Strategic university management in the context of digitalization: the experience of the world's leading universities

Today, at the era of digitalization and digital transformation, many universities and other higher educational institutions (HEIs)

face the necessity to rethink their role and mission as well as to adapt to the new conditions on the educational market [1–3]. Some universities and HEIs employ the

university-wide strategy plans that provide a detailed description of how campus-wide interviews, listening tours, and contributions to plan development can contribute to transparency and engagement. For example, the university of Bergen in Norway complements the general university strategy in its university-wide digital strategy in its decision-making and entrepreneurial needs, and defines digitalization as more than just digital tools, it is about changing our culture and how people and companies conduct business1. In the United Kingdom, the digital strategy of many leading universities (e.g. Russel Group universities, an association similar to the Ivy League in the United States) is a stand-alone strategy that complements the universityʼs overall strategic plan. The digital strategy highlights the universityʼs mission and highlights a list of other sectoral strategies that collectively deliver the universityʼs vision. The strategy also includes a list of the key performance indicators that show how successful success is for all stakeholders within the university, from students to decision makers2.

Figure 1 that is depicted below demonstrates the place and the role of the University 4.0 in the era of digitalization and ICT. The Figure clearly explains how the modernday university (which is being generally called “University 4.0”) draws heavily from and depends upon traditional and renewable energy sources, how it cooperates with people and promotes innovative ideas and projects that might include smart technologies as well as various novel applications and devices.

The COVID-19 crisis (2020–2022) demonstrated that leaders in academia and education can derive the lessons learned from the recent events in order to increase the resilience of their respective institutions for the years to come. The data from the online learning and home office can be used for fine-tuning and improving online education tools and approaches for further use in order to test the future of higher education models [8]. University leaders must not overuse their time fighting fires now and forget about the long-term perspective.

For quite some time, managers and leaders in higher education are trying to master their skills in strategic management.

F i g. 1. University 4.0 in the era of digitalization and ICT: links and collaborations Source : Own results.

Even though all managerial skills seem to be similar and uniform across all fields of economy for the majority of people, the complexity and nature of the problems that university managers face in their daily lives are quite different from those tackled by the business companies [9; 10]. There are many learning opportunities that go far beyond what the private sector has learned about university governance. To build sustainable and effective organizations, science and business leaders must look at the current landscape, question assumptions and think differently in order to build sustainable and effective organizations. The results of a powerful institutional strategy are alignment of resource allocation, facilitation of strategic objectives, clear and transparent decision-making, development of new programs, the growth of research capacities and infrastructure investment [11].

It appears that the Fourth Industrial Revolution had an overall profound impact on the digitalization of universities. The digital epoch in history created by the Fourth Industrial Revolution required a transformation of the university system in order to take advantage of the opportunities offered by the digital revolution [12]. One observation about the future that science-fiction writer William Gibson attributed to is that the digital transformation (DX) itself is not evenly distributed [13]. The dominant style of leadership at universities is that the goals of behavior change, expression, freedom of speech, knowledge acquisition, distribution, exchange and reward should lead to trust building between academics and student. Academic learning and teaching leads to creativity, problem-solving and innovation and that staff have enough skills to enable the university to succeed in the era of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Two widespread shifts in the workforce towards shared services and peer-to-peer approaches are changing the nature and the ways employees work and reducing the effective use of resources. Applications and services are to be redesigned taking into account the student experience. These changes need to be discussed and redefined in the context of the Top 10 educational issues of the post-pandemic era [14].

In general terms, institutions of higher education are trying to offer combined and interconnected solutions, such as various learning management systems (LMS) that can facilitate student connections and participation in academic life. Institutional leaders are building massive data repositories in real time to support the data needed for student success initiatives. This is how

relationship management is used to offer the students top-notch experience all throughout their university paths from the secondary school to graduation [15]. As the industry advances, the increasing specialization and complexity of the data science skills, tools and services prompts HEIs to offer training opportunities so that our community members can take full advantage of these new and emerging capabilities. While some universities offer credit courses on aspects of modern information technology to all of our registered students, these courses remain inaccessible to a large portion of our community. Increasing the efforts to provide the faculty, staff, and students with specialized IT training and general IT training opportunities as a form of continuing education in IT are the efforts higher education requires. This novel approach to education is revolutionizing student experience by providing marketing, enrollment and retention services for colleges (i.e. tertiary educational institutions), universities and other HEIs that are focused on the success of their students. HEIs might lag behind many of their counterparts in the effort to use institutional data to improve their educational outcomes and operational efficiencies [16; 17].

Thence, today universities and HEIs need to position themselves as leaders in supporting innovation by supporting the appropriate use of new data collection technologies. This change took longer than usual. For example, universities and HEIs need to foster their usage of online tuition and resources that might include online rating or psychological counselling. In general, there has been a huge increase in the workload in learning how to use new technologies and in processing student requests, expecting them to do the same thing that killed off research [18]. The summer semester of 2021, during which many HEIs were able to gather research results and had time to think about ways to improve their current offerings, should be dominated by the redesign of modules accessible for online teaching and assessment and completion of the formalities necessary to support change ‒ not enough time to ensure a coherent and balanced approach throughout the course.