The Institute for Higher Education Management is part of the Department of Strategy and Innovation at WU and is led by Univ. Prof. Dr. Barbara Sporn.

IHM activities include research, teaching, policy advising and external engagement with different stakeholders, as well as involvement in international associations. Areas of interest at IHM combine theories of business and management applied to the complex organization of universities. With this focus, IHM provides insights for higher education scholars and practitioners but also beyond that for research and practice interested in expert and nonprofit organizational settings.

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Publications

The Institute for Higher Education Management has great news to share! The course "Business Planning and Performance Management" of the Master's program in “Strategy, Innovation and Management Control” (SIMC) was awarded with WU’s Innovative Teaching Award. This prize honors innovative teaching designs that take up new ideas and approaches in the field of university teaching and learning.

The call for proposals takes place annually. This year’s focus concentrated on teaching designs in “International Teaching and Learning”. The course instructors Barbara Sporn and Bernhard Böhm feel proud of this great achievement!

Further information on the course concept and the innovative teaching award can be viewed via the following link (in German):

https://www.wu.ac.at/en/staff/information-for-teachers/teaching-awards/innovative-teaching-award

Higher Education Speaker Series - new dates!

After a covid-related break, we restarted our Higher Education Speaker Series in the winter semester 2021/22. We are looking forward to top-class guest speakers with interesting lectures. We will continue on June 24th 2022 with Prof. Francisco O. Ramirez from Stanford. More details and dates can be found here.

The article “Organizational Responses to the Covid-19 Crisis by Universities in Poland: A Survey of Student Attitudes”, written by our teammate Ana Godonoga and our former student Danuta Gruszka has been published. Motivated by a need to understand better the consequences of the pandemic on teaching and learning, this study examined student attitudes vis-à-vis organizational responses to the Covid-19 crisis in public universities in Poland. The article can be accessed here.

Book-Recommendation

China and Europe on the New Silk Road - Connecting Universities Across Eurasia

Edited by Marijk van der Wende, William C. Kirby, Nian Cai Liu, and Simon Marginson

With a chapter from Barbara Sporn und Marijk van der Wende The New Silk Road and the "Idea of the University"

This is not a time to be silent. This book addresses the opportunities, controversies and tensions surrounding the New Silk Road. It looks at how universities, while faced with challenges to their autonomy and values, stand firm to defend global cooperation.

Marijk van der Wende about the development and the idea of the book:

"We were able to pull this volume together in a two-year international research project collaborating with colleagues from Europe, China, Hong Kong, the USA, Russia, and Australia. 

We initiated this project in 2017 because we felt that with the changing global order, as it was built on international governance and multilateral trade mechanisms in the wake of World War II, and with China rolling out its New Silk Road (or Belt and Road Initiative), uncertainty was rising in higher education."

Cross-Functional Management

Univ. Prof. Dr. Barbara Sporn is the Academic Lead of the Strategic Management and Strategic Leadership core field of the Cross-Functional Management (CFM) programme. CFM is a specialisation in the International Business Administration major in the Bachelor’s Program in Business, Economics and Social Sciences.

We welcome applications from WU undergraduate students pursuing a major in International Business Administration, and from incoming students from WU’s 250 partner universities. More information about our Strategic Management and Strategic Leadership course portfolio and the CFM programme in general can be found here.

Bachelor-/Masterthesis

Available topics and more information can be found here.

In case you are interested, please contact Professor Sporn directly for a meeting.