2009 Annual Report

In short, our strategy consists of three strategic sets, namely building a strong foundation (internal values, relations and organisational design), enhancing the academic project, and establishing strategic partnerships and enterprises in
support of the first two strategic sets. Within these three sets are 14 institutional objectives and strategies that may vary from year to year.

By design, my message therefore focuses on some highlights of the embedding process and resulting achievements, a number of which are addressed further in the report. Building a strong foundation has meant, amongst other things, that organisational redesign (otherwise known as restructuring) has been used to help us steer the institution to make it fit for the chosen purpose and strategies. The
salary budget, for example, which took up far too much (72%) of the total tuition fee and subsidy amount in 2007, comprised only 63% of this amount in 2009 – a marked improvement. The savings that made this possible were achieved through a careful analysis of our functional efficiency as opposed to a task-oriented organisational design that tended to be unjustifiably labour intensive for an
institution with limited resources due to size and capacity.