Budgeting, strategic planning and institutional diversity in higher education

ABSTRACT

This study investigates the systematic, structural, procedural and reputational differences associated with the use of budgeting for strategic planning across public sector institutions in Canada. Data obtained from a survey of 38 universities across Canada along with publicly available hand-collected data supports a heterogenous mix of budgeting practices across higher education. Our results show institutions rely on budgeting for multiple reasons including control, strategic planning, communication, and regulatory compliance. The findings indicate the adoption of performance management by some institutions, but not others based on systematic differences including budget model, institutional size, decentralization and reputation. The results support a contingency perspective of organizational practices in higher education.

KEYWORDS:

• Budget
• strategic planning
• post-secondary institutions
• institutional diversity
• performance management

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 There are researchers who will debate these two basic categories but these two often are the overarching categories referred to.

2 Private universities are largely insulated from the regulatory reform affecting public universities and the public funding received from the government and are therefore excluded from our study.

3 One instrument was sent to the highest ranking official responsible for financial operations at each university. The list of institutions and relevant individuals to contact was obtained from the semi-structured interviews conducted with the administrators at the authors’ home institution.

4 It is common to parse universities by size and reputation (Altbach 2002)

5 Reputation ranking was based on the Maclean’s University Guide that evaluates Canadian universities.

6 Following Kim and Mueller (1978), a direct oblimin (oblique) rotation is presented for the factors underlying budget model. A varimax rotation was also applied leading to the same interpretations.