The University in the Modern Marketplace

In the intervening ten years since the first York-Mannheim Symposium, we have covered an assortment of topics in a variety of places. The umbrella theme is “issues in public management” often broadly, though I trust not loosely, interpreted. This year, we are venturing into somewhat more distant territory with the topic: The University as a Business? In the process, we will be sailing in relatively unchartered seas. Where business is concerned, there is abundant literature on the theory of business as an institution. With the publication of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations and the development of the limited liability corporation, the nature of the institution of modern business was clearly defined. Business would operate in the marketplace which, in turn, was to be a place of competition. The “invisible hand” of competition would work to the advantage of the consumer of goods and services by ensuring that only the most efficient businesses survived, thereby generating quality goods and services at acceptable prices. In a world of risk, made up of potential winners and losers, only some would be successful while others would be eliminated. As Professor Frank H. Knight described in his classic work: Risk, Uncertainty and Profit, it was a Darwinian world of survival of the fittest.