Abstract
In this study, the conceptual use of the strategy map approach and the strategy map which it produces have been adapted from the business sector and introduced as tools for achieving more effective strategic planning and management in higher education institutions (HEIs). This study discusses the development of strategy maps as transformational management tools in universities. It analyses 15 universities’ strategy maps to establish a comparative perspective in terms of content, expression and form. Based on this analysis, the study synthesises a model for the effective employment of the strategy map approach and strategy maps in universities. The study then uses Tsinghua University as the subject of a case study to illustrate how a university’s strategic plan could be converted into a strategy map. This study gives suggestions for implications of the strategy map approach in transforming the internal governance model in universities and achieving effective and responsive university strategic planning and management.
Introduction
With the rapid internationalisation and the recent development of the knowledge economy, universities are now facing fiercer competition around the globe and greater accountability to society. Consequently, there has been greater emphasis on educational management for its significant role in enhancing the performance of schools and colleges (Bush and Coleman, 2000). Educational management is ‘a field of study and practice concerned with the operation of educational organizations’ (Bush, 1986). Educational management and university planning, however, ‘largely involve the application of industrial models to educational settings’ (Bush, 2006). Strategic planning and the strategy map approach are two examples of how business models can enhance university planning.
Strategic planning can be defined as a ‘disciplined effort to produce fundamental decisions and actions that shape and guide what an organization (or other entity) is, what it does, and why it does it’ (Bryson, 1988). It has been regarded as a logical, systematic and objective method in business-management (Kraus et al., 2006; Mintzberg, 1994; Poister, 2010). The gap between strategy formulation and implementation has negatively affected the effectiveness of strategic planning. In response, managers have turned to strategy maps as tools for supporting the facilitation process.
A strategy map is a simplified visual presentation of the ‘cause-and-effect relationships among the components of an organization’s strategy’, and ‘converts intangible assets into tangible outcomes’ by vividly establishing the objectives and measures (Kaplan and Norton, 2004, p. 9). Strategy maps were originally created as a graphic expression of the Balanced Scorecard (BSC), integrating its four perspectives – financial, customer, internal business process, and learning and growth. A strategy map is not simply a visualised strategic plan, but the map highlights the inner relationships among each component in a strategic plan to facilitate easier understanding and communication among stakeholders. In this sense, it helps to transform the inner governance structure within universities to a more collaborative and democratic one.
Literature has shown the value of strategy maps in describing, managing, implementing and evaluating strategic planning in the business sector (Kaplan and Norton, 2004; Nayeri et al., 2008). It has been gradually introduced into the public sector to demonstrate the power of intangible assets.
The benefits of the strategy map approach
The necessity for enhancing university planning and management in this highly connected world has been recognised by scholars, managers and policy-makers in education. Unlike for-profit organisations, universities generally have not employed scientific management tools and techniques to facilitate their strategic development and daily operation. There is a growing need for universities to better utilise and allocate their resources, effectively communicate and coordinate in and out of organisations, and strategically describe and implement their plans, in order to achieve better performance and to compete more effectively. Effective use of strategy maps can enhance university management in several ways.
First, strategy maps enhance university management and promote good governance. According to the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP) (2013), good governance must be ‘participatory, consensus oriented, accountable, transparent, responsive, effective and efficient, equitable and inclusive, and follow the rule of law’. In the university, it has emerged as a key issue that needs to be addressed to achieve sustainable development. The disciplined use of strategy maps not only encourages and facilitates broader contributions and participation of university leaders and staff, but also provides a more transparent and responsive way to describe and develop the university strategy while enhancing the consensus and commitments from all stakeholders in the university community. The university can derive broad benefits from the broad-based contributions and participation to achieve enhanced governance.
