E I P	1: Introduction Philip Yetton and Anne Forster
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Historical Context
The Emerging Context
The Role of IT
The Universities Studied
The MIT90s Framework
Examples of Practice
Structure of the Report

The importance of the higher education system to Australia in a future dominated by knowledge and knowledge workers is accepted by all. Recent studies have focused on a number of factors which contribute to the performance of this system. In particular, the role of information and communications technologies (IT) has been the subject of a number of studies. Absent from this research has been any significant analysis of the management of IT in the delivery of education and the administration of the university. This is the focus of our study, where we find that the management of IT and strategic leadership in this area will be critical to a university's success. While this will take different forms in different universities, three models of strategic change are derived from an analysis of the behaviour we observed in the twenty universities investigated. Of course, most universities are using a mix of these models.

Historical Context

The choice among the three strategic approaches or dynamic paths described in this report is in part a function of how the universities make different judgments about factors such as future technological developments, the human resource constraints and opportunities, and their financial resources. The choices are also importantly a function of where the universities are now and, of course, where they have come from. Different initial conditions result in different choices about how to compete or cooperate in the future. History is very important to that choice.

While constrained by a common regulatory environment, universities have competed differently in the past because they have different histories, and they will compete differently in the future because they have different 'presents'. Underlying these different histories and different competitive positions are the inter-related factors of age, resources, reputation and location.

In the past and still today, undergraduate geographical mobility has been low in Australia. If we go back to the 1950s and 1960s, it made little difference for a potential student living in Melbourne to move to Sydney to study chemical engineering. The difference in reputation, and the expected quality of the learning experience, between University of Sydney and University of Melbourne was small. So the choice was between universities within the Melbourne metropolitan area.

In that world, the old universities had both a reputation edge and a location advantage. Early entrants in each state dominate the 'group of eight'—the group of eight being The University of Sydney (1852), The University of Melbourne (1853), The University of Adelaide (1874), The University of Queensland (1909), The University of Western Australia (1911), The Australian National University (1946), The University of New South Wales (1949), and Monash University (1958). The first five 'prime movers' attracted resources and reputation in a virtuous circle of competitive advantage. Older universities tend to have degrees dominating the high status professions with associated alumni support. Many of the society's leaders will be graduates of one of these universities. Just as in the classic strategy literature, it is very difficult for the followers into the higher education market to successfully differentiate themselves. In this way, order of entry in this market is a significant factor in current competitive position.

All these five 'old' universities have prime city locations at the hub of rail and/or bus transport. Late entry universities suffer the twin disadvantages of suburban location and failure to usurp the established high status disciplines, with some notable exceptions such as the University of New South Wales (UNSW).

The University of New South Wales (UNSW) has been a good example of a 'follower' into the market which has effectively differentiated itself. On simple measures such as TER (Tertiary Education Rank) and research grants, UNSW is equivalent to The University of Sydney. UNSW had a clear strategy of how to differentiate itself from the leader which is a textbook way of competing. The founding Vice-Chancellor appears to have visualised the city of Sydney as if it were like Boston, where MIT effectively differentiated itself from Harvard University. The University of Sydney was great in core arts and sciences. So UNSW's Vice-Chancellor built UNSW as focused on applied science not pure science, commerce not economics, the built environment not architecture. It has proved to be a viable form of segmenting the market.

The Emerging Context

Much of the history described above is still well entrenched in the ways in which universities currently compete. But two or three factors are changing. First, there is the shift to massification. In the 1950s and 1960s, only about 8 per cent of school leavers went to university. Now 36 per cent of school leavers go to university. This has two profound consequences. One is that they can't all go to the 'old' universities. So now there are 36 universities in the Unified National System (UNS), funded by the Commonwealth. The other is that these universities will differ in quality. It is true that governments in the 1980s did try to maintain that 'a degree is a degree'. But inevitably differentiation emerged as universities competed with each other. It is hard to stop the university system ending up as a tiered structure. Certainly, this is the case across the western world. The growth in the system will tend to increase the differences across the tiered structure. The best will be very successful with high reputations, whereas some universities could become like American-style three year colleges.

