Complex, Turbulent Exogenous Environments

Abstract

This chapter identifies five key trends within the exogenous environments of the case study academic units: (1) Globalisation, (2) Marketisation of higher education: declining public funding and increasing operating costs, (3) Developments in information communication technologies, (4) Massification of student cohorts and (5) Increased accountability to stakeholders (governments, professional associations, employers and students). These trends combined making units’ environments turbulent, complex and difficult to predict and manage. Part II of the book explores whether the case study academic units adapted to these environmental pressures or whether they resisted these pressures and how individual units undertook adaptation or resistance. The final chapter of the book revisits Australian academic units’ external operating environments at the time of writing (late 2009). It finds that these trends still have a profound affect on academic units in Australian public universities; if anything their impact has intensified.