When looking for a good analogy for business, one need not look further than the very place where business is taught: the university class. Elements of strategic management abound within each class. The strategic management process in business involves the following mutually influential aspects:

1. External and internal environment analyses
2. Strategic direction
3. Strategy formulation: business and corporate levels
4. Strategy implementation
5. Strategic control
6. Strategic restructuring if needed (Harrison, 2008)

My argument for the university class as a metaphor for business will be organized according to these elements. In support of my thesis, I will draw on several resources including my extensive study of managerial control in universities and my personal experience from 14 years of university teaching.

External and internal environment analyses

Much like in business, the instruction in a classroom recognizes the context of the external environment. Class content is influenced by sociocultural forces, economic forces, technological forces, and political forces. A good professor incorporates some or all of these elements into discussions, lectures, and assignments. In most classes, environment analysis is the class. For example, in a sociology class, sociocultural forces are studied directly. In a political science class, political forces are also studied directly. If the focus of study is not directly on the environment, at the very least it is examined in relation to the class content. For example, a writing class can examine new referencing styles that apply to internet sources or a health class can study the implications of a new popular diet. Incorporating the context of a subject is very integral to learning.

The internal environment analysis takes on a different shape in the university classroom. The university professor serves as the sole valuable human resource that distinguishes himself as the competitive advantage. The product is the interaction with the professor and the intangible learning that occurs as a result. While this product is difficult to quantify, it remains real and is responsible for the student choosing to take the class or, at the very least, serving as a distinguishing variable of a university's reputation that lead to the student's decision to attend.  This is much like other businesses where a single person is the differentiating variable such as a massage therapist, artist, lawyer, and accountant.

Understanding the importance of the "learning" product is paramount for university success. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology's (MIT) Open Courseware (http://ocw.mit.edu/) is a good example of why this factor is so important. MIT is well reputed for offering an outstanding education product. Yet, they seemingly give away their "product" in the form of free "classes" online. Course materials, lectures, and assignments are provided for anyone to view. They demonstrated a realization that the product is not the knowledge or even the learning, but rather the interaction with the professor and the professor's subsequent verification of that learning in the form of a grade, and eventually a degree. In reality, the product is the process.

The professor is also the sole possessor of the knowledge and learning resources of the class, or more accurately the vetting of this. Decisions are made regarding the all-important textbook, which serves a function similar to an employee handbook in business. The professor usually takes an authoritarian role in deciding the focus of knowledge; yet, many professor harness the knowledge and learning resources of the students when by adopting a more student-lead approach. Cooperative learning, problem based learning, and free exploration are all quite common in the university classroom, and reflect the power of learning by doing. This approach presents a paradoxical challenge to my metaphor. Is the university classroom a manager-employee relationship or that of an employee-customer? In the former, employees are expected to produce work. In the latter, the customers are usually passive consumers or have a choice about what they do. The employee-customer demarcation seems more appropriate, but why is the customer expected to work? I will re-emphasize my point: the product is the process.

Strategic direction

Each class has a specific content focus. Much like a company name, the title of the class is very important. It is the initial directive for a class. This is followed closely by a description of the class. These combined directives are tantamount to a "business definition." The title and description are listed in the university catalog, which is similar to a business directory. The title and description are often not set by the class instructor, but rather by tradition or strategic decisions by a department or other stakeholders. Regardless of whether they are inherited or set by the professor himself, the professor takes on the class name and description as a starting point for strategic direction in a course.

The syllabus is the definitive planning document in the university classroom. While in business, mission, aims, and goals are developed, the syllabus threats similar items as a course overview, learning objectives, and outcomes. The syllabus is presented the first day of class and referred to throughout the class to guide the students (and professor) in their actions. It figuratively and literally serves as a contract.

Each syllabus will also contain codes related to ethics, such as academic honesty and class decorum. Other important strategy tools that are provided on the syllabus include schedules, due dates for assignments, topics, and tests/grading. These pertain to strategic direction, but are more specific to strategy formulation and implementation. In the end, a good syllabus serves as an action plan that guides the work of the class.

