Rouse William B. Universities as Complex Enterprises

Wiley, 2016. — 209 p. — (Stevens Institute Series on Complex Systems and Enterprises). — ISBN10: 1119244870. — ISBN13: 978-1119244875.Explores the nature of academic enterprises, including why they work the way they do and where such enterprises are headed, with the goal of gaining insights into where change can and will happen
This book looks at universities from a whole-enterprise perspective. It explores the steady escalation of the costs of higher education and uses a computational economic model of complex academic enterprises. This model includes component models of research, teaching, administration, and brand value. Understanding the relationships among practices, processes, structure, and ecosystem provides the basis for transforming academia, leveraging its strengths and overcoming its limitations. More specifically, this architecture helps the reader understand how various elements of the enterprise system either enable or hinder other elements of the system, all of which are embedded in a complex behavioral and social ecosystem. Each topic is explored in terms of the levels of the architecture at which it primarily functions. Levers of change within each area are discussed, using many experiences of pursuing such issues in a range of academic enterprises.
Provides a new methodology by taking a more systems-oriented approach to education systems as a whole