ABSTRACT
This chapter explores challenges entailed in introducing change ‘from the top’ within two different institutional cultures: the technologically-driven research university, and the one that has emerged out of a local polytechnic tradition. Adrian Webb reinforces a key theme in the opening chapter: namely, how difficult it is to go against the grain of tradition, despite government rhetoric that seems tofavour difference and change in the higher education sector. To do so requires the skilful management of contradictions if the process of cultural change is not to be completely undermined. In the traditional university, Adrian Webb offers the example of the tension between demands for greater corporateness and executive management, and funding policies that encourage departments to see financial rewards for expansion and research quality as ‘theirs’. At the University of Glamorgan, the traditions and rewards associated with research excellence and, as is now emerging, teaching excellence (HEFCE/CHES, 1994) challenge an institution that is determined to be a community university, actively contributing to economic and social regeneration. Such tensions are also explored in the chapters by Harrison, Price, Flint and Shackleton.
