In 2010, a comprehensive reform required Italian state universities to restructure their institutional governance by revising their statutes. This interpretative paper aims to evaluate whether the Italian reform is congruent with its declarations, examine the variations in the implementation within the same country of a unitary national regulation…

Portuguese public higher education institutions have been undergoing a major reform process since 2007. The most noticeable changes were introduced by Law 62/2007, which gave higher education institutions the option to choose between two different institutional models (foundational and public institute), and allowed the implementation of new…

This study compares the explanatory power of two models of academic governance: dual and managerial control. The research is based on characterizations by chief academic officers of the primary decision-makers involved in 13 types of recurrent academic decisions. We examine change between responses to surveys fielded to US four-year colleges and…

Collegiality and managerialism are often portrayed as opposed ideas or practices, with the latter, in particular, either held up as a necessary response to the massification of higher education or portrayed as a betrayal of long-held academic ideals (as supposedly reflected in collegiality). This article explores how collegiality and managerialism…

The leadership literature distinguishes two modes of governance, which can also be applied to the governance of universities: transactional and transformational. Transactional governance encompasses all forms of managerial governance, including selective incentives and monitoring capacity. The theoretical underpinning of this mode can be found in…

Despite considerable international literature acknowledging issues associated with the effectiveness of university academic boards (also known as academic senates or faculty senates), there is little current empirical research exploring why difficulties might exist and what (if anything) might be done about them. This article reports the findings…

Recent changes in European higher education have accompanied a strong desire and need by national ministries to have comparable data across institutions and a growing recognition from campus leaders that effective planning and decision-making requires reliable institutional data and analyses. This has induced changes and restructuring of duties…

Middle-level academic managers play a central role in university management; however, their roles are not always clear and straightforward. Although this research subject has been comprehensively investigated in the last 40 years, most studies are western-biased. This study examines the roles of Heads of Department in a newly established…

This article compares the national-level requirements for master degree provision in England, Denmark and Portugal following the implementation of the Bologna Process, and ponders upon the reconcilability of these requirements in cross-national initiatives (e.g. joint degrees). In all three countries, master degrees have to comply with the…

This study reports on the steering of a self-access learning center in a Japanese university by its "middle management" committee over the first years of its operation. Middle management practice was informed by an ethnographic archive of various facets of center use, particularly concerning language policy and curriculum integration, issues about…

This study aims to develop a conceptual model of the wider influencing forces impacting the governance paradigms of public universities. It draws on the multi-theoretical governance concept and seeks to identify these forces through the lens of chief audit executives using a qualitative research approach. The interview data supported by published…

With the passage of the 1992 Further and Higher Education Act the British system of higher education formally moved from a binary to a unitary structure. However, ever since successive governments have argued for a diversified model of higher education within which institutions should pursue contrasting goals. This article offers an interpretation…

Significant changes in the policies of higher education in Vietnam have changed the structure and governance of the system since the mid-1990s. The most commonly agreed-upon positive outcome of the governance renovation process is that the formation of a nationwide quality assurance scheme, which is stimulated by accreditation, in the higher…

Mergers are part of the historical fabric of US higher education. However, the current economic recession and other policy issues have experts and academicians predicting an increase in higher education mergers in the USA. Consequently, this study analysed the discursive "policy logics" surrounding merger negotiations in US higher education. The…

This paper addresses the question of what potential success factors are relevant when developing and managing higher education-business partnerships. To shed light on this question, the paper presents a review of research literature on the possible success factors in university-industry relations. To shed further light on the factors identified in…