Second, this differentiation was muted while government controlled both the funding for and number of students at a university. The Dawkins' revolution, through the implementation of the UNS, has changed this. No longer is the university limited to raising TER or equivalent scores as a means of maintaining and building its reputational advantage. For example, with fee paying overseas students and fees for postgraduate coursework, differentiation in the form of higher revenues is possible. This could be used in conjunction with the new minimum rates award to 'buy' high quality faculty, leading to higher reputation effects and a virtuous circle of growth.

Finally, not only will universities compete over quality of students and revenues, they will compete over degrees with high reputation effects, such as PhD and other postgraduate degrees. Universities with the best faculty and highest reputations for leading edge research and innovative teaching will attract the best students to these degrees, further enhancing their reputations. Furthermore, the universities with the highest reputations will capture the market for the most valued degrees. As in the United States, the students may not need the postgraduate degree to be more productive, but to sort out their places in the queues for the best jobs. The oldest and best will control the credentials leading into the high status, high earning jobs.

The specific consequences of the emerging context described here may not occur, not least because if universities discover new ways to compete the outcomes will be different. However, whatever the specific outcomes, there is little in the emerging context to suggest that differentiation will be more muted than at present and, instead, the reverse is likely to be true.

The Role of IT

At the same time as the universities' strategic context is changing, the cost-performance ratio of IT has improved dramatically. If nothing else changed, this would reinforce the virtuous circle described above by leveraging the universities with the highest reputations. If, however, currently leading universities are late movers in this area, being confident of their own omnipotence and subject to greater inertia because of their age and size, they will be left behind, with their virtuous circle in danger of becoming a vicious circle. Or as one interviewee commented—'driving into the future with our eyes fixed on our successes in the rear view mirror'.

More importantly, the new technology also promises the possibilities of new strategic advantages. The shift from the constraints of place to the freedom of space, and from a focus on teaching by the lecturer/professor to one of learning by the student are two such opportunities to be developed. IT will play a key role in their development. These changes are described by John Winship in his AVCC issues paper 'Exploiting information technology in higher education' (1996). To illustrate, he cites Kathy Tiano's distinction between old and new paradigms for higher education presented in Table 1.

This shift allows differentiation to take a number of new forms which are observed in the universities studied and described later in this report. At a fundamental level, in the historical context, teaching involved low fixed costs (lecture theatre, etc) and high variable costs (lecturer costs per hour of student contact time). Furthermore, in very simple terms, if you doubled the student numbers, you needed twice the number of lecturers. In the new emergent context, the fixed costs may be high—for example, development of new multimedia learning modules—but the variable costs of adding one more student in space (via the network) may be very low. So not only is the student empowered by moving from a teaching to a learning mode, but the cost structure changes dramatically, creating new ways to compete.

Table 1: Paradigms for Higher Education

(Cited in AVCC 1996)

The Universities Studied

The research reported here was done in two phases. In phase one, twelve universities were selected for in-depth examination (see Table 2). Selection criteria included reputation for best practice or innovation, in addition to ensuring coverage of the range of universities according to size, age, location, and delivery mode.

Table 2: The Twelve Universities Studied in Phase 1

Detailed interviews were conducted with a range of key administrative and academic staff. Interviews were conducted in person and tape recorded. Documents such as university IT strategies and corporate plans, reports on management or IT reviews, and reports on innovative applications of IT, were also collected.

By using in-depth, semi-structured interviewing, supported by analysis of relevant internal documents, this qualitative methodology facilitated the development of a rich and detailed understanding of IT management issues in universities. It also allowed researchers the flexibility to pursue relevant issues as they arose in interviews with key players. In addition, by agreeing on a common schedule of questions, the method also ensured the maintenance of a degree of consistency across researchers in terms of the data collected. Furthermore, this approach was particularly suited to the exploratory, developmental nature of the research. Rather than imposing a more rigorous and inflexible methodology, which is geared to testing particular pre-determined propositions, the strength of this research approach is in its ability to be grounded in and directed by the trends and patterns observed in the field data (Eisenhardt 1989; Yin 1994; Cavaye 1996).

