This book provides needed guidance and advice for how colleges and universities can reorganize to foster more collaborative work. In a time of declining resources, financial challenges, changing demographics, and staff overturn, institutions are looking for ways to maximize their resources and still be effective. This book is based on a study of campuses that have been successful in recreating their environments to support collaborative work.

Organizing for Social Partnership offers a model and a strategy for universities, corporations, government agencies, nonprofits, and other organizations interested in engaging in social partnerships. This mode of collaboration provides a potentially powerful arrangement for addressing large-scale social issues of interest to higher education and other sectors.

Organizing Academic Work in Higher Education explores how managers influence teaching, learning and academic identities and how new initiatives in teaching and learning change the organizational structure of universities. By building on organizational studies and higher education studies literatures, Organizing Academic Work in Higher Education offers a unique perspective, presenting empirical evidence from different parts of the world. This edited collection provides a conceptual frame of organizational change in universities in the context of New Public Management reforms and links it to the core activities of teaching and learning. Split into four main sections: University from the organizational perspective, Organizing teaching, Organizing learning and Organizing identities, this book uses a strong international perspective to provide insights from three continents regarding the major differences in the relationships between the university as an organization and academics. It contains highly pertinent, scientifically driven case studies on the role and boundaries of managerial behaviour in universities. It supplies evidence-based knowledge on the effectiveness of management behaviour and tools to university managers and higher education policy-makers worldwide. Academics who aspire to institutionalize their successful academic practices in certain university structures will find this book of particular value. Organizing Academic Work in Higher Education will be a vital companion for academic interest in higher education management, transformation of universities, teaching, learning, academic work and identities. Bringing together the study of the organizational transformation in higher education with the study of teaching, learning and academic identity, Organizing Academic Work in Higher Education presents a unique cross-national and cross-regional comparative perspective.

Tierney, University of Southern California; and the late J. Douglas Toma, University of Georgia

This book challenges the orthodoxy of learning and teaching in higher education with an original change approach entitled the Self-Organizing University (SOU). It assists universities build a comprehensive model of learning and teaching at whole-of-organization scale. The chapters demonstrate how a Self-Organizing University can create: • measurable learning and teaching standards; • student centered program development; • enhanced faculty professional growth and career trajectory; • more efficient and effective organizational design; • better feedback; • powerful use of technologies; • a legitimate connection between quality and productivity. Each chapter includes case examples derived from practical experience that situate the key ideas and concepts in the real day-to-day work of universities. The role of leadership in creating and sustaining a self-organizing university is also a key focus. The chapters target leadership practices that improve learning and teaching quality and productivity and assist universities realize their goals and aspirations for maximizing student learning.

Members of today’s online educational settings are often isolated which can prohibit the sharing of ideas and best practices among individuals working and learning as a collective group. Promoting collaboration across various disciplines and departments fosters professional development activities, as well as creates strong connections to the entire online community. Building Online Communities in Higher Education Institutions: Creating Collaborative Experience cultivates knowledge on topics pertaining to the improvement of communication and collaboration in online learning communities. Advancing the current scope of research in this field, this book is designed for use by faculty, students, researchers, practitioners, and college administrators interested in strengthening communication and collaboration in virtual settings.

Higher education is a complex package of issues which never seems to leave the limelight. The primary wedge issues are tuition cost, access, accountability, financial aid, government funding, sports and their place within higher education, academic results, societal gains as a whole in terms of international competition, and continuing education. This new book examines new directions in this ever-changing, vital and controversial field which has a profound effect on society.

Collaborative working is an increasingly vital part of Higher Education academic life. Traditionally, university culture supported individual research and scholarship. Today, the focus has shifted from the individual to the group or team. Collaborative Working in Higher Education takes the reader on a journey of examination, discussion, and reflection of emerging collaborative practices. The book offers suggestions for developing practice via a broad overview of the key aspects of collaboration and collaborative working, informed by focused case studies and the international perspectives of the contributing authors. The book has three main parts: Part I: Examines the social nature of collaborative working from a practical and critical perspective, focusing on four dimensions of collaborative working: academic practice, professional dialogues, personal and organizational engagement and social structures. It considers organizational models, varied approaches, potential challenges posed by collaborative working, and reflection on the management of collaboration at different stages. Part II: Focuses on the different aspects of collaborative working, building on the dimensions introduced in Part I, and addressing the crossing of boundaries. It looks at different contexts for collaboration (e.g. discipline-based, departmental, institutional and international) using case studies as examples of collaborative strategies in action, providing learning points and recommendations for practical applications. Part III: In addition to considering forms of collaboration for the future, this part of the book engages the reader with a though-provoking round-table discussion that itself embodies an act of collaboration. Collaborative Working in Higher Education is a comprehensive analysis of how collaboration is reforming academic life. It examines the shifts in working practices and reflects on how that shift can be supported and developed to improve practice. Higher Education faculty, administrators, researchers, managers and anyone involved in collaborative working across their institution will find this book a highly useful guide as they embark on their own collaborations.

This book examines what collaboration means in practice, and the factors that enable effective team collaboration for learning and teaching in higher education. It explains how academics can work more collaboratively, and how universities can organise and govern themselves by means of collaboration. The book brings together current research and commentaries on collaboration in higher education to provide important guidance derived from a synthesis and evaluation of the existing empirical research and commentaries in the field. The book will benefit all readers who are interested in making their own teams and higher education organisations more collaborative. It will help them plan collaborative innovations in their organisations, identify priorities for professional capacity building, and design collaborative organisational structures.