Strategy, Structure and Style in Brazilian Universities. ASHE Annual Meeting Paper.

Configuration, strategy, and leadership style in five Brazilian universities are examined. Though research tends to focus on the university as a professional bureaucracy, it is demonstrated that other configurations are also applicable. The link between configuration and strategy making is traced, with insights into how strategies are formed in universities provided. Ways in which leaders set strategic direction are examined. Topics of discussion are: (1) decision making and structure in higher education (bureaucracy, collegiality, political model, organized anarchy, mixed models, and models of governance in higher education); (2) the business literature; (3) configuration: a framework for analysis; (4) strategy making in the university; (5) Brazil's universities; (6) university configurations (organized anarchy, the political arena, the adhocracy, the missionary organization, and the machine bureaucracy); (7) strategy making (disconnected academic strategy, emergent strategy, umbrellas and ideology, and planned and unrealized strategy); and (8) leadership style and strategy. Administrators may focus on elements other than academic strategy. Academic strategy corresponds to university outputs (research and teaching) and inputs (staff and students). Physical strategy is related to the various support components on which the university relies to get its work done (physical facilities, fund raising, and support staff). They are usually centralized functions and are more amenable to central intervention. A third area concerns the governance of the university which can facilitate the work of the university or perhaps impede it. Contains 86 references. (SM)