In phase two, a further eight universities were investigated. In this phase, the interviews were typically by telephone, and were focused on checking ideas and insights from phase one. The choice of universities in phase two was primarily driven by a desire to extend the coverage of our sample, and interviews were conducted with staff from Bond University, Curtin University, Edith Cowan University, Northern Territory University, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, The University of Sydney, University of Canberra and University of Tasmania.

The selection of universities for both phases was discussed with and approved by the Advisory Board for the project. Of course, the selection of universities to be included was somewhat arbitrary. True, all those selected do exhibit innovative practices—that is why they were selected. This does not imply, however, that others do not share those practices or have not developed other innovative practices. Indeed, the research team was aware of innovative practices at a number of universities which were not included in our sample. In addition, other universities would be employing such practices unknown to the team. Time and resource constraints prevented their inclusion in the study.

Many examples of practice appear in this report. They are intended to be illustrative only and do not suggest that other institutions or groups are not doing similar or possibly even better things. Furthermore, we have not attempted to give a comprehensive report of all practices at institutions covered by this study.

The MIT90s Framework

In this section we describe the schema that we used to focus our analysis, to frame the questions we asked and, finally, to structure this report. This schema, known as the MIT90s framework, has two key components. One is the five factors, namely:

• strategy;
• structure;
• management processes;
• roles and skills; and
• technology.

The other is the concept of fit. It is found that successful organisations exhibit a high level of fit among these five factors (see Figure 2). It is a principal task of management to attain and sustain a high level of fit and, when strategic change occurs, to re-establish fit and, therefore, high performance as soon as possible.

Figure 2: MIT90s Framework

Adapted from M. Scott Morton 1991.

To understand an organisation's strategic fit, we need to examine the relationships among all the five factors. Simply knowing an organisation's strategy will tell us very little about its performance, or about its likelihood of success. Similarly, knowing just its structure, technology or human resources, or its environment, each considered in isolation, provides a very limited basis on which to assess or forecast performance. We need to consider the gestalt or configuration of relationships across all of these organisational elements in order to predict and explain its performance. The congruence or pattern of relationships among these factors constitutes the particular form of strategic fit (Doty, Glick & Huber 1993). Organisations may have forms of fit that are distinctly different from each other, but that are highly effective for the set of contingencies they are facing. These organisations may be considered to be in a state of tight fit. Similarly, some patterns will be ineffective or inappropriate, and constitute a state of weak or fragile fit either among the factors within the organisation or between the organisational configuration and its environment (Miles & Snow 1994). The survival of such organisations is under threat.

Organisations in strategic fit have four characteristics.

• First, the effective integration of strategy, structure, management processes, technology and roles/skills creates a very focused organisational gestalt which simplifies formerly complex organisational and management demands.

• Second, this simplicity fosters a clarity of understanding within the organisation which reinforces and sustains fit. This means that the organisation structures, management processes (such as reward and control systems), and key technologies combine to support the strategic intent, as well as shaping the required task focus and behaviour of managers and employees.

• Third, simplicity reduces the need for elaborate and complex coordinating mechanisms, thereby freeing up resources which can be focused on value-generating activities.

• Fourth, the high levels of performance created by this strategic fit serve to reinforce the process by which it is attained, and thus further simplify the fit among the elements of the organisational gestalt.

Such a tight fit, both internally among the elements of the organisation and externally with its environment, is associated with high performance. As the environment changes, organisations which discover, articulate and evolve new and effective patterns of strategy, structure, management processes, technology and roles and skills create an early fit, which frequently results in high performance (Miles & Snow 1994).

A key question is how does an organisation, in this case a university, achieve this strategic fit? What paths of strategic change will lead it into fit? In the 1980s it was generally accepted that strategic change was a three-step process, driven by a top down strategic positioning perspective. First, a new strategy was identified and adopted. Second, the organisation was restructured to support that strategy. Finally, the IT strategy and the management processes were redefined and aligned to the organisational strategy and human resources trained in these new skills as required (see Figure 3). This conventional, rational model of strategic change assumes that successful change is the result of a formal process of strategic planning, in which IT is aligned to the dominant strategic design. In line with business organisations in other industries, many universities have explicitly adopted this top down positioning model of IT-based strategic change.

