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This study aims to examine the impact of habitual Facebook use (HFU) on life satisfaction and psychological well-being. In addition, the study examined the impact of life satisfaction on psychological well-being. Moreover, the study investigates the impact of social safeness in moderating the relationship between HFU and life satisfaction.

The study employed a quantitative survey design, using a sample of 261 Generation Y students based in Mthatha, in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. Scales for data collection were operationalized from prior studies. The collected data were analyzed using structural equation modeling.

The study’s results disclosed that HFU positively and significantly impacts life satisfaction and psychological well-being. In addition, life satisfaction positively and significantly impacted psychological well-being. Moreover, the results showed that social safeness had a positive and significant moderating effect on the nexus between HFU and life satisfaction.

This study contributes to understanding HFU as a precursor to life satisfaction and psychological well-being among Generation Y students. Also, evaluating the moderating effect of social safeness contributes to a more thorough understanding of the link between HFU and life satisfaction. Furthermore, this research aims to add to the body of knowledge in Africa’s communication psychology and social media literature, a field that has received little academic attention in developing countries.

The purpose of this paper is to integrate branding and higher education literature to conceptualize, develop, and empirically examine a model of university social augmenters’ brand equity.

Drawing on an empirical survey of 401 undergraduate students enrolled in private universities in Egypt, this study model was tested using structural equation modeling.

The findings reveal that university social augmenters’ reputation, coach-to-student interactions, and student-to-student interactions influence students’ satisfaction with social augmenters. The results also suggest that students satisfied with university social augmenters are more likely to exhibit outcomes of brand equity – namely, brand identification, willingness to recommend, and willingness to incur an additional premium cost.

The results offer managerial implications for university administrators in their quest to enrich students’ university experiences and build strong sub-brands within the university setting. University social augmenters are found to have strong brand equity manifestations and may hold the potential to differentiate university brands in an industry dominated by experience and credence.

This research contributes to the extant literature by filling two gaps in university branding literature. First, previous research has never unified separate streams of literature related to augmented services and brand equity. Second, limited conceptual and empirical research on university branding in general and university social augmentation in particular has been conducted in emerging markets, which has resulted in conceptual ambiguity for the key factors constructing students’ university social experiences.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate and report students’ perception of service quality in a university by examining the perceptual context of service quality with respect to students’ loyalty behavior, image of the university and culture/values.

A research framework is developed for quality assessment with three hypotheses. A questionnaire with 65 instruments was used for gathering the required data for the analysis. The questionnaire was sent through email to all engineering students. The analysis included descriptive statistics, reliability analysis, gap analysis and hypotheses tests. Seven dimensions of service quality were identified: the original dimensions of the SERVQUAL, namely, reliability, responsiveness, assurance, empathy and tangibles. Two additional dimensions image and culture/value were added for the research to understand perceived service quality and loyalty.

The results provide a significant positive correlation between service quality and student's loyalty. It also shows that there is statistically significant relation between the image of the institution and the perceived service quality, and culture/values of the students in the institution and perceived service quality.

This study used data collected from a survey in the university in a given period.

The findings indicate that to provide quality education, meeting students’ needs, wants and expectations of services quality should be carefully understood and addressed. Management also needs to consider factors such as corporate image and culture/value, as they have the ability to heavily impact the type of services provided by the institution.

The findings presented in this paper fill the gap in the current literature by providing empirical knowledge on the quality of service assessment and customer satisfaction in the higher education context. The study is the first of its kind in Qatar’s context and provides opportunities for higher institutions to focus more on current students’ services. This can lead to an increased brand value representing one of the premier institutes of higher education in the Middle East Gulf Region.

Improving service quality, student satisfaction and student loyalty is important to higher education institutions’ sustainable growth. The objectives of this study are a twofold: first, the study seeks to determine the dimensions of higher education service quality with a specific focus on Vietnam. Second, it examines how the service quality dimensions impact student satisfaction and student loyalty, with the moderating role of the university image.

This study followed a rigorous procedure, including interviews, a survey, exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and reliability analysis to identify higher education service quality dimensions and their measures. After that, using the data obtained from 1,550 university students in Vietnam, confirmatory factor analysis was used to validate the identified dimensions and structural equation modeling was used to test a proposed model explaining the outcomes of higher education service quality.