Strategy formulation: business and corporate levels

As mentioned previously, the process of education is the product. Similarly, the strategy for learning is developed as the class progresses. This ongoing strategy formulation is consistent with Mintzberg's (2005) analogy of the business leader as a craftsman, formulating plans while working on the task. "Learning" denotes acquiring knowledge of or skill in ("learn," n.d.), which infers an ongoing process of change. Perhaps this is why the university class serves as a good metaphor for business.

Business strategy is directly forced on classes too. More and more, university professors are asked to take on more students in classes. This internal growth strategy is a marked departure from the original meaning of university as "a community of masters and scholars" ("University," n.d., para. 1). Teachers took on a small number of students to sever as their mentors. The small student-to-teacher ratios created a much more meaningful learning experience because of the individual attention it affords. With the drive to increase revenue in universities, an emphasis on credit hour generation has become paramount (Sather, 2004). This has lead to growing class sizes, often in the hundreds.  

Professors also perform strategies for internal growth (or stability) by taking students from competing classes. Maintaining class size ensures continued employment in many cases. Furthermore, as a department retains class size it ensures a certain number of faculty positions. This leads to both inter- and intra-department competition for students. Especially at small universities, this is an intensely fought battle over a fixed quantity of students. Competitive strategies in a university class demonstrate a departure from the business analogy in that neither differentiation nor cost leadership play a dominant role. The university professor does not have control of cost. While they do have control of differentiation, this is not an overt strategy displayed by many teachers. Rather, the strategies include requiring classes in a major, making classes a general education requirement or alternative, promoting a class, and making advisees take one's own class. 

The corporate strategy analogy is addressed in the curriculum development within departments. In essence, the university department serves as a corporation made up of professors. These departments organize themselves into schools or divisions, usually along natural groupings of subject content. Departments do influence where they will join forces, using a few different strategies.

One strategy is to jockey into a position under the most favorable related field within the academic hierarchy. In my field of study, physical education departments have been found in schools of health science, education, science, or their own school. The decision on where to ally are politically, financially, and self-preservation motivated. The survival of a class is at stake in these decisions.

Eisenhardt (2005) outlines four 4 approaches to strategy decision making:

• Bounded Rationality: Decision makers are rational only within limits of their own capabilities. They rarely explore all the facts and make decisions that are just good enough.
• Power and Politics: People are considered individually rational, but not collectively so. Conflict is resolved through use of politics and power. Tactics like coalition formation, withholding information, and lobbying are used to enhance power. This often involves emotions.
• The Garbage Can: Chance is heavily involved in decision making through random choices by decision makers looking for something to decide, problems looking for solutions, etc.
• Improvisation: Using the analogy of the jazz artist, Eisenhardt coins a new approach. In this, the importance of improvisation is emphasized. The jazz artists operate within a simple set of rules, yet the music is still spontaneous. This requires communicating with other band members and paying attention to what each is doing and playing. They play in the "now." The benefit is adaptability.

Undoubtedly, the power and politics premise dominates university strategy making. However, at the classroom level, the other three strategies are employed quite often by university professors.

A second approach to department strategy involves proximity. The physical location of a department on a campus allows for potentially favorable collegial interaction with other departments and administrators. A department's status can be improved by locating in an advantageous place on campus. This is much like the importance of external environment analysis in a business. Likewise, the location and nature of a professor's office holds much importance. Faculty are very competitive over their office location. If a faculty member retires or dies, faculty swoop in like vultures to claim prime office location. For some reason, it is particularly important to have an office with a window, as if a glimpse into the outside world is advantageous to one's professional performance. Office location can have a favorable effect when it is close to an administrator or other influential colleagues. Equally fierce are the battles over classroom selection. The professor wants a classroom with certain attributes, some related to instruction and many not. These examples demonstrate the importance of internal environment, much like in business. 

