Research integrity is fundamental to the validity and reliability of scientific findings, and for ethical conduct of research. As part of PRINTEGER (Promoting Integrity as an Integral Dimension of Excellence in Research), this study explores the views of researchers, research managers, administrators, and governance advisors in Estonia, Italy,…

Purpose: Higher education (HE) institutions can play a fundamental role in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. However, universities often face various obstacles to sustainability management, leading to a lack of strategies for implementing governance for sustainability (GFS). The purpose of this paper is to propose a model, based on work…

Although recent reforms of higher education (HE) across Europe have involved reconfigurations of internal governance structures, little research has been conducted on the characteristics and practices of governing bodies and their impact on performance. In particular, more empirical evidence is required on the composition of the board of…

Schools are a complex system made up of not only relationships, infrastructures, and challenges, but also constraints. It seems essential that schools, as complex organizations, work in synergy, according to a shared vision with all the actors involved in the educational process. School management is now part of a process that is increasingly…

This book discusses national school policy reforms in a number of key European countries and shows how these are framed in transnational collaborations that meet with national particularities and contestations. It gives an overview of school policy developments that represents the diversity of Europe within a comparative framework. It takes point…

The 2023 edition of the European University Association's Autonomy Scorecard, the most comprehensive yet, provides a full comparative analysis of the state of play of university autonomy in 35 higher education systems in Europe. For the first time, each profile better contextualises the higher education landscape via a dedicated section, along…

New public management (NPM) has dominated the reforms in the higher education sector and the academic discussion on how universities should be governed since the 1980s. Besides, the introduction of accountability and efficiency measures in the form of performance measurement and pay-for-performance scheme, a key debated aspect of NPM is the…

Preschool education is an education process that prepares children for primary education, provides the training and upbringing conditions in the home and also aims to remove the inequalities in terms of language and society in the early period. The audit is to evaluate learning and all the factors that affect learning and also prepare the…

Purpose: This study aims to investigate the stakeholders' (employers and students) involvement in economics and management programs quality assurance in Italian universities from the external audit perspective. Design/methodology/approach: The research tests if employers are positively associated with the coherence between program objectives and…

Purpose: This paper aims to systematically review the university social responsibility (USR) implementation from the empirical studies, which published during the period from 2004 to 2020. Design/methodology/approach: The bibliometric method has been employed to review prior empirical research on higher education social responsibility topics.…

Accreditation is a main pillar for the educational sector and its quality assurance system. The aim of this article is to study how corporate governance affects the responsiveness of public and private organisations to adopting new accreditation standards. The survey was conducted on a sample of more than 500 vocational education and training…

Higher education institutions (HEIs) are more critical than ever to help societies respond to the complex challenges of our times. Recognising that these challenges require HEIs to adopt holistic innovations in teaching, research and collaboration activities, the European Commission (EC) and the OECD have developed the HEInnovate guiding…

This chapter outlines the Italian rejoinder to the Youth Guarantee (YG) by paying due attention to the way in which it is embedded in the national context, historically characterised by high rate of unemployment, economic and financial backwardness and deep territorial differences between the Southern regions and the Northern, more productive.…

The Program of Intervention for Prevention of Institutionalization (P.I.P.P.I.) is a programme that integrates research, training, and intervention in working with families living in vulnerable situations. It is funded by the Italian Ministry of Welfare and, since 2011, has cumulatively involved roughly 8000 professionals from Social and Health…

This paper takes a policy-analytical perspective on the evolution of standards of research information (RI) and provides a framework for analysing processes of RI standardisation in different research systems. It focuses on the choice of policy instruments on the macro level (government) and their effects with regard to policy reactions, decisions…