Dissertation Abstract

Strategy Content in Higher Education at the Academic Unit Level (Radiologic Sciences).

Recognition of the competitive realities within and between institutions of higher education has led scholars to call for specific theory development and empirical research aimed at understanding the dynamics of competition in higher education. Strategy research in higher education has focused on competition at the institutional level. Although there is little empirical research about the presence of strategies for the survival and development of academic units within higher educational institutions, these units face considerable competitive pressure from within their institutions and from the environment. There is reason to believe that the organizational reality they face is similar to that which has sparked a rich tradition of theory, research, and practice in business management on strategy content and the relative utility of specific generic types of strategies.

This research is a study of strategy content at the academic unit level. The rationale for incorporating Porter's frequently cited and commonly applied business level typology is that it allowed the researcher to inspect intended strategies. This approach reduces and clarifies the complexity for strategy content variations by categorizing them into a generic typology. A generic typology permits an assessment of which variables were attended to during the strategy decision process without incorporating a study of the many variables in the strategy process theories. The results of this research contribute two typology models for higher education to address issues regarding a highly competitive environment by providing an explanation of how academic units can organize their resources to survive and grow in a college or university setting.

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