Given the emerging interest in institutional positioning and to augment the small number of empirical studies in this field, this paper presents discussion about how Finnish universities of applied sciences implement their profiling strategies. The analysis is based on an examination of documents recently submitted by these institutions when reapplying for operating licences. The paper discusses how institutions refer to their positioning statements when introducing or responding to changes in their internal or external environments and questions whether or not positioning paves the way to strategic actorhood. The results suggest that the universities of applied sciences that most often refer to profiling statements have built different kinds of networks to support their positioning activities. Moreover, they have made considerable structural changes to implement their positioning strategies. The restructuring of human resource capacity required to execute the positioning strategy is discussed in the reapplication documents, albeit with a lesser emphasis.Higher Education Quarterly, 0951-5224
This study examines a teaching-oriented higher education community which undertook a major change effort when planning a new campus and redesigning their pedagogics. This paper suggests that instead of merely being a rhetorical tool of senior management, distributed leadership can be practiced in higher education communities for the benefit of the learners, the teaching and administrative staff and the local community. The study emphasises how important the joint sense making of the pedagogical approach was in the creation of distributed leadership practices in a teaching-oriented higher education community. It also highlights how higher education students may take an active role in a work system characterised by distributed leadership and how the infrastructure of a campus building may support distributed leadership.
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