INSTITUTIONAL INNOVATIONS IN HIGHER EDUCATION: PROJECT-ORIENTED UNIVERSITY

Global economy is increasingly a knowledge economy, making people’s skills and qualifications more important than traditional power indicators such as territory, geography, natural resources. Today’s global environment is characterized by complexity, turbulence and perpetual change, thus making information, innovation, technological prowess and people’s skills the most valuable resources of any society. Globalization imposes new rhythms of performance to every economic or social field. Higher education is no exception to this, since it lies at the interface with the external environment, where skills and qualifications will be used and exploited for economic benefits. In this context, universities are under a two-fold pressure. First, they provide services, knowledge, skills for fast-moving sectors. The knowledge and skills may quickly become obsolete and irrelevant for the economy. Second, universities need to innovate and to adapt to situations of constant change. Both types of pressure force universities to develop their innovativeness capacity. This capacity is not merely a source of competitive advantage, but a prerequisite for survival. The purpose of this paper is to explain the concept of project-oriented university as a new type of university that embraces project management as an explicit organizational strategy, thus enabling it to survive and thrive under circumstances of complexity and constant change. This concept has not been used in connection to higher education so far, which still operates with distinctions between humboldtian and entrepreneurial universities. It is premised on the idea that there is a connection between a university’s maturity in project management and its innovativeness. The concept inherits the solid conceptual core of a fully-fledged model of an organization in terms of project management maturity (i.e. project-oriented organization). This substantially contributes to its operationalization into a model for universities as particular type of organizations. The model comprises two components: the former oriented towards the structural dimensions of project management (“the hard” component – processes, procedures, organizational structures) and the latter oriented towards the social dimension of project management (skills, attitudes, competences – the “soft” component). Research will focus on a sample of Romanian universities and will explore both dimensions. In exploring the former dimension, research will check whether project management is an explicit organizational strategy of the studied universities, applied both to internally or externally-funded projects; whether project and program management processes are formalized and documented into working procedures; whether a Project Management Office is in place, which is responsible for the coordination of all running projects; whether project management expert pools exist; whether a common project management terminology is used across the organization. Research dedicated to the second component will examine the consistency of project management culture across the entire university, the career and personal development paths in project management and the climate for continuous improvement of project management methodology. Empirical results will offer the basis for assessing the potential of the project-oriented university model to create the framework for universities to develop, innovate, and be competitive on the global education market.