Solution to chaotic situations in higher education: New generation universities as intelligent organizations

Abstract

Higher education institutions have been affected by three major developments since 1980s: Globalization, growing requirements to lifelong learning and fast and intense developments in information and communication technologies. In this chapter we focus on technology, chaos, new generation and how they interact each other. We try to answer the question of whether new generation universities as intelligent organizations could be a solution to the current chaotic situations of universities or not? New generation was born in a technological world and hence are substantially different from the generations before them. Now, in the twenty-first century, all organizations, whether it to be on the macro scale such as nations or the micro scale such as universities, are trying to find ways of overcoming the challenges created by the technological revolution. At the individual level, researchers, analysts, presidents alike try to create new solutions to deal with these challenges by multidimensional cooperation. The most important characteristic of new generation universities is that they are intelligent organizations. In this chapter, we discuss new generation universities as intelligent organizations on five dimensions as solution to cope with research and development challenges (1) Research and development; (2) teaching, virtualization, mobility; (3) professionalization; (4) organizational culture; (5) glocal citizenship; (6) publication level.