Global portfolios and strategic international partnerships of a major research university

Globalization motivates universities to provide a proactive institutional response to the needs and opportunities of globalizing markets and to support the national agenda of productivity and competition. This pressure has accelerated the pace at which major research universities reach out to international markets and are exposed to an increasingly competitive world within the barrier-free globalizing environment.;Using the conceptual framework of international relations affected by marketization, this thesis delves into the organizational behaviour of a major research university, which has embarked on adjustments to its institutional mechanisms for an integrated and proactive response to the globalization pressures. Six case studies examining divisional and university-wide processes of internationalization at the University of Toronto formed the basis for analyzing three major processes---individuation, institutionalization, and marketization---that shape perspectives for global outreach and development of international partnerships at a major research university in the time of globalization. By analyzing institutional policy instruments (global MRU's International Strategies portfolios, and international partnerships) used by some university decision-makers to create a more harmonious and focused international strategy, this thesis explores what motivates and de-motivates institutional collaboration, whether decentralization or centralization can serve as vehicles for the promotion of partnership building, and what costs and benefits may be incurred in the process. In particular, this thesis investigates how various major research university divisions make choices about areas of responsibility and determine which connections are strategic and worthwhile to pursue, and which are not.;The dichotomy between the institutional aspirational story and the grassroots empirical story is examined within the context shaped by the "characterological development" of a major research university, by the lack of government support to international research, and by the growth of asymmetric partnerships, as encouraged by the processes of marketization and individuation.;This thesis expands on and contributes knowledge to the area of internationalization of higher education by distinguishing the organizational behavior of a major research university from other knowledge institutions and universities described in the literature, as well as by identifying and examining the specific character of entrepreneurial response that emerges when a public major research university is pulled into the process of marketization.