Second, a strategy map is not a rigid planning mechanism; it can be revised and adapted in response to changes in society. Based on the open system theory, resources dependency theory and neo-institutional theory, the university is marked by its dynamic interaction with its environment (DiMaggio and Powell, 1983; Greening and Gray, 1994; Oliver, 1991). In the 21st century, the university faces social changes from globalisation and internationalisation, which, in turn, have created great opportunities and challenges. As a result, higher education institutions (HEIs) have started to realise the significant importance of strategic planning as a means of adapting to the rapidly changing environment. The university not only needs to reflect on and respond to the changes, but also to become the ‘initiator of change’ (Özdem, 2011). The disciplined use of the strategy map approach can equip universities with clearer ideas of their positions, goals and available resources, thus helping them to better cope with and adapt to the external changes in society. More importantly, the strategy map approach provides a more flexible and adaptable way to keep up with the changing situations in and out of organisations, which helps to sensitise universities to the complexities of this rapidly changing world.
Third, as a non-profit, service-oriented and intelligence-intensive organisation, the university bears many features which distinguish it from business organisations, such as the ‘loosely coupled system’ (Weick, 1976), anarchic structure (Cohen and March, 1986), reluctance to change, and contrast between administrative and academic power (Gioia et al., 2000). This organisational context deserves careful consideration. Two points can be illustrated here: one is that the most valuable resources in the university, unlike in profitable corporations, are intangible assets of culture, knowledge and human capital. Therefore, it is essential for universities to quantify and measure their intangible assets that show the stakeholders, i.e. students and faculty, what and how much value they create. A strategy map serves as a powerful visualisation tool for transforming intangible assets into tangible outcomes while improving overall competitiveness. The other thing related to the unique organisational behaviours is the relatively loose governance structure and decentralised power distribution. Each department is to some extent autonomous and independent. It helps each discipline to maintain its academic freedom, but is not conducive to the overall university development. In today’s world, the trend toward the integration of knowledge, interdisciplinary study and fierce competition for students and resources across a global playing field have forced the university to consolidate its resources and to improve cooperation among its management units and departments. The university would seem to require a more coordinated and flexible management approach and governance style to integrate their efforts to produce a more competitive institution. The strategy map approach can be an effective conceptual process for coordinating each element within the university and maximising its efficacy and effectiveness to help the university achieve better quality and compete in the global market for favourable standings.
In all, the strategy map with its attendant process for continuous adaptation and revision offers singular advantages for improved strategic conceptualisation, communication, management, and evaluation. It condenses the university’s strategic plan into a clear and consistent form that can be easily understood and used by all the participants in its planning and management process. It offers a consistent and concise way to establish and manage strategy by showing the cause-and-effect relationships among key elements in a university’s plan. It can ‘illustrate the time-based dynamics’ (Kaplan and Norton, 2004, p. 3–28) of a certain strategy, thus ensuring the responsiveness and relevance of the university’s management. More importantly, the strategy map can provide a simple and direct mechanism to ‘convert intangible assets into tangible outcomes’ (Kaplan and Norton, 2004, p. 3–28) and to ‘communicate the strategy to the employees and stakeholders and to articulate why the objectives have been set and how they can be achieved’ (Nayeri et al., 2008).
A review of the research and scholarship on the adoption of the strategy map approach in the university community reveals that such reforms are not widespread, but that researchers and educational practitioners have gradually realised the importance of strategy maps to university management, and the possible transformation it may bring for the university governance.
Case studies are the most frequent way to illustrate the university’s adoption of strategy maps. For example, in the case of the University of Newcastle, Young and McConkey (2009) researched its strategy map during 2008 and 2009. The strategy map approach used in this university was based on the BSC performance management system. The findings indicate that a strategy map is an effective tool for illustrating the cause-and-effect relationships in the strategic plan and can help to improve the university’s performance in terms of evaluation and supervision. Similarly, the University of Leeds (Chai, 2008) is used as an example to illustrate how the use of the strategy map approach was developed based on the BSC perspectives and functioned in the university. Its findings, largely in align with Young and McConkey’s (2009), indicate that the strategy map approach can help to improve the university’s management and performance.