Figure 3: Conventional Model of Strategic Dynamics

Adapted from P. Yetton, K. Johnston and J. Craig 1994

More recently, other paths of IT-based strategic change have been identified (Yetton, Johnston & Craig 1994). Two of these paths to fit, or models of strategic change, were observed in this study. One begins with the building of core competencies based on gradually developing new roles and skills in combination with new management processes and technologies. This is better known as bottom-up management, in which strategies gradually emerge from the developing capabilities, and then are formally recognised or adopted by the organisation. In this model, successful strategic change builds on and leverages an organisation's core capabilities within the domain of an evolving strategic intent (Hamel and Prahalad 1989; Barney 1996). We observe a number of universities which are implicitly building innovation through IT strategic change in this way.

The other path begins with structure. A university restructures to create a 'subsidiary' to deliver education in a different way, often to new 'customers'. A typical example is the creation of distance education and open learning centres leveraged by developments in information and communications technologies. Once success has been achieved on a limited basis, the intention is either to grow the 'subsidiary' as fast as possible, so it becomes a major operation in its own right, or to use it as a role model from which other parts of the organisation can learn and thereby integrate the new mode of operation into the university. The choice depends on whether the students or customers served by the subsidiary are typical of the whole customer segment served by the organisation, or whether they constitute a different market segment.

To sum up, the three paths to 'fit' observed in our study of Australian universities started either with strategy, core competencies or structure. These then are three key ways in which the universities studied differentiate among themselves as they undertake strategic change in their use of IT. We do not assume that one of the approaches is right and the others wrong, in which case the task would be to discover the best approach. Rather, we assume that each university will attempt to develop a different approach, probably based on some combination of the above three models of change, to discover a new effective fit, and to satisfy its stakeholders' needs. Indeed, in the next chapter, we show how different combinations of these three models of change define three distinct ways of competing. The success of the approach adopted by a university will in part be contingent upon the fit with its current resource position, history and capabilities, as well as how effective it is in successfully differentiating itself and embedding the required strategic change in the organisation.

In drawing these conclusions, we tend towards the perspective of corporate strategy rather than market economics. There is a fundamental distinction in the perspectives on strategy taken by economists and by corporate strategists. The economists' view of market outcomes assumes that all firms are similar if not identical, whereas strategists argue that surviving organisations are successful because they are unique. In the context of higher education, economists tend to see all universities as homogenous, subject to similar forces and constraints. This is because they are interested in market outcomes in which it is natural to model universities in terms of their similarities. In contrast, strategists look for heterogeneity, seeing each university as potentially unique, and needing to differentiate itself from the competition if it is going to survive. The issue here then is to be aware of the contributions of each perspective and understand how these two pressures—for homogeneity and heterogeneity—combine to create similarities and differences among successful universities in their strategic use of IT.

Examples of Practice

To illustrate the different historical contexts and current directions, three of the universities studied—The University of South Australia, The University of Melbourne, and The University of New South Wales—are briefly described here (Case Study 1, Case Study 2, and Case Study 3.) Of the five factors in the fit profile, the factor of roles and skills, or human resources, is given prominence in the descriptions. This is because whatever new strategic choices are made, the required human resources will need to be developed to enact those choices. In addition, it begins to establish a mind set which does not automatically start with strategy and strategic planning.

