Abstract:

This study seeks to examine the strategic planning implementation in higher educational institutions and its impact on service quality. In the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, both private and public universities struggle to provide quality services in order to improve their reputation locally and globally. However, because of complications in implementation of strategy, the final outcome is still less than expected. In addition, the factors that constrain the emergence of Saudi universities in the world ranking will be investigated.

As such it is an exploration of the nature of strategic planning process, academic staff’s perceptions on its components and the difficulties facing higher institutions in managing it to improve the university’s service quality.

The research will employ a case study research design strategy and three cases of universities which implement Strategic Planning will be investigated. Such a method allows comparing and contrasting cases and enhances theoretical considerations of the result. Furthermore, the study will use both quantitative and qualitative data method. Both primary and secondary data will be considered.
This study hopes to fill a gap in the literature of strategic management by providing a profile of selected Saudi universities regarding their practices of strategic planning.

Keywords:

Strategic management, strategic planning, service quality, higher education.