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This chapter qualitatively explored the impact of including parent liaisons (i.e., parents with lived experience caring for a child with complex needs, who support other caregivers in navigating child and family needs) in a case conferencing model for children with complex medical/social needs. Case conferences are used to address fragmented care, shared decision-making, and set patient-centered goals. Seventeen semi-structured interviews were conducted with clinicians and parent liaisons to assess the involvement of parent liaisons in case conferencing. Two main themes included benefits of parent liaison involvement (10 subthemes) and challenges to parent liaison involvement (5 subthemes). Clinicians reported that liaison participation and support of patients reduced stress for clinicians as well as family members. Challenges to liaison involvement included clinical team/parent liaison communication delays, which were further exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Parent liaison involvement in case conferences is perceived to be beneficial to children with complex needs, their families, and the clinical team. Integration of liaisons ensures the familial perspective is included in clinical goal setting.

Research management is slowly being recognised as a profession in Iceland as demands from funders and quality assurance have increased. The Icelandic research community is very small and funding for research is limited. The development of the profession in Iceland is tightly connected to international cooperation in research and participation in international programmes, in particular, the EU framework programmes. This participation has increased the administrative burden on researchers and shown the need for a specific profession that manages all other aspects of the research enterprise. This has slowly developed from being mostly financial management of grants into complete research management from idea to impact. A pivotal moment for research management in Iceland was the founding of ICEARMA in 2012, which has put a spotlight on the role of research managers within institutions, and led to most major research institutions hiring a designated research manager. This has also increased cooperation within the community.

This chapter discusses the proposed integrated sustainable road infrastructure project implementation (ISRIPI) model and its constructs and sub-constructs, as well as public participation (PP), climate change response (CCR), and stakeholder management (SM). CEEQUAL was the most comprehensive rating system, with 11 criteria. Lim (2009) and Ugwu and Haupt (2007) were the most thorough studies examining sustainability models for infrastructure projects, focussing on social and cultural sustainability (SCS), economic sustainability (ES), environmental sustainability (EnS), institutional sustainability (IS), health and safety (HS), project management (PM), resource utilization and management (RUM), and engineering performance (EP). The Brundtland Report and Rio Summit defined social sustainability as the right to a decent standard of living, social justice between generations, within generations, and around the world. Thin (2002) showed social justice, unity, investment, and safety as aspects of society. Rosenström et al. (2006) defined social qualities as objects that make people happy. Cultural sustainability is access to cultural assets for current and future generations, and cultural legacy is the collection of physical signals passed on from the past to each civilization and, by extension, to all humans. EnS seeks to reduce the environmental impact of road infrastructure projects. Sustainable road infrastructure project implementation (SRIPI) must consider PM issues such as delivery system, risks, duration, performance assessment, sustainability clauses, and contract type. Quality control systems must be set up to ensure the optimum utilization and management of resources in SRIPI. EP criteria measure sustainable road infrastructure projects’ (SRIP) durability, quality, resilience, adaptability, functionality, carrying capacity, and robustness. This research developed an SRIPI model based on the models of CEEQUAL, Lim (2009), and Ugwu and Haupt (2007). The hypothesized framework consists of 37 SRIPI factors, including SCS, ES, IS, HS, PM, RUM, EP, CCR, PP, and SM. It projected the analytical authority of these constructs in the success of SRIPs to test whether the realization of SRIPI outcomes depends on the supposed indicators of the variables. SRIPI is a multidimensional structure composed of 11 latent variables, derived from literature review and Delphi study findings.

A Delphi study was conducted to identify the critical variables of successful implementation of sustainable road infrastructure projects (SRIPs) in developing countries, determine the reasons for the various viewpoints held by infrastructure development professionals, determine what motivates and pushes the infrastructure sector to pursue sustainability, and determine the factors that could impact the implementation of a project for sustainable road infrastructure. Expert feedback was used to determine values for these metrics and indicators, and most of the panellists reached a consensus on the final decision. Statistical methods were used to determine whether there was a general agreement with respect to the statements and questions asked. The findings of the study were presented alongside its overarching principles. The most important criteria for SRIP implementation were socio-cultural sustainability, economic sustainability, environmental sustainability, and engineering performance, with little consensus on environmental sustainability and public participation. The primary purpose of this study was to identify the most crucial determinants of effective SRIP implementation in low-income nations. Interquartile deviation (IQD) values ranged from 7.0 to 8.1, but IQD values varied from 2.00 to 3.00. Thirty-one environmental sustainability indicators were assessed as important or very important, with 26 out of 30 having IQD values between 0.00 and 1.00. Six sub-attributes were deemed extremely significant and four important when experts examined institutional sustainability, with no consensus on the final four indications (IQD 1). Fourteen of twenty-one Public Participation Indicators were deemed ‘major’ by panellists for SRIP implementation, with consensus among experts. Ten factors contribute to diverse perceptions of sustainability, with only 2 deemed crucial and 18 deemed important. The four most essential indicators of successful SRIP implementation are VHI: 9–10). The other seven criteria were crucial because their median scores were between 7.00 and 10. The Delphi survey explained why various individuals in the infrastructure industry have divergent views on what it means to be sustainable. Twenty-one factors were identified as contributors to divergent perspectives on sustainability among infrastructure industry stakeholders. The Delphi survey also established the factors that affect the success of SRIP implementation in low-income countries, leading to the development of the conceptual SRIPI model.

