Internationalisation strategy implemented through Faculty Exchange: Strategic Entrepreneurship in a “new” United Kingdom University

The promotion of international staff mobility is a founding principle of the ‘Bologna Process’, designed to create a converged system of higher education across Europe as it is subjected to increasing globalisation. Many UK ‘new’ (ie post-1992) universities are engaged in the development of internationalisation and globalisation strategies which include staff exchange. Meanwhile, the failure to execute strategy is increasingly acknowledged as a major problem in organisational performance. Using a first-, second and third-person Insider Action Research (AR) approach, six chronological cycles of AR were enacted over a 28 month period in order to organise and implement an international staff exchange between universities in the UK and France. Data generated were subjected to a double process of analysis – four phase analysis and a meta-cycle of enquiry - in order to propose aspects of strategy execution through strategic entrepreneurship within the constraints of a post-1992 university business school in the UK. Concepts from the theoretical literature in three domains - entrepreneurship in higher education, globalisation of higher education and strategy execution through strategic entrepreneurship – are combined with the research analysis to propose that ‘strategic entrepreneurs’ can execute the riskier elements of an internationalisation strategy, such as staff exchange. This work broadens AR from education into strategic management. It goes beyond the common, well-intentioned and yet vague statements involving the ‘encouragement’ of international staff exchange to propose the elements of execution through strategic entrepreneurship.