The findings reveal five dimensions of higher education service quality: academic aspect, nonacademic aspect, programming issues, facilities and industry interaction. Most of these factors have a positive influence on student satisfaction. In addition, the university image moderates the positive relationship between student satisfaction and student loyalty.

This study’s findings highlight the complexity of service quality in the higher education context and encourage higher education institutions to improve their service quality in image to enhance student satisfaction and loyalty.

This study suggests a unique measure of higher education service quality dimensions and provides fresh insights into how they impact student satisfaction and loyalty in Vietnam.

The purpose of this paper is to determine the students’ perceptions of an on-campus foodservice operation at an identified historically black college and university (HBCU) and its effect on their satisfaction and dining frequency.

A survey of 685 students was conducted to collect data. Partial least squares based structural equation modeling is used to test the proposed structural model with SmartPLS 3.0.

Results confirm that quality of food, ambience, value for money, food and beverage options and service quality have a positively significant impact on students’ overall satisfaction with the on-campus foodservice operation and dining frequency. As such, all the hypotheses are supported.

These findings indicate that on-campus foodservice operators should focus on quality of food, ambience, value for money, food and beverage options and service quality to achieve student satisfaction. This in turn could positively impact the institution’s reputation, student retention and the marketability of the institution to future students.

This study would help on-campus foodservice operators to better understand the impact of the various elements of foodservice experience which will lead to students’ overall satisfaction and dining frequency, particularly in a HBCU setting.

The paper aims to explore the relationship between the congruence of mental models held by the members of entrepreneurial teams operating in an emerging economy (Poland) and entrepreneurial outcomes (performance and satisfaction).

The data obtained from 18 nascent and 20 established entrepreneurial teams was analysed to answer hypotheses. The research was quantitative and was conducted using an online questionnaire. Data was collected from each of the teams at two stages. Members of entrepreneurial teams were surveyed independently, which allowed measuring the congruence of their mental models pertaining to running a venture.

Findings reveal that team members’ mental model congruence is significantly related to financial performance and members’ satisfaction in the case of established entrepreneurial teams. However, in the case of nascent teams, there is no relationship between analysed variables.

Implications for theory and practice are offered with a special emphasis on entrepreneurship education. The concept of team mental model congruence is proposed to be included in training of nascent entrepreneurial teams, experienced companies and students.

The concept of team mental models investigated by the authors has been underexplored in entrepreneurship research. Results indicate that at least in some entrepreneurial teams, team mental models’ congruence is related to obtained outcomes. The paper proposes that principles of effectuation and causation can serve as the lens through which the mental model pertaining to running a venture can be analysed. It allows expanding studies on the congruence of team mental models in entrepreneurial teams beyond the strategic consensus.

Anyone seeking to influence another is a potential leader. Within higher education, determining what an institution should undertake on sustainability can be daunting. Sustainability leaders face labyrinthine, multifaceted sub-cultures, influencers and viewpoints across staff, students, government, business and alumni all with an opinion on whether, how and in what order of priority sustainability should be taken forward. In this paper we take on this challenge by synthesising and critically evaluating core principles and working models for influencing and leading for sustainability in higher education. We identify a series of eight challenges affecting delivery of sustainability and seek to understand how conceptual models and principles in sustainability decision-making and leadership could address these. We draw on the experience of both authors, in tandem with comments from workshop and leadership training programme participants who attended the Environmental Association for Universities and Colleges (EAUC) Leadership Lab training in the UK, as well as reflections arising in a detailed case study from the University of Edinburgh. We bring key insights from theory and practice for the benefits of individuals or teams seeking to influence and persuade key decision-makers to embrace the sustainability agenda.

This study envisioned plausible influential factors on service quality and academic excellence relatable to graduate self-confidence in an open distance learning (ODL) outlook. The objective was to expose the moderating role of academic excellence (graduate satisfaction) between service quality and self-confidence (engagement, achievement, loyalty and opportunity, EALO). It was also of interest to explore how, in what routines factors involved interrelated.

