Organisational Development
European higher education institutions have been managing change, often profound reforms, for decades, with no end in sight. Widening and diversifying participation, addressing increased competition for research and institutional funds, expanding internationalisation in research, teaching, hiring and even administration, introducing new public management instruments of resource planning, quality assurance systems, redesigning curricula in the framework of the Bologna reforms, expanding student- and competence-based learning, building transfer services and innovation hubs – the list of profound organisational changes seems endless, demanding wide-reaching capacity for change at all levels of institutional development, amongst academics and administrators alike, across all sectors of the higher education and research landscape.
Reichert Consulting supports organisational development at universities, university consortia and associations. Most often as part of strategy development projects, organisational development processes will be addressed in implementation design, including the necessary resource, personnel and infrastructural implications of strategic aims.
Reichert’s organisational development work is based on a wide variety of studies and mandates at very diverse institutions across Europe. It also benefits from the experience of several years as Chancellor of the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg. In her mandate as Chancellor (responsible for finances, infrastructures, services and personnel), she introduced financial transparency and planning (in a historical line-budget system), removed the structural budget deficit, introduced personnel planning and development, including performance reviews, leadership skills development, and conflict management, and raised substantial infrastructural investments for campus development from the state, and negotiating the financial terms for professorial recruitments. Most importantly, she sought to overcome the cultural rift between the academic and administrative dimensions of institutional development and planning. Reichert’s institutional mandates and sector analyses thus benefit from familiarity with the challenges involved in cultural and organisational change at universities, with budgetary restrictions which do not grow in proportion to student numbers and research volume, as well as with the cultural particularities of university communication and power structures.
Past mandates with primary focus on organisational development:
- ETH Zürich
- LERU (League of European Research Universities)
- Modul University Vienna
- Norwegian University of Science and Technology
- Stifterverband für die Deutsche Wissenschaft
- Universität Basel
- Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg – Consultant (2011-13) und Chancellor (2014-16)
- Université de Lyon
Evaluation of Higher Education Systems, Alliances, Institutions, Faculties, Centres and Programmes
Reichert Consulting has been conducting evaluations at all levels of institutional development, helping whole higher education systems, university alliances, individual institutions, individual faculties, cross-cutting research centers, or programme
- to review their structures, processes and performance
- to reflect strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats, and leverage their potential in national and international contexts
- to identify their institutional profile and unique competitive advantages and develop methods to leverage their institutional potential more systematically
- to position themselves in national and international competition and build inter-institutional alliances
- to address new policy developments and higher education reform agendas
- to develop awareness of institutional cultural and organisational challenges and strategic approaches to addressing them
As a member of the expert pool of the EUA Institutional Evaluation Programme as well as in other mandates, she has conducted evaluations all over Europe. Most recently, Reichert has acted as chair of the accreditation committee accrediting the establishment of the Central European University in Austria. System reviews have addressed the Quality Assurance System in Indonesian Higher Education, for example, or the Research Capacity of the Slovak University System. Evaluations have also addressed strategic reviews of University Associations or Alliances, as well as the strategic capacity of individual universities. Programme evaluations have focussed on inter-institutional international programmes and their impact.
Reichert Consulting has also contributed to reflections on different approaches to performance reviews and monitoring, quality assurance and quality culture and their limits, most recently for the Austrian Quality Assurance Agency. Her study on the limits of research performance reviews has informed policy advice of the Swiss Science Council in 2012&13.
Evaluation Mandates @
- Academic Cooperation Association (ACA)
- All Austrian Universities, focusing on hiring procedures (Tenure Track)
- Bilkent University, Turkey
- ETH Zurich, Switzerland
- Czech Technical University
- International Master Program Educating Quality in Developing Countries (Universität Bamberg, Protestant University of Ruanda et al.)
- Central European University, Accreditation in Austria (Chair of Accreditation Committee)
- League of European Research Universities (LERU)
- Norwegian University of Science and Technology
- Romanian Higher Education System
- Slovak University System (Research Capacity)
- Swiss Doctoral Program of Social Anthropology
- Swiss Science Council
- Tohoku University, Japan
- Trinity College Dublin, Ireland
- Universität Basel, Switzerland
- Universität Bielefeld, Germany
- Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany
- Universität Mainz, Germany
- Université de Lausanne, Switzerland
- Universität Stuttgart, Germany
- University of Daressalem, Tansania
- University of Surabaya, Indonesia
- University of Zvolen, Slovakia
- Vilnius University, Lithuania
