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This study aims, first of all, to analyze the extent to which Italian higher education institutions declare their mission statements in their official documents; then, to examine their content; and finally, to investigate whether mission statements include considerations on sustainability dimensions.

After a theoretical background on the new strategic approach adopted by higher education institutions and the related disclosure of their mission statements, the study deepens their sustainable perspective presenting the concepts of social engagement and knowledge transfer from a literary point of view. Then, a documentary analysis on the content of Italian universities’ official mission declarations will be conducted, to understand the role they play in society, by individuating their actual interest in sustainable dimensions.

Findings suggest that 36% of the 98 Italian universities state their engagement in societal issues, but only 3 of them mention sustainability targets in their mission declarations.

The study is limited, exclusively based on what higher education institutions share and, in terms of future perspective, the aim can be to investigate further official documents, especially for what concerns sustainability reports.

Practical implications regard the denounce of weak attention paid by Italian universities to sustainability, with the aim to foster them to increase connections with the external world, aware of the centrality of their role within society.

In a context that is not yet completely investigated, the originality of the paper regards the intent to study the sustainable propensity that characterizes the Italian higher education system.

Leaders at higher education institutions (HEIs) in the USA experience substantial pressure to contain costs while advancing their educational missions. The purpose of this paper is to explore the association between publicly stated academic cost-containment objectives found in HEI’s strategic plans and mission statements, which help to unify stakeholders and link strategy to an organization’s purpose.

This paper analyzes mission statements and strategic plans of 57 small, private HEIs in the Northeastern USA. HEIs in this sample published strategic plans with an explicit cost-containment goal. Mission statements were analyzed for readability. Thematic analysis was conducted using the balanced scorecard approach. Associations between a stated academic cost containment goal and mission statement themes are presented using logistic regression.

Mission statements of HEIs focused on academic cost containment are wordier and more varied. They tend not to mention “liberal arts,” a potential signal of a high-quality, high-cost school; less selective schools may be more likely to emphasize academic cost cutting.

This paper contributes to the literature demonstrating mission statements’ role in goal setting. Further, it considers college costs from college administrators’ perspectives. Given the small sample size, future work should expand the sample and use case studies to explore how mission shapes or constrains strategic objectives.

This is the first paper using qualitative and quantitative analysis to explore the association between the mission statements of small HEIs and academic cost containment goals in strategic plans, documents intended to support differentiation in a crowded market.

Academic institutions struggle to differentiate themselves in the eyes of prospective students. Schools use their institutional missions to communicate their unique purposes and goals with core constituencies, but often the mission is not shared during recruitment. Academic libraries can assist in recruiting students by communicating the institution's mission through their collections. This paper aims to focus on the efforts of Brigham Young University's L. Tom Perry Special Collections.

This case study examines the approach of Brigham Young University's L. Tom Perry Special Collections, which has worked with its campus admissions office by serving as a stop on campus tours for high‐priority academic and athletic recruits.

These tour sessions are more than just quick show‐and‐tell sessions; they are opportunities to discuss the university's unique “Aims of a BYU Education”.

The case study provides new perspectives on how academic libraries can demonstrate value by tying their services and collections to recruitment efforts and to the mission of their parent institutions.

A service learning (SL) course is carried out at higher education institutions in cooperation with community partners to facilitate the development of students’ civic engagement. It consists of several phases, including the identification of a social need; the development and implementation of a concept to meet that need; and, above all, the reflection of this experience. In practice, however, the concept takes different forms with diverging goals. In this chapter, we map out the framework conditions and institutional contexts in which SL courses are based at the University for Continuing Education Krems (Austria) and the Babes-Bolyai University (Romania). We focus on the extent to which SL has become integrated within the policy and practice of every university and illustrate how corresponding circumstances, such as specific characteristics of the faculty and the student population, lead to different variations. In some cases, that context does not support the articulation of a shared understanding around the purpose and practice of SL. We therefore draw on critical reflections collected through interviews with module leaders to describe courses with SL components from both institutions. Ultimately, more needs to be done within each institution to put in place the necessary resources and support systems for the articulation of shared understandings. Some of these challenges must be understood in a broader institutional context in which the courses are located, which is why we include general and specific recommendations to create favorable conditions for the institutionalization of SL in the last part of the paper.