This study utilized exploratory design. Qualitatively, service quality included acclimation, advising, module, tutorial, assessment, feedback and referral factors. Service quality led to academic excellence (GPA, study length, relevance and recognition). Besides, academic excellence influenced self-confidence. Quantitatively, service quality, academic excellence and self-confidence were the independent, moderating and dependent variables. Respondents were randomly selected through a survey of eligible Universitas Terbuka alumni.

11 hypotheses were assessed under structural-equation modeling (SEM). Responses from 122 out of 500 graduates were completed. Eight hypotheses were validated by the analysis. The tutorial was the most influential factor followed by module, assessment and acclimation; advising, feedback and referral were excluded. Academic excellence also led to self-confidence. The study was able to visualize a substantial role of academic excellence in moderating service quality to EALO. Besides, important-performance analysis and customer-satisfaction index (IPA-CSI) recognized 21 out of 32 attributes as the pillars of academic excellence.

Three of the hypotheses were invalidated by the quantitative analysis. Further inquiry with much broader coverage is then required to diminish the variance to finally find the ideal framework.

Focusing on the adoption of Total Quality Management (TQM) principles in universities, this research paper explores how the “soft” dimensions of TQM trigger its “hard” dimensions considering them at the individual (micro-) and the university (meso-), and eventually at cluster (system-), levels.

Adopting a qualitative approach, this study presents an in-depth, longitudinal case study of University of Siena, one of the oldest Italian universities, that has been at the core of the research-based cluster on vaccines, today converged in the Tuscan Life Science Cluster. In particular, data were collected between 2018 and February 2022 and consists of archival data (press articles, websites, books), nine interviews to key informants, multiyear experience of the Life Sciences sector by two of the authors and other material put at disposal by university offices, and emails. Data analysis relied on a timeline, a coding procedure that considered three levels of analysis (individual, organization and cluster). Finally, the authors looked at the “how” and “why” the emerged themes have contributed to academic excellence.

This paper unveils how “soft” and “hard” sides of TQM are blended across multiple levels for reaching academic excellence. The grounded model emerged enlightens the importance of an individual “soft” dimension, academic passion (composed by its three subdimensions of individual research, teaching and entrepreneurial passion) and also sheds light on the organizational “soft” and “hard” sides that the university has been able to design for encouraging research, teaching and third mission quality. Academic excellence has been possible thanks to the capitalization of the individual and organizational “soft” sides into real outcomes as represented by the organizational and individual “hard” sides.

The paper suggests the importance of TQM principles applied at universities' level, providing an in-depth description of “soft” and “hard” sides dimensions of TQM and their impact on all the three pillars of academic excellence. The study findings suggest implications for managers and professionals in the higher education domain as well as for policymakers emphasizing the importance of supporting the individual and organizational soft sides of TQM. The authors provide practical implications recommending universities to consider not only the organizational dimensions but also individual ones when pursuing higher education excellence. In particular, individual passion plays a crucial role and universities need to identify ways of nurturing it. The authors also recommend policymakers to think about new ways to sustain universities as crucial actors in boosting a cluster development, as well as to consider higher education institutions, especially in more rural areas, as a privileged player not only capable of nurturing academic excellence but also able of creating an internationally renowned cluster.

TQM principles have been intensively analysed from an industrial perspective focusing on manufacturing and services, while this paper focuses on TQM in universities, presenting a grounded model that blends the individual and organizational “soft” and “hard” sides.

Advising systems play an important role not only in the student development process but also in student retention. Academic scholars across the world have been emphasising the presence of an effective student advising system as one of the requirements of a standard educational set up. To ensure student satisfaction with the advising system, institutions conduct satisfaction studies to monitor the effectiveness of their system and to understand key issues such as influencing factors and the association between demographic and influencing variables. The current paper addresses these key issues. A survey was conducted during Fall 2012 with students from across the GCC at three colleges in Muscat, Oman, to identify the factors influencing student satisfaction with advising system. In our study twenty-six variables were formed into five factors. The results show that student satisfaction with the advising systems is highly influenced by ‘feel good’, ‘critical situations’ and ‘IT’ factors. It was also found that satisfaction is independent of gender but not of the education level: lower level students were found to be more satisfied with advising systems than the students at the higher level. Student satisfaction has a significant positive correlation with training/orientation on advising and perceived quickness in solving students’ problems.