This article explores the strategic external funding goals and plans of action of Finnish universities of applied sciences (UASs) as articulated in their institutional strategies using the ecology-of-games metaphor. UASs are pressured to expand external funding sources compared to their previous student number-based funding history. The UASs'…

What work strategies must university professors adopt to guarantee the service of higher education and even go beyond the role universities have formally established for them? This article aims to analyze the strategy of job crafting -- specifically, how it influences the job crafting strategies of approach vs. avoidance in prosocial service…

The organization and management of universities have changed radically in recent years and has been the subject of various studies. One line of research that receives little attention, however, is the study of the leadership of university presidents as relevant actors in the academic and administrative management of universities and in the…

One of the goals of China's 'Double First-class' initiative is to boost the top-notch disciplines in those next-to-top universities and allow their differentiated paths towards development. This study investigates Chinese universities' policy interpretations and strategic responses to this national initiative through a social network analysis of…

Universities might aspire to teaching excellence, but do they enable academic teachers to make good teaching decisions? Using a critical realist perspective, a qualitative interview study in England and Australia explored academics' experiences of teaching decisions and their responses to strategic, institutional and departmental teaching policy…

Previous research on knowledge management in universities has focused mainly on a single country. This research contributes by exploring the understanding of senior managers and academics involved in research/and research management and comparing the three KM processes in two countries, Mauritius and South Africa, one with a small and developing…

This paper argues that university strategic positioning is influenced by the organisational dimension, operationalised along the variables of organisational structure, identity and centrality. A comparative case study is presented including two English and two Italian universities and drawing on a set of sixty interviews with academic leaders,…

Strategic agility is seen as a crucial necessity for organizations to achieve superior organizational performance. However, it is uncommon to find a research framework that explains the relationship of strategic agility with its antecedents and organizational performance, especially in the private higher education sector of Malaysia. As such, it…

This paper examines interactions between the presence of top-ranked universities and other conditions that encourage regional competitiveness. Fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) was conducted to assess the combined effect of the conditions. The analysis yields several noteworthy conclusions. First, no single condition is necessary…

There is an increasing reliance on international education agents for student recruitment in Higher Education (HE), but the governance of education agents is under-researched. This study explores contractual governance approaches adopted by HE institutions for managing international education agents in the United States, United Kingdom and…

Several studies in higher education have attempted to study the impact of quality management practices on organisational innovation processes and outcomes in higher education institutions (HEIs). However, there is relatively limited research examining the impact of multidimensional quality management practices (QM-practices) on academics'…

The purpose of this research was to articulate the pressures faced by USA higher education leaders lived experiences and the relationship to problem definition, attention focus, and strategy choice. A conceptual Model of Strategy Choice by Higher Education Leaders is proposed to capture the dynamics between exogenous pressures and problems and…

This article aims to explore the innovation-related qualities of an ideal-type university as perceived by Polish academics at a public university who are characterized by attachment to the tradition of academic self-governance, Humboldtian ideals, autonomy, and academic freedom. The study employs Weberian ideal-type methodology and analyzes…

This paper develops a managerial-influence perspective in the context of e-learning technology in higher education. Drawing on principal-agent theory and the information systems (IS) continuance model, a new research model is developed and tested. The study finds support for the effects of goal congruence between managers and educators and…

The purpose of this article is to analyze the content of mission statements of Spanish public universities and explore two questions: firstly, whether missions differ according to the date they were drawn up, and second, whether their discourse reflects new public management policies proposed by the government. The study covered 47 public…