Industry analysis - Canadian medical doctoral universities

Most public sector and non-profit entities do not undergo standard business analysis that is typically found in their private sector counterparts, however such approaches may provide administrators with information to better understand their industry. A high-level industry analysis of Canadian medical-doctoral universities, based on Porter's five forces and value chain analysis, combined with an analysis of pertinent issues indicated that universities are greatly affected by strategic decisions imposed by government. Examples of these include movement towards a userpay environment and increased co-funding research relations with industry. Other influences outside of the control of universities, such as demographic impacts to customer base and human resources, also play a role. Through the use of similar analytic approaches, business administrators in universities can study the decisions and influences for future trends and their impacts and derive an understanding to augment their knowledge in order to compensate, prepare for and possibly eliminate negative impacts.