The paper considers how shifts in the locus of power in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) have effected the development and implementation of their learning and teaching strategies.A theoretical framework of organizational structure, culture and managerialism is used to examine recent literature, government reports and papers and to devise a schedule for depth interviews with directors of educational development centres in England and the Netherlands. The literature review will focus principally on English Higher Education although, in order to provide a comparison with another European country, there will be reference to the Dutch system.An HEI's structures are affected by numerous factors such as the age of the institution, the disciplinary mix, tradition and size. Nevertheless, it is possible to identify different types of university (Duke, 1992). However, distinctions are becoming blurred due to increasing 'supercomplexity' (Barnett, 2000). Organisational cultures vary greatly in HEIs with, for example, Oxford and Cambridge universities having a dominant collegial culture and regarding themselves principally as a self-governing community of scholars with significant autonomy in decision-making. These collegial universities are strongly departmentally based and so there is very little effective central power. On the other hand, McNay (1995) claims that particularly in modern universities there has been a centralizing tendency in terms of a move ' … from collegial academy to corporate enterprise'. Even at the University of Oxford, '… the preconditions for good collegial governance have been undermined' (Tapper and Palfreyman, 2000). Modern universities, when they were polytechnics prior to 1992, were centrally managed with their degrees being conferred through the Council for National Academic Awards (CNAA). Consequently, they were familiar a large measure of central control through the CNAA's formal Quality Assurance procedures and this became very much part of their organisational culture when they became universities.Braun (1999) discerns two different managerialist models: (i) the efficiency model predominant in Germany, France, Italy and Switzerland and (ii) the client/market model more evident in the United Kingdom, the United States of America and the Netherlands. Use of the client/market model in the UK and the Netherlands has meant that HEIs are gradually adopting centralising management approaches used in the business sector and are increasingly being affected by corporate interests (Parker, 2001). Casey (1995) goes as far as saying that in some HEIs there is 'corporate colonisation' which involves the hallowed corridors of academia being taken over by the forces of marketisation and corporatism. However, there is a variety of opinion on how far HEIs have embraced the managerialist paradigm (Randle and Brady, 1997).In order to examine the question of the locus of power in HEIs and its influence on learning and teaching strategies, depth interviews will be conducted with eight directors of educational development centres; three in pre- 1992 and three in modern English universities and two in Dutch HEIs.It is important to be aware of the dangers of over-generalisation and over-simplification when looking at the locus of power in HEIs. The locus of power varies greatly from one HEI to another but similar traditions and organisational cultures do allow some general comments to be made. Certainly, it is most helpful for academic staff who are members of educational development centres to identify where the power lies in their HEI. If they know whether power is located largely in the departments, the faculties/schools or at the centre they then know where to target their energy and efforts and where the 'battles' need to be won if learning and teaching strategies are to become embedded.