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To understand whether the public value approach will improve the performance and legitimacy of Italian universities.

The public value approach is used to identify the factors limiting the improvement of the performance of Italian universities over the period 2007–2009. Four cases are analyzed in order to reveal how universities measure and communicate the public value delivered. The evolution of the whole system is analysed in the light of the three paradigms on public administration: traditional public administration, new public management and public value management.

Recent reforms introduced by the Italian government do not facilitate the overcoming of political and organizational constraints, with the exception of a few noteworthy elements. The dominant role of the Ministry of Education in the definition of universities’ strategic goals combined with the great autonomy traditionally granted to the departments and to single academics leave little room for manoeuvre.

The case of the Italian higher education system highlights the importance of the rules of governance for public value production. The analysis shows that the actual governance of the higher education institutions does not favour the construction of a public value proposition by the universities’ managers. This aspect raises the more general question of identifying the necessary conditions for realizing the public value proposition and determining its presence in all public administrations.

This article contributes to the understanding of mechanisms that hinder the capability of public institutions’ to develop their own public value proposition.

The reforms that have been promoted in public organisations in developed countries since the 1970s are said to impose changes in professional bureaucracies by promoting self-governance and institutional autonomy and by challenging professionals’ status and their values and standards. Taking the specific case of Portugal, this paper intends to contribute to understanding to what extent professional bureaucracies, like hospitals and Higher Education Institutions (HEIs), have been affected by changes in state policies and how the professionals involved have responded to these organisational changes. Based on an empirical qualitative study the paper concludes that there are significant differences in the way the state changed the regulatory framework and the professional archetypes in hospitals and HEIs and that professionals give heterogeneous responses to these changes.

The global higher education (HE) sector is increasingly becoming more competitive and has experienced a significant amount of transformation. Within the last 20 years changes occurred within legal frameworks, governing funding schemes, quality assurance systems and apprenticeship programs for industry across a widening range of HE provisions that support the upskilling of the workforce. This chapter shows that, higher education institutions (HEIs) are constantly seeking alternative ways of developing and consolidating new financial streams (partnering with other HEIs, geographical growth and portfolio development) that allow a sustainable development while maintaining high quality standards. The chapter shows that governments and experts believe enterprise-wide risk management (EWRM) can help HEIs reduce risk but also shows that it is not widely implemented in the HE sector.

This chapter critically discusses the implementation of EWRM in the context of a private HEI case study example with the purpose of ensuring business continuity and sustainable growth, while maintaining and enhancing quality standards. The importance of EWRM is discussed and illustrated through the case study research approach where the author analyzes the importance of risk management starting from preparation to program evaluation. This case study review provides a comprehensive and detailed answer as to how adoption of EWRM has been applied through adopting an international standards approach and utilizing the improvement cycle of preparation, plan, do, check and act. The chapter aligns well with the scope of the book as it provides theoretical and practical insights related to EWRM which is very important in assisting HEI governors and leaders in developing resilient and competitive educational establishments.

The UK government has taken the lead in accelerating the capacity of higher education to engage with sustainability accounting and adopting a novel systematic approach toward a collective implementation of and contribution to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The UN SDG 16 “Peace, Justice & Strong Institutions” promotes the (re)building of effective and accountable institutions. In line with the institutional logics metatheory, we provide empirical evidence on how the alignment between social mechanisms alongside the reputation of higher education institutions (HEIs) and SDGs on transparent and responsible service (SDG 16) affect the students' overall experience. Using a sample of 142 UK HEIs, interpretative content analysis and ordinary least squares, the results show that integrating HEIs' responsible-oriented research agenda proactively with high sustainability reputation adds significantly to greater student satisfaction.

The societal role of universities (u-pillar) is a long-standing discussion dividing the education researchers worldwide. Entering the sphere of the eminent Nordic education model (NEM), we aim at grasping its contemporaneity with regard to social value creation (SVC) and to the promotion of equality in education (EiE).

A theoretical review of literature revisits the foundations of the NEM in the light of the postmodern education challenges and the inherent governance practices of higher education institutions (HEIs) in the global eduscape.

One of the oldest HEIs in Denmark, Niels Brock Copenhagen Business College (NBCBC), is here instrumentalized as the target case research. The latter exhibited a sophisticated educational design, oriented toward digital apprenticeship and cumulative proximity to the students’ population of both national and international cohorts.

Case study research undertaken in Spring 2019 uncovered that only a small percentage of a university workforce were able to engage with a large, influential teaching regulation. This “exclusivity” impacted on the relationships in the academic schools studied and by extension, the capacity that the regulation had to enhance teaching. Key findings included the regulatory agenda elevating the status of some workers while increasing the precariousness of others, an inability to agree on a local definition of excellence and general confusion, ambivalence and disdain surrounding structural and cultural changes.

This chapter uses the example of the English Teaching Excellence Framework, a relatively new centrally imposed quality framework, to explore “frontline” professional services staff as policy actors. This chapter will use the study’s findings to explore the complex identities, tensions, and workplace dynamics of staff working to implement regulation locally and provide a reflection of the case study methodology used to expose these findings. In its exploration of the complex reality of policy enactment, I hope to encourage institutions to consider local engagement with regulation by repositioning them within institutional discourse as opportunities rather than threats. This study should speak to those that are navigating HE governance and management to meet commanding central regulation.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the alarming spread of coronavirus (COVID-19) began to shock the world on 31 December 2019, and it was first detected in Wuhan, Hubei, in China when a patient presented with pneumonia. To date, the virus has recorded over 2,088,663 cases worldwide. The impact of COVID-19 would be precisely worrying as it aggravated not only tourism but also the learning behaviour of tourism students. What are the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the learning behaviour of tourism students? What lessons could be learned to make it more sustainable for the students? And finally, what would be the suggested resilient strategies for the tourism students in the post-pandemic era? There is no original study conducted to focalise investigation on revealing the negative characteristics of COVID-19 and the learning curve of university students in Malaysia. However, the main objectives of this chapter are to provide an overview of the effects of COVID-19 in the learning behaviour of tourism students for sustainable education and the factors that distress students' minds and how these helped students to share the positive aspects with others. It is gradually visible that the effects of COVID-19 on learning behaviour and dangers to university students in Malaysia and their significance on students' emotional change or learning behaviours are not well perceived. This chapter recommends that educational institutions produce studies to proliferate and document the pandemic's impact on the educational system. It is crucial for tourism students for sustainable education in the current time.

Corporate governance (CG), initially associated with private organizations, has been adopted by higher education institutions (HEIs). These are being managed more as firms in this post-standardization phase, in which the commercialization of higher education, competition and selective choice, finite resources and sustainable development (SD) have become major requirements for accountability and action. Principles of CG can collaborate and guide the process of making universities sustainable. The chapter analyses the effects of CG on the creation of a culture of sustainability in universities. In doing so, it analyzes the websites of public HEIs in EU-15 countries for a set of social responsibility indicators and investigates the impact and practices of two young Portuguese universities regarding United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals. The results point out that CG and SD principles tend to guide the strategy of most public HEIs in the EU-15, confirming that they have made a commitment to good governance and sustainability.