Lack of stable leadership
It is clear from the scenario that the rotational nature of the chairman of the management board （MB） will almost ensure that there is a lack of stable leadership. Unless the universities can agree on a common and mutually acceptable aim, the chairman is likely to be acting more in the interests of their own university than in the interests of the joint venture.
The inclusion of at least one government official from Deeland on the MB may also present problems from the perspective of Roan with regard to performance management. As the current balance of the MB membership is 50:50, the inclusion of representatives from Deeland would clearly tip the balance in favour of Saugh. This is likely to lead to a loss of control for Roan which would clearly have an effect on the manner in which the joint venture is managed in terms of its performance.
Measuring performance
Given the challenging funding environment in Teeland, reflected in the overall view of Roan with regards to what the aim of the joint venture should be, Roan will be focused on the financial return of RSU. This means that Roan would seek to measure traditional financial measures such as return on investment and operating surplus.
Roan’s focus is likely to be specifically on the fees charged, student numbers, costs incurred and on return on investment overall. The measures that Roan would like to see would therefore relate to fee growth, student numbers and cost reduction. It is not clear how quickly Roan is seeking to achieve a return on the investment but from the scenario it can be assumed, given the cuts to governmental funding, that it would prefer a return to be achieved in the short term as well as over the long term.
Roan may therefore be keen to spend a significant amount on advertising, to boost student numbers in the short term, rather than wait for the reputation of RSU to grow by word of mouth.
Both universities will be interested in how the students perform at RSU. Roan’s reputation would suffer significantly, for example, if it were to accept students who failed its programmes in large numbers. However, Roan will be less focused on the level of excellence achieved by students of RSU than Saugh. Again, this is likely to lead to conflict as Saugh will be motivated to undertake additional investment, be it in terms of staff time in the form of extra classes or through extra resources that are likely to help students achieve higher grades.
Roan is also likely to be interested in how graduates of RSU perform after graduation but it is not as important to them as it is to Saugh. Saugh may therefore be keen to devote significant resource to developing strong links with local industry to ensure that RSU graduates are equipped with the correct skills. Saugh will also want to devote significant resource to monitoring and measuring how the graduates perform after graduation. Saugh may, for example, initiate surveys at various points following graduation at intervals of perhaps one, five and ten years. Given the focus of Roan, it is unlikely to want to devote much by way of resources to such measurement.
As a measure of commitment to the joint venture, Saugh will definitely be motivated to measure how many of Roan’s staff will teach at RSU. Saugh may try to impose specific measures here, such as percentage of Roan staff from Teeland teaching on each programme, as it is clear that the involvement of Roan is a critical success factor for Saugh in achieving its aims.
