Managing Universities

Hans Wissema
Much of what we know about management is what we learned in industrial enterprises – we have been doing that for some 250 years – yet this body of experience is at odds with professional service firms. According to Toffler, traditional industrial enterprises are characterised by:

  • specialisation (breaking up the work process into small uniform segments)
  • standardisation (of work-elements, jobs, components, output)
  • synchronisation (between elements of the production and logistic processes and in society in general)
  • concentration (all the work is done in one enterprise, car manufacturers also make the rear lights)
  • maximisation (of output)
  • centralisation (of the design of the production and logistic processes, planning and organisation)