60 Strategic Leadership
transformation as well as perpetuation; it must involve individual cognition and
social interaction, cooperation as well as conflict; it has to include analyzing
before and programming after as well as negotiating during; and all of this must
be in response to what can be a demanding environment” (1998, 372–73).
Using different terminology, but covering much of the same intellectual ground
as Mintzberg, Richard Alfred classifies various approaches to strategic management
with an eye toward synthesizing their meaning for higher education. He claims
that the common strategic theme is the achievement of competitive advantage in
the marketplace through the creation of differentiated and sustainable value for
stakeholders. “Advantage is the end goal of any and all perspectives on strategy”
(Alfred et al. 2006, 83).
This language seems apt but presents challenges when we try to translate it
into the thought world of higher education. The work of translation hinges on
the meaning of “value,” and the point of reference in terms of which worth is
established. In corporate strategy, the creation of shareholder value is a primary
goal, as defined by shareholder economic returns and the relationship between
supply and demand for the company’s shares in the financial market. The com-
pany gains advantage when it creates economic value for customers by providing
high-quality products and services at the right price. In higher education, how-
ever, the meaning of these terms changes. Words like “quality” and “excellence”
become the primary terms used to refer to the intrinsic forms of value created in
the discovery and transmission of knowledge. Educational value is not in the first
instance determined by market forces but is an end in itself, a basic intellectual
and social good. “Advantage” remains a useful concept for thinking about the
strategies of academic organizations, but its relationship to educational value is
complicated by the enormous range of different types of educational institutions,
with their dramatically different programs, sponsorships, purposes, and prices.
As a result, it becomes clear that higher education is a peculiar marketplace:
“the relationship between price, product and demand is different for different
purchasers in different parts of the higher education market” (Zemsky, Wegner,
and Massy 2005, 35). When academic reputation is the prime value in a market
segment, there is little price discipline; but when convenience or credentials
define value, price becomes more influential (Alfred et al. 2006; Zemsky, Wegner,
and Massy, 2005).
Recent interpretations of strategy in higher education show that it continues
to evolve both in theory and practice, often in the quest for more integrative
models. Peterson has outlined a method of contextual planning to serve as a more
proactive, integrative, and meaning-oriented process than strategic planning.
Using the term “strategic leadership” only parenthetically, he offers interpreta-
tions that are broadly parallel to some of those suggested in this book, though
he focuses more on very broad macro-level changes in the system or “industry”
of higher education (Peterson 1997). Ellen Earle Chaffee and Sarah Williams
Jacobson (1997) have discussed a new approach to planning focused on vision
and the effort to change institutional cultures that makes it, in effect, a central