Case Study 1: The University of South Australia The University of South Australia (USA) is a multi-site, multi-campus university, the largest in South Australia, created from a series of amalgamated (and previously disamalgamated) institutions. The two major precursor institutions, South Australia College of Advanced Education and South Australia Institute of Technology, had very different cultures as well as entirely different IT infrastructures. Early in the process it was decided that the amalgamation would be a true amalgamation of equals, not a take-over or a federation. The University has roughly 2000 staff and 16,000 EFTSU (equivalent full time student units), represented by approximately 24,000 students. The ratio of academic to general staff is virtually 1:1, which is unusual and means that academic staff are often required to perform work done by general staff at other institutions. The University is very much driven by its planning processes, which appear to be genuinely operational—to have 'real bite' in the day-to-day work of staff and their units. There is coherence in the mission statement and goals of the university which seem to be reflected in the plans of Faculties and support units. Planning seems to be primarily driven by a vision articulated by the 'top'. University Priorities USA places great emphasis on the quality of teaching and learning in the institution. In particular, it is using its experience in the delivery of distance teaching to encourage more flexible delivery of all programs. Technology is seen as a tool to facilitate interaction between students and teachers and among students. The emphasis is on communication technologies and facilitation of deep student learning rather than on delivery technologies for knowledge transmission. The Flexible Learning Centre Recently the University decided to create a different sort of academic support unit, the Flexible Learning Centre (FLC), by merging its large and well-established Distance Education Centre (DEC) with its Centre for Teaching and Learning and then adding its Student Learning Support (SLS) advisers to the group. The FLC has been functional for less than a year, but seems relatively well integrated into the systems and processes of the University. Through the Flexible Learning Centre the University is offering what it considers a whole-of-institution approach to flexible learning with emphases on: improvements in access and quality; adaptability of educational programs in terms of place, time and medium; diverse study patterns adapted to the requirements of lifelong learners; flexible and inclusive curriculum content; teaching and learning support systems which can accommodate diverse student needs and learning styles; the provision of learning resources to support the teaching and learning process; the use of appropriate information technology resources to underpin inquiry and discourse; organisational structures and policy processes to maximise flexibility and creativity; and collaboration with others. The Centre offers staff development and support to academic staff in the development of their teaching and learning programs, student learning support, materials production services, and program delivery services for distance students. It is involved in the development of both on campus and distance programs, and sees itself as offering student centred and flexible support for the learning of students in whatever mode they study, and from whatever background they come. Staff Development There is no over-all plan for staff development, nor is there integration of provision, although coherence in the area of information technology skills development, particularly for teaching related applications, is emerging. Academic staff development in the area of teaching and learning is the responsibility of the FLC and much of it happens when FLC staff support academic staff in subject development or revision projects. Some central workshops and seminars are also offered. The Library offers courses on using technology to access information. The University has established a high level group titled Future Learning Environment Group (FLEG), which is considering a range of issues and providing advice to the Senior Management Group (SMG). FLEG has outlined outcomes for the University's 'IT for Teaching and Learning' plan and the issues which the plan must address. These issues include staff and student knowledge and skills, network capability and software systems. As part of the development process for this plan the group is developing standard hardware and software configurations and has specified five categories of user with characterisations of their software, hardware and staff development needs and costs to the University, in addition to a description of their main usage activities (the interactions they engage in, the information sources they access, the administrative functions they perform etc.). These specifications are providing targets for the FLC, Library and ITU activities. The targets operate by focusing activity on specific categories of user with the aim of moving all staff and students to the second category by the end of 1996. It is clear from the documentation and interview data collected that the University is working towards a model where flexible student-centred learning is the essential philosophy underpinning the practice and values of teaching, and permeating the institutional culture. A key mechanism for achieving this goal is the planning process of the institution which is well embedded and which directs the work of the FLC. The University's corporate plan places significant emphasis on the 'advancement of technology in socially and environmentally responsible ways'. It is notable that one of its major objectives is to 'provide a range of quality courses and methods of delivery which are flexible, incorporate appropriate developments in emerging technologies and facilitate life-long learning', and that the link between the vision of flexible learning and the use of appropriate technology which this objective outlines, is also evident in the structures and processes set up at the University. Also notable in the plan is the intention to integrate mainstream planning processes with the deployment of staff development, information technology and flexible delivery resources. Faculties, and more recently, administrative units present an annual plan. The plan is expected to be consonant with University goals and priorities. In the area of teaching and learning a Faculty is expected to identify ten subjects for development or improvement by increasing the flexibility of their teaching strategies. Faculty plans include impact statements in four areas: IT, the FLC, the Library, and the physical plant. The plans are assessed by a high level University committee against University goals. This Committee may reject or reduce the list of subjects proposed for flexible development, depending on their fit with University goals. The appropriate use of information technology, while not an explicit criterion in the selection process, seems to figure highly in judgments made by this group as to the appropriateness of proposals for the flexible delivery of subjects. The agreed list of subjects becomes the basis for the design, production and skill development support from the FLC to the Faculty in the following year. As the FLC is involved in helping Faculties develop their plans, there is some advice from both specialists with technical knowledge and those with understanding of student learning in the early stages of their development. Through this planning mechanism the FLC is in a position to allocate its resources in a more systematic way than is common in staff development centres in other Universities. To support this, the Centre has begun the difficult task of measuring workloads against which to allocate resources. The FLC also administers a series of internal 'Innovative Teaching Grants' to support development in teaching strategies. While the use of information technology is not a sole criterion for success in this granting process, it was clear that a high proportion of grants involved some use of information technology. Recipients of grants receive money to provide for equipment or teaching relief, and a like allocation of design/production and developmental support from the FLC. Hughes, Hewson and Nightingale 1996