Besides case studies, which to some extent are limited in values for generalisation, exploration for generic models for strategy maps can be seen from the literature. For example, Zhao et al. (2008) conducted a research concerning the application of the BSC in graduate education institutions in China. The study adopts the four perspectives of the BSC to analyse China’s graduate educational institutions and provides a close look at the impact of introducing strategy maps in China. However, the findings reported in this study of strategy maps can only be applied specifically to graduate institutions to the exclusion of a broader university context. Another study that may shed light on this research in terms of methods and validity is from Antola et al. (2006), who conducted a case study concerning the strategy map model in the business sector based on a Finnish company. Interviews, document analysis and observation were used to present a step-by-step model of how to design and implement the strategy map approach in a business corporation.
In sum, it has been indicated in literature, theoretically and empirically, building on BSC principles, that the strategy map approach provides a visual framework that incorporates four sets of objectives, i.e. financial, customer, internal processes, and learning and growth. BSC was built on the idea that ‘if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it’, while the strategy map, in contrast, was built on the assumption that ‘if you can’t describe it, you can’t manage it’. This difference clearly delineates the usefulness of the strategy map in its descriptive and adaptive advantages. As a non-profit and intelligence-based organisation, the university’s priority is very different from those of business organisations. This essential difference underscores the need for the university to develop a unique approach to the use of the strategy map to address its unique characteristics, which most of the researches identified fail to address. More importantly, most of the identified research is not sufficiently systematic and comprehensive.
This study makes an in-depth analysis of the strategy map approach in 15 universities from a comparative perspective. From this analysis, the study develops and synthesises a model for effective adoption of the strategy map approach in the HEI setting. Then it tests this model at Tsinghua University as a case study to illustrate how a strategic plan can be converted into a strategy map. To conclude, this study believes that the implications of adopting the strategy map and the possibilities it may bring can be further analysed from the perspective of university internal governance transformation. However, deeper analysis in this respect is beyond the scope of this study, but a discussion related to this issue is expected to offer possible directions for further research.
Methodology
Five types of strategy maps are differentiated in this study: comprehensive strategy maps, core strategy maps, technical strategy maps, service strategy maps and special strategy maps. This study collects strategic plans from the top 100 universities’ official websites based on the Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2013–2014 . After identifying the strategy maps used by some of these 100 universities, this study uses a web search to collect other possible strategy maps in universities worldwide. The 15 universities 1 are selected for two reasons. First, they have the most representative and comprehensive strategy maps. Second, they are universities with different histories, social contexts, and strategic positions, which guaranteed the diversity of the samples.
This study takes a comparative perspective on these strategy maps in three dimensions: content, literal expression of core elements, and form. The main method applied is content analysis. Two researchers worked independently to ensure the validity of the results. After an in-depth analysis of the 15 strategy maps, the researchers synthesised a model for strategy maps in universities that incorporated the core elements and essential forms identified in each of the examples.
Tsinghua University is used as a case study to illustrate how this model could be adopted, and how strategy maps can ensure implementation of a university’s strategy. There are two reasons for choosing Tsinghua as a case study. First, as a leading university in China, Tsinghua is at a critical juncture in transforming from a technology-centred university to a comprehensive and world-class university. Enhancing its management is then critical in this context. The second reason has to do with the convenience of data access and feasibility.
Results
The content
Based on an in-depth analysis of the 15 universities’ strategy maps, the researchers found two major ways of designing a strategy map. The first one strictly follows the BSC model and aligns with the findings from the previous research. The other is a more flexible method that integrates some characteristics of the university while incorporating some features of the BSC. Table 1 provides a summary of the comparison among the essential elements included in the 15 strategy maps.
Comparison of the content from the 15 strategy maps.
It is clearly shown that there is no consensus across universities on which elements should be included in a strategy map. Also, the different names to describe certain elements each university used add difficulties in understanding strategy maps for both readers and researchers. However, some shared elements can be identified: vision statement, mission statement, goal, theme, stakeholders, and learning and growth.