Finland aims to increase its research and development (R&D) expenditure to 4% of gross domestic product (GDP) by 2030. The parliamentary working group proposed to advance Finland’s research, development and innovation objectives which are now strongly committed by the Finnish government. This will allow universities to invest in the research and innovation not only more in the future but also in the long-term and sustainable way.

This would also provide opportunities and challenge the national research management and administration (RMA) community to develop the RMA profession, not only to increase the number of RMAs, but also to better meet the more diverse and complex tasks of the future RMA profession. Finn-ARMA creates a good platform for co-operation between RMAs in various positions and for the professionalisation of the current community and its future new members.

Incorporating the voice of older adults into all phases of research has the potential to make findings more relevant and impactful. Beyond the direct benefit, researchers have an ethical obligation to elicit the contributions of older adults into their work. Recently, organizations such as the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute in the United States, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the National Institute of Health Research in the United Kingdom have stepped up to accelerate the incorporation of public and patient voice into research, resulting in innovative engagement strategies for involving stakeholders, including older adults in research. However, those who are physically and mentally capable are more often included in research than those with multiple chronic conditions or living with disabilities. The ability to incorporate older adult voice into research is possible and has provided tangible benefits to researchers. Older adults have expertise based on their lived experiences that can provide invaluable insights on how to conduct research with real-world applications. Programmes such as the Bureau of Sages have worked to implement and disseminate best practices and guidelines for incorporating the voice of older adults into research. Principles for engaging older adults include flexibility, mutual engagement of the older adult and the researcher, time for rapport building and partner development and increased focus on accessibility. By working to understand these principles and overcome challenges to incorporating older adult voice into research, research will be more meaningful and relevant to the public, and will inherently include a focus on translation of research into practice.

In this chapter, we show the development of the Dutch research funding support during the past 40 years. As well as the evolution of the research funding ecosystem in science and innovation.

We show where Research Managers and Administrators (RMAs) started, how they developed and which developments in the research and innovation policy coincides with those origins and developments. Especially showing the exponential development of RMA in the past 10 years. The past and current situation in the Netherlands is distinctive due to the history behind the professionalisation of the profession.

This chapter aims to explore the novelty and utility of political economy discourse, termed “neo-statism,” as an analytical lens for comparative research in higher education. Analysis is framed within the context of Hong Kong’s transition from a British colony to a Special Administrative Region under China’s sovereignty, and its shifting academic paradigms from a more or less spontaneous philosophy rooted in liberal capitalist economy to embracing neo-statism, which involves market-conforming and state-sponsored approaches to economic and social restructuring whereby the state regulates higher education in support of national integration and global power projection. The statist regulation depends heavily on its deployment of discursive legitimacy, strategic distribution of resources, organizational synergy, and elite cohesion articulated through higher education policy, research projects, and cross-border academic exchange and cooperation. The Hong Kong case suggests that comparative research in higher education should advance from the methodological aspects of the comparative approach to exploring wider theoretical spectrum, for understanding emerging politico-economic factors shaping academic paradigm in comparative contexts. Moreover, scholars who engage in the trendy internationalization in higher education should move beyond the logics of neo-liberalism, and pay closer attention to the new geopolitical realities that are changing the normative and interactive dimensions of international higher education at large.

Although universities have been decentralized for academic freedom and autonomy, resources are being increasingly centralized, and the role of central administration is growing for efficiency and excellence reasons. At the same time, a division of labor is progressing by assigning specific tasks to professionals. The professionals are also centrally managed. Educational development was introduced by central administration to cope with the massification and quality assurance of higher education. Although it played a great part in promoting educational reform, it also suffered from the rejection of academics and the lack of methodology. Unlike ITC service and student service, educational development touches the autonomy of academics and is always torn between the central administration and academics. This chapter analyzes the structural and cultural difficulty of educational development in Japan by tracing its historical development and by comparing to other countries.