Case Study 2: The University of Melbourne The University of Melbourne is a large multi campus university with some 30,000 EFT students, approximately 2000 academic staff and 2,400 general staff. The University has been encouraging the use of information technology in its teaching programs for a relatively long time now. There is a major emphasis on multimedia, which, though broadly defined, tends to be interpreted as computer aided learning resources for use by students studying at the University's campuses. There is little interest in distance education, outside a few specific areas, including Agriculture and Education. The University does not see information technology as a way of expanding its student base, rather its use in teaching is seen as a way of improving the quality of teaching, and only secondarily, as a way of handling large class groups while maintaining or improving teaching quality, and only incidentally as an efficiency measure. The focus is, notably, on multimedia, with general consideration of the use of the Internet and the Web in teaching starting to emerge. During the late 80s and early 90s considerable central resources were allocated to faculty groups on a more or less ad hoc basis, to support the development of multimedia or information technology projects and computer aided learning labs and facilities. (e.g. Horwood Language Centre in the Faculty of Arts, the Medical Faculty Multimedia Unit, Faculty of Agricultural Science). This strong but ad hoc support for local IT initiatives, arose from a firm belief on the part of the Vice-Chancellor of the time that information technology would be an important component of the University's teaching future. The strategy has resulted in the establishment of major facilities in several faculties, and in an ethos which suggests that the establishment of multimedia and other IT support mechanisms are a responsibility of faculties and that they are both feasible and desirable. Most Faculties have IT committees which provide a mechanism for developing Faculty IT plans. Administrative areas are now being brought into the planning process. Budgeting is tight, with decentralised budgets and a reported reluctance by senior management to support overspending. Faculties and administrative units are sometimes allocated money to support new activities on the basis that the costs are to be recouped and repaid to the University. Recently there has been a shift in the process which involves a tightening of the link between planning and budgeting. This new 'incentive based budgeting' involves a 5 per cent clawback each year from all Faculty budgets. Faculties may bid for money accumulated by this clawback by proposing quality improvement projects in line with the faculty's and the University's mission and goals. While information technology is not an explicit criterion in this process, the projects approved include a significant number of projects using IT. In 1996, individual Faculties won back between 70 per cent and 130 per cent of the 5 per cent clawed back. The total amount received becomes the baseline budget for the next year, to which the clawback is applied again. Staff Development In addition to the faculty based multimedia and IT units, there is the central Multimedia Education Unit (MEU) which grew up inside the Centre for the Study of Higher Education (CSHE). The CSHE is an academic development unit located in the Faculty of Education, with a staff development role and a broad research role in higher education. The MEU is an academic unit including expertise in the areas of educational design, evaluation and development with particular reference to the use of IT within teaching and learning. It was created to foster the development of skills within the faculties for the development of computer aided learning packages. Since its creation, the MEU has taken on additional resources such as graphic design and broadcast video, and has embarked on a series of support initiatives such as workshops, seminars, tutorials, contract support and collaborative ventures with various projects. With the evolution of the faculty multimedia development units, MEU's focus is shifting to provide specialist consultancy, support and equipment which the faculty units are unable or unwilling to otherwise obtain, such as educational theory, evaluation, video production etc. Despite some exceptions, there is little sense of a consistent focus on staff development at the University generally, little sense that major developments need staff development as an implementation support. This observation is supported by a relative lack of knowledge of what staff development is available, although one senior member interviewed explained this observation as arising from the fact that the University takes such things as staff development and computer literacy as given. Formal training in the area of PC packages is available from the University's Information Technology Services (ITS). ITS training programs designed to address core skills are free, those addressing non-core areas are charged for. Some courses charge if the enrollee does not attend. A training manual is available to support faculty based IT support staff. The MEU was recently moved out of CSHE and it now reports to the DVC (Academic) and to a newly established committee of Academic Board with a focus on IT and multimedia innovation. The MEU retains its academic character in this move, which is seen as underlining the importance of information technology to the educational effort at the University. This importance is emphasised by the fact that all the CSHE staff involved in academic development work have moved with the MEU, meaning that all central support for academic development at the University will henceforth be related to information technology and multimedia and will be situated in a Unit with significant resource design and production facilities, and with a mission which stresses the use of IT in education. The implications of the shift in the structural location of the MEU, together with the 'incentive budgeting' process now in place at the University suggest a significant tightening of the links between staff development for information technology, at least in education related areas for academic staff at the University. While the intention is not to match the degree of conformity to institutional goals achieved at the University of South Australia, the trend is in the same direction. There are significant elements of a 'distributed' approach (see Chapter 3) at the University of Melbourne. The faculties have considerable resources in the area of support for the use of IT in teaching—both production and developmental resources—and so the concentration of support and production resources in the MEU is balanced by the presence of these faculty resources. Hughes, Hewson and Nightingale 1996

