Track

Information Technology Services & Sourcing

Abstract

The emerging global Higher Education (HE) market challenges all universities to reconsider their mission, in order tofunction effectively and efficiently, and to be responsive to changing marketplace demands. Universities are considering cooperatingor sharing in a wide range of areas, in order to achieve sought after cost savings and improvements in performance.Studies suggest that a wide range of services could potentially be shared across Higher Education Institutions (HEIs),offering several potential benefits. While there are many individual documented examples of how shared services have beenapplied in the Higher Education sector, there has been little synthesis, conceptualization or discussion (in general or in the HEsector) around the different types of possible shared services options and how they are structured. A deeper understanding ofpotential types of sharing arrangements will be of value to those universities considering shared services, implementingshared services, and managing shared services. Through analysis of 36 documented case studies of shared services in HE, thisstudy sought to synthesize a typology of sharing arrangements. An inductive approach was used to identify the coredifferentiating dimensions. The findings present eight types of sharing arrangements that occur in the HE sector, withdescriptions and examples from the case studies observed.

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