“There is nothing between the lines; this is not a proposal to move towards shared services,” Habibovic responded. However, she continued, over the past two and a half years, in preparation for the administrative ‘merger’, many good ideas for collaboration have emerged, including in the area of services. “That could benefit both parties.”
On Wednesday 22 April, the University President summarised the content of the letter once again: the boards of the hospital and the university are disappointed that their plans for the administrative integration of the hospital and the university have not been realised. But now they wish to further intensify substantive collaboration. How this can best be achieved will be a topic of discussion in the coming months, including within the University Council. It is already certain that this will go beyond joint scientific research; in other areas too, there is “a need and a desire to collaborate”.
Agreements will have to be made and perhaps, as she suggested to the University Council, “together we will discover what works and what does not, and in this way arrive at a governance structure that fits”. That last element is new; neither the letter nor the appendix mentions any alternative governance model.
University Council member representing academic staff, Janosch Prinz, wondered whether he should interpret the appendix to the letter as an evaluation of the process over the past 2.5 years. Or is a more thorough analysis to follow? “The appendix is more of a logbook of everything that has happened,” said Habibovic. In the coming period, the Executive Board intends to work with all stakeholders, including the University Council, to examine “how it has been received, what has been done, and how things could be done differently.”