible university, or, more precisely, the paradigm of
responsibility.