Georg Krücken, Nicolai Götze, Tim Seidenschnur (2025): Lions, Game Players and Niche Providers: Universities' Positioning in Funding Competitions in Germany. Higher Education Quarterly 79(1).

In Germany, funding competitions are immensely important for the development of a broader competitive positioning of universities. They employ different strategies in dealing with the competitions. The authors focus on the major funding competitions Excellence Initiative (EI) and the Quality Pact for Teaching (QPL) in order to analyse the positioning strategies of universities. They empirically develop three ideal types of universities with regard to strategic positioning (lions, niche providers and players) and analyse different strategic approaches of universities towards internal and external reference groups.

This work was supported by the German Research Foundation in the Research Group Multiple Competition in Higher Education (grant FOR 5234 [447967785]).