Australia's Federated Network Universities: What happened?

This paper examines the performance of Australia's three federated network universities from an inter-organisational relations perspective. It investigates the influence of the political economy - network members' pursuit of funds and power - on the network's relationships and its performance. In doing so, it describes how the strength of the network's political economy, and the network's inability to manage the political economy, led to the failure of the federated network model.