Anecdotal evidence suggests that there is growing concern about increasing administrative burden within universities around the world. At the same time, the literature explicitly devoted to the issue of administrative burden within universities remains relatively scant. Drawing on various bodies of literature and reflections on the situation at…

Universities seeking to establish or expand their research missions in developed countries have at their disposal well-established literature on strategies to foster research capacity in universities. On the contrary, the literature on these processes in the context of developing countries is quite recent and scarce. We offer a descriptive,…

From an understanding of knowledge mobilisation as a set of strategies that favour responsible and inclusive research, the aim of this paper is to identify the obstacles or barriers to carrying out such research in higher education institutions, as perceived by researchers. In this descriptive study, content analysis is used to examine…

Universities face an uncertain funding environment and turbulent marketplace. Financial scenario modelling offers a potential mechanism to assist in navigating a way forward. Our previous paper on UK universities' practice found some variation in the sophistication of the approaches taken, but the overall impression was of a relatively simple…

Under pressure to establish world-class universities, higher education institutions are competing for high-level talent and developing increasingly strict performance assessment mechanisms, which may cause academic staff turnover and potential talent loss. This study focuses on academic staff turnover in the context of reforms to the Chinese…

Academic institutions today are experiencing a legion of security risks that are increasingly impeding their mission of producing high-quality graduates, guarding reason and educational integrity, and ultimately advancing human civilisation. The Enterprise Security Risk Management (ESRM) model represents a potential solution to the dynamic threats…

Globalisation, changes in technology and transportation, and isomorphic trends in the sector emphasise the need to identify the diversity of higher education institutions. As a response, classification mechanisms emerged in higher education in recent decades. While many studies on classification focus on the types and methodology, the examination…

Professional staff in research administration work closely and collaboratively with academic staff. Examining research administrators' work provides a point of entry for investigating research culture in the Canadian Academy. We focus on interviews with 19 research administrators from 5 universities within a larger project on the social production…

There is a growing body of literature on the roles that deans play in challenging times; however, what is often missing are deans' own voices as they reflect on their experiences trying to manage the dilemmas and crises inherent in their work. This is particularly true of the past few years when deans have managed unprecedented levels of…

In more fluid higher education environments, the concept of third space has been developed to explore the activities of groups of staff who do not necessarily fit formal institutional descriptors. This paper draws on qualitative data from 26 respondents, in eight UK universities, who described significant elements of their work as occurring…

The need for universities and industry to collaborate has been well established. In this paper, we present three cases studies, including 14 semi-structured interviews, across a range of disciplines. In the design and analysis of the study, we apply management and political science theories to better understand how stakeholder's motivations…

In 2018, a new governance law ("Ustawa 2.0") modernised the institutional governance of Polish public higher education institutions. This article investigates the governance changes from the cultural perspective of higher education governance through a survey administered to all Polish rectors. Responses were analysed by splitting higher…

Professional staff occupy an essential role in universities, and yet they have received little attention in the existing French literature, despite the considerable changes afoot in academic institutions. Based on qualitative research consisting primarily of 43 semi-structured interviews, this article looks at representations of development…

There is a popular perception that interdisciplinary research collaboration can yield benefits to knowledge production, from improvements to creativity to advances in addressing real-world problems. However, studies into interdisciplinarity frequently point to material obstacles, such as burdensome time and resource requirements, difficulties in…

This case study explores the potential for democratic governance in state-regulated Arab higher education systems focusing on institutional committee members' adoption of deliberative, empowered and participatory evidence-based decision-making practices while engaged in university policy development. Amidst a landscape characterised by the forces…