A third approach to department strategy--and also individual professor strategy--is interdisciplinary teaching ("Interdisciplinary teaching," 2009; Wineburg & Grossman, 2000), whereby courses are co-taught or offered as part of a program for a different department. This has become very popular lately under the mantra that real-world learning is cross-disciplinary and a richer learning environment can be created for the students (product differentiation). In a practical regard, these are more like strategic alliances. We have seen the value of international relations in business come to fruition under globalization (Hill, 2009). The most successful business strategies include strategic alliances, international collaboration, multi-national companies, shared resources, and monetary controls. While distinctiveness still remains important, cooperation has proven to be a stalwart factor in organizational growth. It seems natural that similar principles can be applied positively to the university class. A professor has much to gain by diversifying and allying with other departments.

Strategy implementation

Leadership is a very important aspect of strategy implementation. The professor serves as the appointed leader in the class and retains full authority on all classroom activities. This is known as "legitimate power" based on French and Raven's sources of power ("Power [philosophy]," 2009). This fact has been further reinforced historically by university and legal support of the professor as an unquestionable authority in his own class (Makar, 2002; White, 2008), although recent court cases are beginning to treat university classes more like businesses in this regard (Makar). What a professor does in their teaching is very private (Centra, 1993; Chism, 1999). Rarely do teachers ask advice about teaching and rarely are they evaluated in the classroom.

Despite having authoritative power, most professors avoid Machiavellian use of this power, recognizing the value of other leadership styles. Some adopt an approach like Sun-Tzu's Taoist leadership philosophy that emphasizes traits like leadership by example, empowering others (Wagner, 2005), and servant leadership ("Servant leadership," 2009). However, in most cases the professor uses autocratic leadership. This is usually laid out on the first day, when everyone is in attendance and the already-prepared syllabus is presented, as if a pre-ordained plan of business for the term. The class usually progressed based on the direction of the professor throughout the entire term of instruction.

While professors' academic freedom is still largely protected in the classroom, this does not extend to the university in general. Traditional controls for professional work (e.g. doctors, lawyers, professors) are the schools that train them, examinations that test them, licensure, and ethics codes that professionals presume to obey (Abbott, 1988). These traditional controls help ensure that only qualified individual join the profession. The idealistic mindset that the university is a haven for professors to freely practice and control their own profession has never really existed (Keller, 1983). University professors tend to think of their hierarchy as upside down, with themselves running it (Mintzberg, 1998). In fact, this is not the case. What exists is a medium somewhere between anarchy and rigid managerial control. University professors do maintain a higher degree of freedom than their elementary and secondary school colleagues (Feidson, 1986), but are nonetheless subject to managerial control in their work.

Ambrose’s (1988) survey of academic administrators, department chairpersons, and full-time faculty members revealed that all three groups share a high opinion of academic freedom. Raelin (2003) recommends administrators, such as chairs, allow professors to maintain "operational autonomy" in the classroom. This includes, “Having the freedom, once the goal or problem has been set, to attack it by means determined by oneself but within organizational resource and strategic constraints” (para. 24). Gmelch and Miskin (1993) outline a model of control for departments (see figure 1). The first step is department planning. This includes developing a mission and measurable outcomes and goals, both short-term and long-term. Second entails implementation which involves individual faculty and staff goals and action plans. Finally, evaluation and control complete the process in the model. “The term ‘control’ should not mean a monitoring or checking up on daily activities and assignments. The purpose of control should be instead to help individuals become more productive in accomplishing personal goals and contributing to the achievement of department success” (p. 80).

Much like in business, the management of human resources is important in the college class. According to their leadership style, university professors manage their students through communication, policies in the syllabus, attendance, assignments, adding/dropping students, and extrinsic and intrinsic motivational techniques. Another important aspect of the college class is the management of information. Most professors now employ a content management system ("Web content management system," 2009) like Blackboard for assignment collection, grading, information dissemination, and discussions.

The combination of leadership style and resource management is a manifestation of the professor's teaching method (pedagogy). This is comparable to operations strategy of a business. There are several not-so-coincidental similarities between business and the university classroom in operations strategy:

• Meetings are common.
• Questions are usually asked of the leader, one at a time.
• Eclectic styles of management and leadership are the most common, with no single "right" style.
• Each student/employee has their own space, whether this be a desk/cubicle or a user account on the organization's network (content management system).
• The hiring/enrollment process contains several controls and "red tape" that must be passed to gain employee/student status.
• Students/employees often do the minimum necessary to pass the class (or keep their jobs).
• Social loafing ("Social loafing," 2009) is common
• Extraneous online activity occurs concurrently. Students and workers use their cell phones and computers during work/class time for activities such as Facebook interaction, YouTube movie watching, and following a live sporting contest.
• Much like over speculation resulting in the current economic crisis, tuition at universities is inflating too rapidly (Vedder, 2004).

