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This paper seeks to analyse how excellence and diversity are addressed in student recruitment strategies, and how these strategies are developed in eight Norwegian higher education institutions.

The study utilises a theoretical perspective that asserts that strategy is developed through practice. The authors have combined document analysis with qualitative interviews to investigate the development of institutional student recruitment strategies, their characteristics and their links to the individual institution's profile and ambitions.

The study reveals that student recruitment strategies are often grounded in inherent institutional identities, while at the same time responding to external ideas about excellence and diversity. The study also finds that higher education institutions show significant creativity in trying to adapt to these ideas and general trends, while at the same time maintaining their own characteristics and traditions. Findings suggest that student recruitment strategies are also used for accountability purposes. Given the importance of student recruitment, many higher education institutions attach surprisingly little importance to this issue.

The study encompasses only a small number of institutions in a single country, limiting the possibility of generalising aspects of the profile and content of the student recruitment strategies. Nevertheless, the analysis indicates that the processes associated with the development of student recruitment strategies are quite similar, with more emphasis on specific quantitative analytical schemes and less emphasis on other ways of organising strategy development.

The paper reveals the importance of placing greater focus on the ways in which strategic processes are organised and identifying the potential for improving the creative organisation of the strategising process.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss how funding systems influence higher education institutions and their strategies and core tasks.

Taking the results of a comparative study between Denmark, Norway and Portugal as a point of departure, the paper identifies and analyses the main features of these state funding systems, their strengths and weaknesses, and their impact on academia.

The system‐level analysis offers an illustration of a trend across Europe. The paper shows that mixed funding models have been implemented in all three countries.

Funding systems and their impacts do not come in neat packages. The systems demonstrate a mixed pattern of strengths and weaknesses. The impacts of the funding systems converge, although different mechanisms are employed. There are no clear cut differences in the perceived strengths, weaknesses and impacts of the two main types of funding systems – input‐based funding and output‐based funding – presented and discussed in the paper.

The purpose of this paper is to identify those factors that key actors in university governance hold as to be important in realizing strategic change within their institutions.

Key decision-makers in 26 European universities were surveyed on their views on which factors bring about strategic change. The results were interpreted using a theoretical framework emphasizing organizational archetypes and their development.

The findings indicated that strategic changes in universities were perceived as highly dependent on leadership, decision-making procedures, communication and evaluation. However, some differences between the universities in the sample can be identified, supporting indicating the relevance of using organizational archetypes as an analytical tools for observing change within the higher education sector.

The study links organizational level developments on strategic management to macro-level change within the European higher education landscape, and provides new insights intoon the debate on convergence and differentiation in organizational fields.