Strategic analysis is the first step in the strategic planning process. At this stage, the university evaluates its strengths, weaknesses, available resources, environment and opportunities, thus locating its strategic position and future direction. Based on the type of their strategic analysis, universities can be divided into two types: the developing university which strives for a higher ranking, and the developed university which is trying to maintain its position. For example, the University of Minnesota ranks in the top 50. 2 It has a relatively advantaged position in research, and its strategic goal, consequently, is to build on its strengths and advance its position to ‘become one of the top three public research universities in the world’. The University of Leeds, on the other hand, is still in the developing stage. 3 Therefore, its strategic goal is to enter the world top 50 by 2015.
There are also two different routes a university can take. The first one is the international course, in which universities strive to build a world-class ranking in the international league tables. The University of Newcastle is a good example. It clearly states in its strategy map that its goal is to achieve the internationalisation of the university in terms of curriculum, research, staff, students and community. Another route is the local course, in which the university puts more emphasis on providing a service to the local community. The University of Colorado Denver has taken this route. It aims to ‘lead in learning, research, teaching, and service in order to benefit and enhance the quality of life for the people of Colorado’. This discrepancy arises from the respective differences in their strategic positions, and largely dictates their future directions.
Literal expression
The first step in the building of any theory is to clarify confusing terms and conceptions. Therefore, this study attempts to clarify the misuse of terms and conceptions used in university strategy maps. For example, ‘vision’ is what the university wants to become, ‘mission’ describes why they exist, and ‘value’ states what is important to them. ‘Goal’ is a general expression for what the organisation wants to achieve, while ‘objective’ is a more concrete and quantitatively measurable statement of that direction. ‘Theme’ is a strategic category of different courses in a certain university, while ‘action’ is what the university specifically does to realise its goals and objectives.
As Bush (1986) states, ‘educational management has to be centrally concerned with the purpose or aims of education’. Therefore, the vision statement and mission statement, as two forms of university expectations, play a significant role in the university management and serve as the starting point in the shaping of a strategy map.
The vision statement describes the future, while the mission statement addresses the present. The mission statement defines their identity and actions and the vision statement describes how the world perceives the organisation. Table 2 summarises the vision statements and mission statements of the 10 universities this research studied which have developed comprehensive strategy maps.
Vision statements and mission statements of 10 strategy maps.
Note: direct quotations from these institutions.
A comparative analysis of Table 2 reveals the following findings.
First, ‘vision’ and ‘mission’ are two forms of expression for the university’s expectation. They reveal several differences. ‘Vision’ is an outward-oriented expression of ‘who’ the university wants to become and how it wishes to be perceived by others. ‘Mission’ is an inward-oriented expression of why the university exists and what it needs to do to achieve that ‘mission’. Also, ‘vision’ is a mid- to long-term goal that is rather stable, while ‘mission’ is more easily mutable and adaptable to short-term changes. As Nanus (1992) notes, ‘vision’ is ‘a realistic, credible, attractive future’ for the organisation, and serves as a ‘signpost pointing the way for all who need to understand what the organization is and where it intends to go’. The mission describes the organisation’s goals that need to be accomplished. Vision and mission statements ‘serve as a foundation of all activities’ (Hamidi and Delbahari, 2011) and become ubiquitous elements in HEIs (Morphew and Hartley, 2006). They are helpful for universities to establish their identity, confront challenges and increase their competency. Therefore, vision and mission statements are the central elements in strategy maps.
For example, Tsinghua’s vision is to become ‘a world-class university by 2020’, as a response to the national call in China for higher education modernisation. With this vision, Tsinghua plans to provide international experience to at least a third of its undergraduate students and a half of its graduate students by 2020. Tsinghua envisions setting up an international talents training system, with both short-term and long-term programs. In 2011, Tsinghua sent out more than 3354 students, including 1121 undergraduate students and 2233 graduate students. 4 It represents a huge increase in both numbers and scales compared to the previous year.
Second, we conducted a keywords selection and frequency analysis. The most frequently appearing keywords in vision statements and mission statements in relevant universities are listed in Table 3.
Frequency analysis: vision statements and mission statements.