Case Study 3: The University of New South Wales The University of New South Wales (UNSW) is a large multi-campus metropolitan university with over 28,000 students and 5,000 staff. UNSW has devolved one-line budgeting with considerable autonomy afforded to Faculties and Divisions. The main campus is in Kensington, although significant Sydney sub-campuses operate at Randwick, Oatley and other sites. The University also includes the College of Fine Arts at Paddington and the University College at the Australian Defence Force Academy in Canberra. The University's corporate plan stresses the use of information technology to support the development of high quality in all its activities: UNSW will be an information intensive institution, taking advantage of new models of educational delivery and information access based on the latest developments in computing, telecommunications and interactive multi-media. The University has a central Division of Information Services (DIS) responsible for the Library, Academic and Administrative Computing, Networks and Telecommunications. The Division of Information Services grew out of a review of the preceding Computing Services Department. DIS also includes an Audio Visual Unit with facilities to support video production and conferencing, and graphic design and production. It also has a multimedia coordinator who facilitates the development of projects and liaises with external facilities such as the Cooperative Multimedia Centres. Modem access to the University Wide Network (UWN) and staff email are run centrally by DIS. There are plans to centrally manage the expansion of email access to the whole university community. Some faculties have significant multimedia and educational technology support resources of their own, ranging from fully equipped multimedia units to technical support areas with a range of equipment and expertise available. Most operate their own file-servers, and in some faculties local services are extensive. Teaching laboratories are owned and operated by faculties. The University's marketing company, Unisearch, houses the Institute for Professional and Continuing Education (IPACE) which is an active short course developer and provider with considerable expertise in instructional design and multimedia production. IPACE's services are available on a fee for service basis to support internal UNSW activities. IPACE offers course administration services, on a fee for service basis, to some faculties conducting distance education programs. There is considerable use of information technology in support of students studying both on and off campus at UNSW. Some distance education programs are delivered using technologies such as computer conferencing, and many on-campus and flexible delivery activities involving extensive use of information technologies are operating. Staff Development The University coordinates staff development activities through its Professional Development Centre (PDC), an academic unit with both staff development and teaching roles. As a staff development unit the PDC reports directly to the Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academic Affairs), while for teaching purposes its academic staff are members of the Board of Studies in Professional Studies. The PDC offers a postgraduate program in Higher Education with programs available from Certificate to Masters level. Approximately 50 per cent of students in the program are UNSW staff. One subject within this program focuses on the use of information technology in teaching, and it is taught entirely using network technologies including email, the Web and file transfer protocol (FTP). The PDC's staff development role ranges across all staff groups and areas of need. It encompasses the roles of more traditional teaching and learning units, as well as general staff development units. Basic package training is provided by the PDC on a self access basis, by DIS (both IT and Library Units) or by external providers. Many staff attend basic package courses run by external private providers. In the area of information technology for teaching, the PDC conducts a range of activities focused on its Educational Technology Service (ETS) which provides design and project management advice to staff and groups undertaking development projects. The ETS also encourages staff and Schools to think through some of the broader educational issues involved in the implementation of IT in teaching. The ETS has no production facilities (apart from those used for its own in-house purposes) and cannot undertake the production of projects for its clients. Staff needing a full production service go to IPACE, external providers, or have built a capability within the Faculty. Staff are advised to seek advice on projects or IT based developments from the ETS in the first instance. The ETS assists with the pedagogic design of projects and advises on media selection and production facilities, and assists with project management. Units within the Division of Information Services, such as the Library and the Audio Visual Unit are able to provide developmental support to staff in the areas of their expertise, as are faculty based units. In 1994, in conjunction with the Professional Development Centre, the Library was awarded a University Staff Development Grant to provide Internet training to staff and postgraduate students. Over 400 staff and postgraduate students were trained using materials that had been developed and tested by Library staff. To meet the significant level of unmet demand at the conclusion of the project, the program was continued in 1995 and 1996 as part of the Library's information skills program. To date over 1600 members of academic staff and postgraduate students have been trained. The Library's Internet workshops are currently being redesigned to take into account the availability of assistance from trained staff in the Schools, the existence of basic training packages on the Web and the development of tools such as search engines which are changing the way the information on the Web can be accessed. Hughes, Hewson and, Nightingale 1996

