Revisiting the Missions and Educational Strategic Management of Universities

Wannarat Wattananimitkul
Thailand

Observing successful management of business corporations, an increasing number of universities look to the SWOT analysis and the strategic management as essential tools for the development and implementation of their missions. However, it is recognized that universities differ in some respects from business and they still need a unified source of direction and guidance in order to address factual truth, students' needs and stakeholder concerns, and produce good management.

This article aims at presenting that an analysis of universities' internal and external environments and the strategic management process have significant influences on their mission contents and practices. The article is based on the writer's synthesis of a number of articles and researches of others as well as that of her own regarding the use of SWOT analysis and strategic management in educational institutions.

It was found that specific elements of the university missions are determined by the universities' competencies in relation to their external environments. Such elements include the universities making significant contributions toward reaching their functions of knowledge searching, knowledge creation and dissemination, and their objectives in sustainable human resource development, academic achievement and student-oriented service provision. The roles of university missions are associated with the institutional strategic management. They route the universities' objectives and implementation plans, and provide assessment criteria for evaluation. After all, collaborative efforts of as many stakeholders as possible in the development process of mission statements promise to yield even greater results for the university strategic management.