The Institute for Higher Education Management is part of the Department of Strategy and Innovation at WU and is led by Univ. Prof. Dr. Barbara Sporn.

IHM activities include research, teaching, policy advising and external engagement with different stakeholders, as well as involvement in international associations. Areas of interest at IHM combine theories of business and management applied to the complex organization of universities. With this focus, IHM provides insights for higher education scholars and practitioners but also beyond that for research and practice interested in expert and nonprofit organizational settings.

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Publications

After some calm few weeks without teaching, we successfully started the new summer semester 2025 in March. As part of our “Business Planning and Performance Management” course in the SIMC Master's program, students are faced with the challenge of solving multiple, complex tasks in the areas of business planning, strategy and performance management.

Our practical project assignments with our long-standing partners SPAR and the UN World Food Program make up one big corner stone of this course.

Thus, our joint project evening at Interspar Schottentor/ das Mezzanin marks one of our highlights of this course every year. Thank you very much once again for this opportunity!

Picture: Raimund Lainer (SPAR), Barbara Sporn (WU, IHM), Bernhard Böhm (WU, IHM)

We are pleased to announce the publication of the chapter "Organizing for Social Impact in Universities in the DACH Region", co-edited by Barbara Sporn and Ana Godonoga. Access to the document can be found here.

We will restart our successful Higher Education Speaker Series and are looking forward to top-class guest speakers with interesting lectures. On June 4, 2025 we will welcome John Aubrey Douglass (University of California) for an exciting online public lecture. More details and dates can be found here.

A new Call for Papers from the Journal of Higher Education Development has been published:

The special issue 20/4 (December 2025) is entitled New Models of the university: innovative structures, adaptive responses, and strategic behavior.

The editors are Tatiana Fumasoli (University College London), René Krempkow (HTW Berlin), Liudvika Leisyte (TU Dortmund University), Barbara Sporn (Vienna University of Economics and Business), the deadline for submitting complete articles is June 6th 2025.

Content and organizational details can be found in the call at Announcements | Zeitschrift für Hochschulentwicklung (Journal for Higher Education Development)

During the upcoming summer term we offer the following courses with interesting (guest-)lecturer:

LV 5304: Business Planning and Performance Management

LV 6426: Strategic Leadership

LV 6425: Fundamentals of Strategic Management and Leadership

LV 6191 + 6194: Strategie und Innovation

LV 4375 + 4768: Professional Development Workshop

The WU Course Catalogue for the winter term with dates and details can be found here.

The Institute for Higher Education Management and the World Food Programme (WFP) agreed on a dynamic collaboration aimed at fostering innovation in the fight against global hunger.

The collaboration builds on the success of a previous partnership between WFP and the Institute for Higher Education Management, in which, for the past two years, students from the SIMC Master’s Programme, have contributed to WFP’s innovation and knowledge management work through recommendations around crucial areas such as culture, knowledge management approaches, governance, and innovative technology.

The partnership has proven mutually beneficial by offering students valuable opportunities for internships and networking.

The collaboration will extend to various domains, including joint publication and thesis collaboration, research projects, knowledge and expertise exchange, innovation research and exchange by leveraging the Innovation Accelerator’s experience, and the integration of real-world problem-solving into the Master’s Programme on Strategy, Innovation, and Management Control (SIMC) at WU.

We’re looking forward for much more to come!