This finding shows that vision statements and mission statements match the general understanding of the functions of the modern university, i.e. teaching, research and social service. Also, global participation and recognition have gradually become important university goals, reflecting the trend toward higher education internationalisation. However, it shows that universities tend to use similar vision and mission statements. Özdem (2011) also reached this conclusion in his comparative study of the vision and mission statements of Turkish public schools. The vision and mission statements should be formulated based on the universities’ respective strategic positions and focus on the uniqueness of each university. Only in this way can the strategy map achieve its functions in promoting cohesion and effectively coordinating resources while building up a promising and competitive image of the university on the international stage.
Compared to the general comprehensive strategy maps, the literal expression of the strategy maps with specific aims is more concrete and precise. For example, the mission statement of Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) Information systems and technology (IS&T) strategy map is to provide ‘foundational IT services that make it easy for the MIT community to do its work: communicate, collaborate, and interact with MIT and beyond’. All its specific strategies and plans are made based on this mission, with each part clearly coordinated to facilitate a smoother functioning of the university with respect to its overall mission.
The form
Generally speaking, the strategy map is a visual framework that conveys strategic planning in a consistent and concise way within one page. The key of a strategy map is to show simple but clear cause-and-effect relationships among the key elements.
Basically, the 10 comprehensive strategy maps we studied all show these characteristics, while 14 of the total of 15 were condensed to one page. The University of Fort Hare used three pages to convey the hierarchical structure of its strategy map. Eleven universities chose to use frame diagrams, three universities used a self-designed graph, and one used a flow chart. All the key elements are expressed in concise words in an oval or square frame. This finding provides guidelines to follow when synthesising a model for the strategy map.
A synthesised model for strategy maps in the university
Based on comparative analysis and consideration for unique university characteristics, this study synthesises a model for HEIs.
As Kaplan and Norton (2000) state, the description of strategy, namely the strategy map, should be made in a more scientific and disciplined way in order to ‘increase the likelihood of its successful implementation’. Though it falls far short of covering all situations for all universities, it is an attempt to provide a ready-to-use model which universities can adapt to their specific contexts for better formulation, management, implementation and evaluation of their strategic planning efforts. Hopefully, this will contribute to an enhancement in its overall quality and competitiveness. The model is shown below in Figure 1.
The strategy map model.
Applying this model, the study converts Tsinghua’s strategic plan into a strategy map, which is shown in Figure 2. Tsinghua’s 12th five-year plan is a mid- to long-term strategic plan for the overall development of the university. The main body of this strategic plan contains eight independent chapters, which is very confusing for most readers. By converting this long and confusing strategic plan into a strategy map, Tsinghua can compress its strategic description and show the communication lines among key stakeholders, and thus increase the effectiveness and efficiency of its strategy.
Strategy map for Tsinghua University.
The first step was to identify Tsinghua’s vision, mission and values. According to the text, the vision statement and mission statement focus on academic areas, i.e. how to improve education and research in order to become a world-class university. The following step is to identify and categorise strategic goals, namely discipline, education, research, social service and cultural innovation. Each goal carries relevant themes. Each strategic goal and theme can be matched with its relevant stakeholders, such as students, faculties, donors and the country. For example, discipline, education and research are three strategic goals that are directly linked to students. All these goals require support from policy, strategies and actions. Therefore, five supporting elements are identified from this strategic plan, i.e. international cooperation, staff quality, infrastructure, service and organisational actions. All these supporting elements require cooperation among the stakeholders.
Through conversion, this strategy map describes the strategic plan in a concise and clear way. Moreover, by outlining the relationships among the key elements in this strategic plan, it can help in communicating, managing, implementing and evaluating university management and enhance Tsinghua’s performance and competitiveness.
Conclusion and discussion
As a newly developed tool to facilitate strategic planning, the strategy map approach has been implemented in only a few HEI contexts, and thus its effectiveness has been little studied by researchers. After analysing why the strategy map approach has been essential for improving university management and contributing to university planning and management, this study provides a synthesised model for the strategy map approach in universities based on a comparative study of 15 strategy maps adopted by universities from around the world.
