8: Senior Management structures in HE

The structure and size of university senior management teams varies significantly across the sector. They may be referred to as Executive Boards or Senior Management Teams or in equivalent terms. What is clear is that executive management teams are highly present in universities, and form what Simon Marginson described as early as 2000 as a ‘central steering core’ (the Enterprise University), which then interacts with faculties (within which academic departments are housed), or academic departments. The strength of the ‘centre’ varies according to the type of universities, but many universities now adopt this more corporate model which provides a greater framework of steering or direction from the centre, in a context when universities are expected to adopt institution-wide approaches to key activities such as enterprise, research and teaching and learning, with a view that objectives are rarely organically achieved without such co-ordination.  

Most vice-chancellors or head of institution equivalents build around them, and inherit, a mixed team of colleagues with portfolios of responsibility which are cross-cutting in the academic field such as the student experience or education, research and innovation, enterprise or knowledge exchange or internationalisation. These colleagues sit alongside the most senior heads of the professional services including the Chief Operating Officer or Registrar, the University Secretary, the Finance Director and the HR Director, with variations including IT Directors and Estates Directors. Increasingly, Directors of Strategic Planning and/or Change feature, as leadership teams seek to focus on their transformation and business intelligence capacities. Clearly there is no 'one size fits all', but most medium-sized to large HEIs have executive leadership teams of 8 or more. In working out how best to engage faculties and departments, the presence of faculty deans or heads on university senior management teams is increasingly seen as key.