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A deteriorating security situation and an increased need for defence equipment calls for new forms of collaboration between Armed Forces and the defence industry. This paper aims to investigate the ways in which the accelerating demand for increased security of supply of equipment and supplies to the Armed Forces requires adaptability in the procurement process that is governed by laws on public procurement (PP).

This paper is based on a review of current literature as well as empirical data obtained through interviews with representatives from the Swedish Defence Materiel Administration and the Swedish defence industry.

Collaboration with the globalized defence industry requires new approaches, where the PP rules make procurement of a safe supply of defence equipment difficult.

The study's empirical data and findings are based on the Swedish context. In order to draw more general conclusions in a defence context, the study should be expanded to cover more nations.

The findings will enable the defence industry and the procurement authorizations to better understand the requirements of Armed Forces, and how to cooperate under applicable legal and regulatory requirements.

The paper extends the extant body of academic knowledge of the security of supply into the defence sector. It serves as a first step towards articulating a call for new approaches to collaboration in defence supply chains.

The existence and growth of research administration in the United States has been largely guided by the requirements imposed on recipients of federal funding and it continues to be influenced by those requirements today. What has changed over the past 80 years is how research administrators learn their craft and share their knowledge, how the profession has moved from mostly male dominated to being largely female, and how their roles expanded. The formation and growth of professional organisations has allowed research administrators to take an active role in development of regulations and policy and to advocate for the profession. The challenges faced by research administrators since the turn of the century have served to show the vital role played by the profession in moving the research enterprise forward.

The total defence (TD) concept constitutes a joint endeavour between the military forces and civil defence structures within a TD state. Logistics is essential for such joint collaboration to work; however, the mismatch between military and civil defence logistics structures poses challenges for such joint collaboration. The purpose of this paper is to identify logistics concept areas within the TD framework that allow for military and civil defence collaborations from a logistics operations perspective.

Pattern-matching analysis is used to compare patterns found in the investigated case with those prescribed from the literature and predicted to occur. The study seeks to identify logistics concepts within TD from the literature and from the events describing the Swedish response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Pattern matching thus allows for the reconciliation of logistics concepts from the literature to descriptions of how the response was handled, albeit under a TD framework.

Findings show quite distinct foci between the theoretical and observational realms in terms of logistics applications. While the theoretical realm identifies four main logistics concepts, the observational realm identifies five logistics conceptual themes. This goes on to show an incongruence between the military and civil parts of the TD.

This study provides basis for further research into the applications and management of logistics activity within TD and emergency response.

Logistics applications within TD have not, until now, received much attention in the literature. Given this knowledge gap, this study is of original value.

I historically compare changes in institutional frameworks creating academic positions linked to temporary employment by analyzing university employment statistics in Chile, Colombia, Germany, and the USA. I find that temporary academic positions were institutionalized through the creation of previously inexistent academic categories called a contrata in Chile, de cátedra in Colombia, “junior professor” without tenure in Germany and “postdoc” in the USA; used in higher education and employment laws since 1989, 1992, 2002, and 1974, respectively. Under institutional frameworks demanding the maximization of students and research, universities have increasingly contracted academics through temporary contracts under rationales that differ between regions. In Colombia and Chile, public university leaders and owners of private universities contract such teaching positions to expand student numbers through lowering costs. In Germany and the USA, employment insecurity is mostly driven by temporary scientific positions under a main rationale of scientific expansion. The share of temporary positions has increased exponentially in Colombia and Germany in recent decades, whereas in the USA there has only been an increase since 2012. Moreover, in Chile, the share of permanent positions has decreased since 2012. The common trend is one of isomorphism of vertical academic structures sharing a pyramidal form, with a wide base of academics working under conditions of contractual insecurity. Such trends follow a rationale for maximization of student numbers as well as administration, and scientific production that is in tension with prioritizing wellbeing and improvement of academics’ working conditions. Yet, in these environments, the institution of tenure in the USA and recent Chilean regulations on accreditation represent mechanisms counteracting precarious employment.

The chapter describes the emergence of the profession in Czechia. The major driver for universities and research and technology organisations (RTOs) was the country’s accession to the European Union (EU) in 2004. The country has a rich system of national research, development, and innovation (R&D&I) funding and EU Framework Programmes are witnessing a slowly growing interest and success of Czech researchers.¹ Yet, the major force in changing the research management and administration (RMA) culture and addressing the need of professionalising the environment of research administration, management, intellectual property rights, and technology transfer (TT) was European Structural and Investment Funds (ESIF). The Czech government repeatedly, through four EU programming periods, stressed the need for investments to reshape the research infrastructure, environment, and conditions on a scale not experienced by the universities or the RTOs ever before. The availability of EU funds and increasing emphasis on international cooperation enabled Czechia to witness slow, yet steady growth of demand to deliver better service in the field of RMA. This is illustrated through several EU-funded projects focussed on RMA skills development and the recent establishment of the Czech Association of Research Managers and Administrators (CZARMA) in 2022 (Masaryk University, 2022a).

This study aims to explore the impact of board size, board gender diversity and federation age on the likelihood of having a female chair in National Sports Federations (NSF).

A quantitative methodology compares 300 sports boards in five countries (Italy, Portugal, Spain, Turkey and the UK), using data collected from NSF’s websites.

