What is Academic Partnerships

The Higher Education sector is rapidly changing and is in a current state of flux because of the changing global demand of students. To cope with this dynamism, Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) are entering into partnerships to combine competences and market presence. The purpose of this chapter is to provide a better understanding of Knowledge Management (KM) in HEIs and discuss the role of communication and organisational learning when working in partnerships. The authors present developmental stages of a higher education partnership so that deployment of underutilised KM technologies can be identified at each stage. The chapter then identifies KM factors specifically useful for the evaluation stage of a higher education partnership; thus, measurement of those factors could foster organisational learning more easily. The chapter also provides a discussion of underutilised technologies in HEIs and explains how improving utilisation would enhance institutional and cross-institutional performance.