Exploring Institutional Behavioural Elements Needed to Support Knowledge Management in Higher Education Partnerships

Abstract

As market competitiveness in the higher education sector continues to grow, higher education executives and managers are exploring alternatives of maintaining and growing market share by forming partnerships with other higher education institutions. Collaborative initiatives amongst higher education institutions are driven by key stakeholders, higher education executives, managers, academics, and administrators, who are involved in a significant amount of knowledge exchange processes at institutional and departmental levels. Entering into a partnership and managing knowledge at intra-institutional levels becomes a very important, challenging, and complex task. This chapter argues that in order to develop effective higher education partnerships, executives and managers will need to channel their efforts and resources on four institutional, behavioural elements, which include institutional culture, trust, absorptive capacities and communication channels.