The board size and federation age have no significant impact on having a female board chair when the countries and the percentage of female directors are included in the model. When the number of women is measured in absolute value rather than in relative terms, the only variable that predicts a woman chair is the country. When the model does not include country differences, the percentage of female directors is key in predicting a chairwoman, and when the number of women is used as a variable instead of the percentage, a board’s smaller size increases the odds of having a chairwoman.

There are some limitations to this study which we believe provide useful directions for future research. Firstly, the authors have not considered the role of gender typing in sports activities which explains the extent that women participate in specific sports (Sobal and Milgrim, 2019) and the related perception of such sports in society. The social representation of sports activities classified as masculine, feminine or gender-neutral can hypothetically influence women’s access to that specific federations’s leadership. The authors included the country factor only partially, as a control variable, as the social representation of sports usually goes beyond national boundaries.

This study has implications for sport policymakers and stakeholders, and for institutions such as the IOC or the European Union that implement equality policies. If the aim is to increase female presence in the highest position of a sports board and to achieve gender equality more generally, other policies need to be implemented alongside gender quotas for the sports boards, namely, those specifically related to the recruitment and selection of the sports board chairs (Mikkonen et al., 2021). For example, given the implications of critical mass and its ability to increase more female’s engagement then the role of existing chairs acting as mentors and taking initiative in this objective may be warranted. Furthermore, attention should be paid to the existing gender portfolio of each board and its subsequent influence on recruiting a female chair, regardless of the organization’s age. Knoppers et al. (2021) concluded that resistance to gender balance by board members is often related to discriminatory discourses against women. The normalization of the discourses of meritocracy, neoliberalism, silence/passivity about the responsibility of structures and an artificial defence of diversity emphasise that equality should not only be determined by women (Knoppers et al., 2021).

When countries are included in the model, the results suggest that the social representation of a female board member is different from that of a female board chair.

The originality of the study is that it shows the factors that constrain women taking up a chair position on NSFs. Theoretically, it contributes to existing literature by demonstrating how a critical mass of females on boards may also extend to the higher and most powerful position of chair.

In North America, the profession known as ‘research management’ elsewhere across the globe, is often known as ‘research administration’ and encompasses the activities and work associated with developing, administering, accounting for and complying with sponsor requirements, guidelines, procedures, and laws relating to externally funded projects. In the United States and Canada, the expansion of respective federal government agencies and programmes was the major factor for the need and growth of the research administration profession. Initially, administrative and business staff often administered research funding, however over the decades, a fully-fledged profession has evolved with distinct specialisations. Both the United States and Canada now have maturing professions and professional societies to organise and advance research administration. This chapter outlines the chronological origins, growth, and professionalisation of research administration in North America, with a focus on the United States and Canada. Mexico has not yet evolved a formalised research administration infrastructure.

Relations in university settings are becoming more heterogeneous in terms of race, ethnicity, religion, nationality, class, and gender. In South Africa, transformation imperatives have radically changed the complexion of the country’s university campuses but have also entrenched political imperatives in its universities. As a consequence, the university is a highly politicised space. This is not new. What is new is a communication environment characterised by real-time, global networked digital communication and the uptake of digital media platforms (including social media platforms). We explore the effects of politicisation and new modes of communication using the case of a controversial article published in a South Africa journal and the ensuing polemic. Drawing on both institutional theory and Castells’ description of the network society, we conceptualise collegiality along two dimensions: horizontal collegial relations which exist for the purpose of knowledge creation and transfer which, in turn, depends on self-governance according to a taken-for-granted code of conduct; and vertical collegiality which describes collegial relations between academic staff and university management, and which is necessary for the governance of the university as a complex organisation. We conclude that the highly personal nature of communication that is propelled by digital communication has a direct impact on collegial relations within the university. The motivations of both university academic staff and management, as well as the public, extend beyond stimulating collective debate in the service of knowledge production to serving individual and/or ideological agendas as the communication of science becomes politicised. While issues pertaining to collegiality in South Africa may at first glance appear to be unique to the country, we believe that in a globally transforming academy, the South African case may offer novel insights and useful lessons for other highly politicised university systems.

Background: Educational institutions are strategic tools in disseminating knowledge on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) since education is an effective developmental tool. All the 17 SDGs are tied in one way or the other to education, that is, the ability of people to learn and apply. This study applies unorthodox theories which include convergence models, neo-functionalism, intergovernmentalism, neorealism and the Hofstede model to explain how educational institutions are an essential enabling environment which accelerates the attainment of SDGs.

Methods: These factors are analysed in the context of the new coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Empirically, some university case studies were highlighted in addition to unclear modus operandi, small, fragmented and heterogeneous markets and economies, political stability, deficient political will, and lack of standardisation of products and procedures among other factors. These dynamics affect both the quality of educational institutions and the quality of education thereby directly or indirectly affecting the attainment of the 17 SDGs and are compounded with the emergence of the coronavirus pandemic.

Results: The study reveals that acceleration of the 17 SDGs will require a holistic approach as opposed to silos (scientific, economic, political, academic) which usually emerge when pursuing overarching goals of this magnitude.

Conclusions: It concludes that accelerating progress towards the attainment of SDGs will not only require dynamic and visionary leadership but also well-functioning institutions which are based on economic feasibility as opposed to political alliances. Priorities should be placed on addressing poverty, inequality and quality education. Moreover, partnerships will be key in achieving sustainability especially given that the COVID-19 pandemic has compounded existing challenges.