The overarching theme for the 2026 events of the Residential School Alumni Network is “change readiness to drive organisational developments”.

This third event in the network series of events and the second webinar will take place on 26 November 2026. It will focus on universities as organisations, looking at institutional approaches to enhance organisational agility as well as practical approaches to innovate in the delivery of professional services.  

From centralisation to decentralisation operational models for professional service delivery, what is the most efficient approach for a university to be agile? It is often not just one or the other but more about developing new hybrid integrated architectural frameworks around service sharing and the user journey based on institutional capabilities.  This can be e.g. with a central hub (for policy, strategy, institutional compliance, core IT infrastructure) and local spokes (foron-the-ground execution, student advising, localized HR support, and departmental budgeting).  

Universities often centralise core services (finance, HR, IT, admissions) for cost efficiency, risk mitigation, and compliance.  Yet there are limits to significant centralisation as bottlenecks and standardisation can fail to address local relevance, lead bureaucratic inertia, and faculty/student dissatisfaction.  Academic and professional service staff as well as students are demanding agile governance and responsive local service delivery, for speed and better decision-making proximity in resolving local issues; cloud-based service portals are now facilitating seamless distributed execution while maintaining central oversight.   

Balancing local autonomy with institutional alignment is key to support agile operations and foster a culture of cross-functional accountability, optimisation and standardisation.

The webinar will look at the trade-offs, efficiencies, and friction points between centralised and decentralised administrative structures.  It will discuss the driving forces that push universities towards centralisation or decentralisation, explore hybrid operational models and the ways leaders can design new change management frameworks to execute structural transition without disrupting academic delivery or the governance.  This includes stakeholder mapping and coalition building, resource and budget distribution, capability development and risk mitigation (to prevent duplication, fragmented data and compliance breaches).

The speakers for the webinar will be:

• Leon van der Zande, Secretary General, University of Amsterdam, NL
• John Heniff, Principal, Huron Consulting Group, US

The workshop moderators will be Steering Committee members:

• Anke Vogler, Head of Operations LCSB, University of Luxembourg, LU
• Bart van de Laar, Programme Manager – Impact Strategy, Student & Academic Affairs Office, Utrecht University, NL

The presentations will be followed by a short time during which you can ask questions to the two speakers.

More information about the speakers can be found here.