The Relationship between Institutional Strategy and Undergraduate Teaching in World-class Universities

This research aims to investigate how WCU s address strategically undergraduate teaching, particularly in relation with research missions. Also, how WCUs strategies for undergraduate teaching affect the way lecturers perceive their organisational context and adapt their academic identities. The main methods are documentary analysis and interviews. Materials of documentary analysis are the corporate strategies from selected universities, which present an institutional detailed development of the WCUs, and link to the dimensions of undergraduate teaching. The participants for interviews will be lecturers because they are the main workforce for teaching. In-depth interviews will be conducted to investigate all the possible relationships between the institutional strategy and undergraduate teaching, and to answer the question of how the institutional strategy influences undergraduate teaching. The paper will present the preliminary findings from a pilot case study conducted in 2018 and from the interviews that will be carried out in May 2019 at Shanghai University.