Glossary
Glossary
- Departmentalised
- An organizational approach where activities are managed separately within individual departments rather than being coordinated across the institution. This often leads to isolated, disconnected work.
- Enterprise in Higher Education
- A UK government initiative launched in 1987 that encouraged universities to develop closer links with industry and incorporate entrepreneurial skills into education.
- Excellence Framework
- Government assessment systems used to evaluate university performance in areas like research and teaching. Portfolio leaders' priorities were often shaped by strategies to perform well in these frameworks.
- Industrial Collaboration Zones
- Strategic organizational structures created by the University of Salford in 2016 that made business partnering the sole institutional priority. These zones cut across existing departmental boundaries to actively engage external partners.
- Kitchen Table Activities
- Small-scale, informal partnership activities that individual academics pursued independently within their departments, often without institutional coordination or oversight.
- Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP)
- A UK government-funded scheme that helps businesses access university expertise and knowledge to drive innovation and growth. Universities like Salford had notable success with these partnerships.
- Matrix Management
- An organizational structure where employees report to multiple managers, such as both a department head and an associate dean with portfolio responsibilities. This creates overlapping lines of authority and responsibility.
- Organizational Culture
- The shared values, beliefs, and practices that characterize how an institution operates. The university needed to shift its culture to prioritize external partnerships.
- Portfolio Leaders
- Senior roles recruited to act as disruptors, change agents, and role models for the new strategy. These positions were detached from traditional management structures and focused on external partnerships.
- Real World Experiences
- Practical, industry-relevant learning opportunities that allow students to apply theoretical knowledge to solve actual business problems before entering employment.
- Relationship Management
- A strategic approach focused on establishing, developing, and maintaining successful long-term partnerships rather than one-off transactional exchanges. It emphasizes ongoing value creation through collaboration.
- Single Silo Strategy
- An organizational approach where a university focuses on one overarching priority (in this case, business partnering) as the central strategic direction for the entire institution, rather than having multiple separate priorities across different departments.
- Thought Leaders
- University staff members identified as being skilled at external engagement who were recruited to champion the new partnership strategy. They were selected through colleague referrals rather than formal assessment.
- Transactional Exchanges
- One-off, short-term interactions between organizations focused on completing specific tasks or projects, as opposed to building ongoing collaborative relationships.
- Triple Helix
- A theoretical model that describes the interconnected relationships between universities, industry, and government as essential for innovation and economic development. It emphasizes how these three sectors must collaborate effectively.