anagement in the university environment. However, the only definition of this process involved is given in a couple of sentences in which it was noted that in a university, strategic planning, "...is located toward the emergent end of the continuum and falls with in the domain of unconnected strategies." It is not impossible to understand what is being said here, but more specificity and discussion of this key term in the study would have been helpful.
In order to investigate the study's three research questions, the following data collection and analysis methods were used by Luby (1996):
Step 1 - An informal meeting was held with the university vice principle which was said to be used for the purposes of confirming that the focus of the study was appropriate, obtaining permission to conduct the study, obtaining a copy of the university's strategic plan, and obtaining "background information," which was not defined in any way.
Step 2 - A cross-section of university mangers at all echelons of management was obtained to serve as sample subjects. Two subject selection criteria were provided but no actual steps were mentioned as to precisely how these criteria were applied to obtain the final sample which consisted of five deans.
Step 3 - Semi-structured interviews were conducted with deans in which they were asked to comment on each of the three strategic planning issues being addressed in the study.
Step 4 - An analysis of collected interview data was conducted that looked for themes and patterns related to the research questions.
There are several problems with the methodological approach taken in the study. First, the study is qualitative rather than quantitative in nature which is to say that the description of the observations is not in quantitative terms (Cary, 1988). Qualitative studies have the advantage of allowing observations in real-world settings (Bogdan & Biklen, 1997); however, such studies lack the...