This study yields the following preliminary conclusions.
First, the strategy map approach can be a tool for improving university management, thus contributing to a significant improvement in performance and competitiveness. A visualised expression of the results of strategic planning, the strategy map itself offers a consistent and concise way to establish and manage strategies by showing the relationships among the key elements in a university’s strategic plan. The strategic map helps to ensure the responsiveness and relevance of a university’s management and can play a central role in converting intangible assets into tangible and measurable outcomes that are essential to the efficacy of the university as an intelligence-based, non-profit organisation.
Second, this study reveals that there are problems with strategy maps in HEIs. Some key terms are being misused and causing confusion among the participants. Some universities simply adopt the model from the business sector. These issues are what this study was intended to tackle. The second one has to do with the homogeneity of the content, which often neglects the differences in size, resources, and traits among universities. The strategy map was intended to be used as a unique tool to maximise the impact at particular universities.
The strategy map approach was also not designed as a stagnant or undiversified process, but rather as a dynamic and case-based method for addressing issues in the strategic planning and implementation process. This study provides a general model for the university, but it is not intended to be an ‘all-encompassing’ tool. It needs to be adjusted to each university’s particular characteristics and contexts. Good governance can only be achieved by responsible and responsive universities. Good governance in the university requires scientific and effective management. The internal need for reform and external urging of internationalisation require universities to adopt transformational management. The strategy map approach is an important tool for moving in that direction.
The limitation of the research lies in the unavailability of empirical studies on which to consolidate the legitimacy of adopting the strategy map approach. The true test of its effectiveness still needs to be addressed by further research.
The adoption of the strategy map approach needs to be a gradual process, moving from instrumental tool to substantial change in governance within the university. As indicated earlier, thorough research regarding the possible transformation of internal governance in the university is beyond the scope of this study, but the far reaching discussion we have conducted related to this issue may help shed some light on specific directions which can be taken for further exploration of university management, governance, and leadership.
Governance can be defined as ‘a means for realizing institutional goals and, in an ideal world, should enable the institution to respond to the demands of the political environment by regulating its internal affairs accordingly’ (Salter and Tapper, 2002). ‘Internal governance’ deals with issues such as ‘internal management structures, decision-making arrangements, and leadership roles and the relationship between these internal functions and the role of governing bodies’ (Middlehurst, 2004).
The autonomous nature of knowledge leads to the academic-run, discipline-independent style that has marked the internal governance of universities in the past. Rapidly changing external pressures, especially the introduction of the market mechanism and a growing call for the public accountability of HEIs, have increased demands for a more corporate structure, scientific management, and a highly specialised and systematic governance style, such as Clark’s (1998) entrepreneurial pathway. As Middlehurst (2004) points out, there is an increasing need for ‘strong strategic capacity, integrated management systems, swift and flexible decision making capabilities and dispersed leadership throughout the organisation’, which the strategy map approach helps to achieve.
Whereas the self-governing nature of universities largely limits the effectiveness of external governance, the competitive world inevitably necessitates HEIs to turn to scientific management in their internal governance. The very nature of the strategy map approach provides a flexible conceptual framework for democratic management that engages all stakeholders in the process of decision-making, teaching, research and service, and responsibility-sharing. The adoption of the strategy map approach may lead to possible shifts in university internal governance from an emphasis on inputs to an emphasis on outcomes, from isolated management within disciplines towards a more coordinated and interdisciplinary management focus, from subjective based criteria to indicators based on measurement and quantification in evaluating the university efficiency and effectiveness, from direct and centralised management towards a more democratic and responsibility-sharing management, and from a traditional reliance on knowledge and academics towards a more responsive sensitivity to consumer demands.
Adopting the strategy map approach is certainly not the end of any attempt to enhance the university planning and management efforts aimed at continued development. The central challenge is to find ways to persuade and effectively engage the key stakeholders in the process so they can see for themselves the power of the strategy maps.
Footnotes
Conflict of interest
The author(s) declare no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.