Strategic control

The main control mechanism used by the university professor is grading. Details about this are included in the syllabus. Thus, the controls are made apparent from the start of the class, and the students undergo their work knowing both the criteria and time frame for measuring the result.

In turn, the professor's performance is also measured in several ways. Peers and superiors (dean or chair) evaluate the professor according to promotion and tenure policies of a university. An even more pervasive technique used for professor evaluation is the student evaluation of teaching (Glassick, Huber, & Maeroff, 1997). This supports the notion that a student is customer, and the customer's input is valuable for judging performance. Yet, many professors challenge this belief. Miller, Finley, & Vancko (2000) indicate that this principle can be taken to an inappropriate extreme if students are allowed to choose how they are taught. Furthermore, Benton (2006) argues that students are not customers because their tuition only pays a fraction of the cost of their education; also, faculty contribute to keeping costs down by working for lower wages than similarly educated counterparts. Sproule (2002) characterizes student evaluations of teaching as unscientific. According to Shelley (2005), the student as customer is simply inappropriate for student-faculty interaction. Some research reviews support the validity of student evaluations of teaching (Wachtel, 1998) while others question its accuracy (Greenwald, 1997). Students lack the knowledge and professional maturity to accurately evaluate their own learning experience. This challenges the "customer is always right" mantra in business. The use of student evaluation of teaching as a strategic control revisits the paradox of manager-employee versus employee-customer relationship quandary unique to my metaphor.

Strategic restructuring

Structural reorganization takes place in the university class when a professor decides to change pedagogical techniques. This is surprisingly not common in the university, where professors sometimes use the same style and content for decades. The traditional tenure process provides little incentive for restructuring. Other business examples of a similar stagnant nature include the US Postal Service, secondary school teaching, and many unionized or highly bureaucratic organizations.

Many teachers do revise their teaching styles. Ernest Boyer and The Carnegie Foundation published Scholarship Reconsidered (Boyer, 1990) which spawned an emphasis on restructuring teaching in higher education. In this work, a new paradigm was presented which encouraged the scholarship of discovery, a holistic idea that encompasses teaching integration and application. This was accompanied by a focus on better evaluation methods for faculty (strategic control). I have also recently refocused my teaching with a more paradigm shift toward more use of technology, flexibility of content, collaboration, and student-directed activities (Sather, 2009).

The university is a rather fluid environment--albeit sluggish in change--with retrenchment of professors happening quite often. Classes are added and dropped regularly, and professors often give up a class for reasons such as taking on a different class, focusing on a research project, or sabbatical. Technology has also had a drastic influence on how university classes are taught. In short, strategic restructuring is commonplace in university classes and professors that are resistant to this will soon become obsolete.

Conclusion

Perhaps the comparisons between the university classroom and business are no coincidence. After all, universities are expected to prepare graduates for the business workforce. It follows that the preparation would be similar in nature to business itself. Perhaps that is why universities are so bureaucratic, to mimic the structure that most of their graduates will work within. It is ironic that the university class is presented here as a metaphor, because in reality the class is a business--or more accurately the university is a business. What we have is a business serving businesses.

While the similarities abound, there are some key differences between university classes and business:

• The student as customer analogy is different
• No financial exchange occurs in the class
• University classes are self contained in most cases. They are private, ignorant of competitors, and lack inter-class interaction despite the potential in these areas.
• The university class is mainly theoretical, while business is practical.

In the best scenario, the university class and business should be mutually influential. The metaphor I have outlined serves to highlight the importance of strategy in both the university class and the business. In many ways, the university class has a lot to glean from business, more so than business has to glean from the university class.

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Figure 1
Gmelch & Miskins Department Analysis