The results of a 3-year fieldwork study within France's National Centre for Distance Education are presented, specifically detailing the impacts on higher education middle management overseeing curricula design for a series of French 3-year degree programs undergoing revision in how students are financially charged for the programs. Following the…

One common way of conceptualising recent changes in university governance is by stating that the universities are being pushed towards a market-like setting where the uniqueness of each university's strategy and capacity for introducing organizational change is seen as necessary to improve the functioning of the university. We argue that the…

Faced with persisting massive failure rates in the first year of university, the French authorities have decided to implement measures to improve study conditions. Although these measures translate into additional resources for universities, the latter are placed under an obligation to achieve results, because student success rates at the end of…

Could enthusiasm for e-learning be dampened because it is detrimental to the relationships between those undergoing e-training and their direct managers or colleagues? Interviews conducted in four French banks provide material to explore this question. We see that e-learning has increasingly been adopted because it goes beyond the role limitations…

An international comparison study investigated the organisation and management of continuing higher education (CHE) in Germany, Finland, France, the United Kingdom, Austria and the United States of America. CHE is compared on the system level (boundaries between traditional study programmes and CHE, linking of CHE and vocational training,…

This paper examines the concept of performance support systems in university teaching. In four different studies a performance support system with education elements was built to support students while they learn and work on their assignments. Performance support systems originally originated from business and industry but seem to be very valuable…

This study is a consolidation of the findings acquired in the course of three parallel surveys conducted in France, Italy, and Spain on the impact of new technologies in the telecommunications and administration/office sectors. Data are from an ad hoc interview questionnaire directed at the people in charge of functional areas of the firm and…