At a general level, the three cases illustrate a shared focus on the importance of IT to each university's strategic agenda. They also show both the richness and complexity of the management issues in each university and the diversity across the three institutions in how they manage IT. It is important to remember that five years ago, IT was neither a strategic opportunity nor a competitive threat. So, what we observe are universities' first attempts to integrate IT into their strategic agendas and the different emergent patterns as they explore how to compete by building new IT-based core competencies.

The patterns that are emerging, as we will see in the next chapter, are similar to those found in other industries as they have integrated IT into their strategic planning. Each pattern differs both across each of the five elements in the MIT90s schema; for example, its strategy or structure, and the overall fit or integration among these elements which reinforces the three institutions' different identities and their different strengths and strategic options. For example, the University of South Australia emphasises flexible learning and develops the Flexible Learning Centre; Melbourne has a focus on multimedia for use at its Parkville Campus; and UNSW has a central Division of Information Services and a devolved Faculty or divisional structure. For all their similarities, they are very different. Furthermore, it is such emergent differences, and not the similarities, which will drive competition among Australian universities and other suppliers to the higher education sector over the next five years.

Structure of the Report

The research reported here utilised the MIT90s schema (Scott Morton 1991) as an organising framework for the study of how universities manage the introduction and delivery of technology in higher education. Groups of researchers with expertise in the five different domains focused on the management of each element in the framework, or more precisely, on the relationship between technology and each of the other elements—strategy, roles and skills, management processes and structure. This naturally leads into structuring the report around each of these pairings with a final chapter on the fit among all the elements.

Chapter 2 describes and analyses the different IT strategies developed by the universities studied, and discusses them in the context of their emerging competitive strategies. Chapter 3 examines the issues of staff development and the changes in roles and skills required in universities as they adopt IT in delivery and administration. Chapter 4 reviews the IT management evaluation issues and comments on the low emphasis on systematic management processes for evaluation of IT investments in universities. Chapter 5 explores IT management structures in the context of the ongoing debate about who is responsible for IT, and what activities should be centralised or devolved to users. Finally, Chapter 6 provides an integrative perspective across all the chapters. The focus is on how a consistency and fit can be achieved across all the elements. To do this, it discusses three scenarios for IT based strategic change in Australian universities.