(1138)IS IT BECAUSE OF PARTNERS OR PARTNERSHIPS? ANINVESTIGATION INTO THE MAIN OBSTACLES OF DEVELOPINGINTERNATIONAL PARTNERSHIPS IN FOUR UK UNIVERSITIES

摘要

This study is sustaining the serious of studies of international partnership strategy for agroup of four UK universities implemented by Ayoubi (2006) and followed by a paper inICERI (2009). The main aim of the current study is to explore the major obstacles that UKuniversities encounter when developing international partnerships with overseasuniversities. Focusing on the obstacles of international partnerships, the study results arebased on the same twenty-four interviews with senior and very senior universitymanagers from four UK leading universities which have been used in the previousstudies. The results indicate that the obstacles to international institutional partnershipsfor each university of the four universities in this study are grouped into the obstacles thatrelevant to the partner selecting and the obstacles that are relevant to the process ofpartnership arrangements. The study, alike the previous study, ends up with a model ofobstacles of international partnerships in universities. In terms of strategy evaluation,obstacles related to the partner, whether they are focused or diversified, and obstaclesrelated to the partnership arrangements, whether they are also focused or diversified,identify four styles of strategy evaluation: Realistic Strategy, Partner-Reevaluation Style,Arrangement-Reevaluation Style, and Unrealistic Strategy. This model would be of vastimportance to university international office directors and researchers in the field. Thestudy however did not tackle the positive side of international partnerships. In this regard,a study exploring the outcomes of international partnerships would of great importancefor researchers and for practitioners in the field.