With the globalisation of the higher education industry, service quality in the higher education services is seen as a vital factor in determining a university's competitive advantage. The purpose of this study is to extend current conceptualisation of quality research in higher education by investigating the influence of self-determination…

How geographical neighboring competitors influence the strategic price behaviors of universities is still unclear because previous studies assume spatial independence between universities. Using data from the National Center for Education Statistics college navigator dataset, this study shows that the price of one university is spatially…

In this paper we examine the creation and expansion of the English university system. We show how the enormous increase in student numbers, which began with the Robbins Report (1963), led to successive governments cutting universities' funding and compelling them to act more like business enterprises than educational institutions. In turn,…

This article analyses performance dialogs (PDs) in the university context in Finland. These are held annually between employers and employees. The study was carried out to assess the efficacy of this technique. Research methods included an electronic questionnaire over two different years delivered to the whole staff of the Department of Teacher…

When benchmarking its performance, a university is usually considered as a single strategic unit. According to the evidence, however, lower levels within an organisation (such as faculties, departments and schools) play a significant role in institutional governance, affecting the overall performance. In this article, an empirical analysis was…

Higher education systems featuring intense competition have developed world-class universities, capable of attracting top professors and students and considerable public-private funding. This does not occur in non-competitive systems, where highly talented faculty and students are dispersed across all institutions. In such systems, the authors…

In this paper a framework is proposed for the formulation of a higher education institutional (HEI) strategy. This work provides a practical example, through a case study, to demonstrate how the proposed framework can be applied to the issue of formulation of HEI strategy. The proposed hybrid model is based on two operational research…

The aim of this article is to contribute to the scholarly debate on differentiation processes in higher education, particularly in binary systems. The article builds on recent developments in institutional theory and organizational ecology regarding the nature of "organizational forms," as well as on the mechanisms through which these…

This article reports on a study of academic staff perspectives on disciplinary communities and skill development in disciplinary contexts. Fifty-five academic staff were interviewed across eight disciplines in four Australian universities. Responses of historians and mathematicians are the focus of this article. A socio-constructivist framework…

The paper explores two universities' strategies of impact and engagement and their perceptions by local economic and policy stakeholders in a post-industrial city of Scotland. The concept of structural embeddedness is used to unpack the logics and repertoires of action of local universities and to relate discourses and actions to the nature…

This article draws on the multi-theoretical approach to governance and a qualitative research method to examine the extent to which the corporate approach is practised in Australian public universities. The findings reveal that in meeting the needs of multiple stakeholders, universities are faced with a number of structural, legalistic, and…

The article focuses on the effects of management-by-results from the perspective of the work motivation of university employees. The study is based on extensive survey data among employees at Finnish universities. According to the results, performance measurement is based on quantitative rather than qualitative measures, and the current…

This article briefly overviews the student movement working for political democratisation during the authoritarian governments in South Korea. The article focuses on how student activism has changed as a reflection of political developments from the dictatorship through to the civilian democratic governments. Further, it analyses how tuition-fee…

Following the trend of many comparable countries, Australian universities are now part of a massified system which is a significant contributor to the national economy. The commercial university is solicitous as to its product and its position in the market, but must also navigate the regulatory environment. Uncontrollable aspects of the…

The aim of this paper is to identify key challenges facing Japan's higher education since the early 1990s and their impacts on major research themes. In this paper key challenges include those resulting from the decline in the 18-year population, the cultivation of high-quality university graduates, the incorporation of national universities,…