Investors balked when JP Morgan Chase bank planned to spend heavily on technology. They understood that to succeed in digital, JPM needs to base its strategy on what unique benefits customers will get now and in the future from its digital banking services.

JPM must rethink how banking can be re-invented to improve customers’ lives, using the new capabilities of digital.

Because of its lack of a customer focus, JPM’s market capitalization is not only growing more slowly than the tech giants, it is growing even more slowly even than the average S%P 500 company.

The lesson is that companies with a customer primacy mission statement and a supporting, well designed investment strategy, out perform their peers.

The article links customer primacy mission statements, future oriented tech investment strategies and successful corporate growth.

Examines the impact of organisational culture on the responses of one group of professionals to change processes. Draws upon literature relating to policy implementation and organisational behaviour, in order to gain abetter understanding of the power and processes associated with the impact of culture on professional employees. The context of the study is an analysis of the responses of academics within Australian universities to changes resulting from the implementation of policies affecting teaching decision making and practices. Recent policy changes affecting the accessibility to resourcing and operations of academics’ three functions – teaching, research and community service – has provided the impetus for organisational change. To assure the quality of teaching to a growing and increasingly diverse student population, a quality initiative was implemented. This study examined the impact of organisational culture on academics’ responses to its implementation. The findings suggest that despite significant reform aimed at changing the work practices of all professional employees, senior academics undertaking management tasks still have some power to mediate the way organisational changes are implemented within the faculties. One contributory factor may be the existence of a well‐established organisational and professional culture.

In organizations that have to meet demands from multiple sponsors, and that mix missions from different spheres, such as “civic,” “market,” “family,” how do participants orient themselves, so they can interact appropriately? Do participants’ practical navigation techniques have unintended consequences? To address these two questions, the authors draw on an ethnography of US youth programs whose sponsors required multiple, conflicting logics, speed, and precise documentation. The authors develop a concept, navigation techniques: participants’ shared unspoken methods of orienting themselves and appearing to meet demands from multiple logics, in institutionally complex projects that require frequent documentation. These techniques’ often have unintended consequences.

Of the 105 historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs), there are 6 that have instituted a campus women's center: three women's research and resource centers including Spelman College (SC) in Georgia, Bennett College (BC) in North Carolina, and Howard University (HU) in Washington, DC; and 3 women's centers including North Carolina Central University (NCCU) in Durham, Lincoln University (LU) in Pennsylvania, and Tennessee State University (TSU) in Nashville. Women's centers at HBCUs are a sphere of community, support, intellectual capital, and critical service for Black women in the United States. According to Ross (2003)The literature acknowledges that black women have had the heaviest burden to bear within the African American community. If we contemplate the history of African American women from the period of slavery, we can easily claim that they have endured the greatest suffering of any group of people in American history. African American women should be studied within the context of their silent suffering and courageous overcoming. (p. 2)

Higher education is increasingly being scrutinised and discourse centred on its usefulness to stakeholders. In 1992, the University for Development Studies (UDS) was established in Northern Ghana with a mission to engage with local communities to develop the area. This paper aims to understand the quality perspective of the university within the contexts of the needs of its catchment community and quality requirements of other stakeholders guided by issues arising from the questions of who really should define quality, in what context, for whose benefit, and with whose resources.

The paper takes a qualitative approach using semi‐structured interviews, documentary and artefacts to generate data from the UDS.

Although donors play a crucial role in ensuring quality, the findings suggest that the basis for any effective quality should move beyond the traditional precepts to make it reflect local needs and realities within an international context guided by effective quality monitory and evaluation mechanisms.

The paper provides practical suggestions of appropriate quality assurance models for higher education institutions in the developing world.

The paper identifies some quality dilemmas in higher education in developing contexts.

Higher education institutions (HEIs) must take on a leadership role in building a sustainable world, given their responsibility for preparing future professionals and leaders worldwide and considering the role they provide to society. To accomplish this goal, HEIs need to holistically embody sustainability in everything they develop. This study aims to help HEIs in this purpose by developing a method to integrate sustainability into the strategic planning process in these institutions.

In the first stage, the method was developed based on papers selected through a systematic literature review. The proposed method was then applied in a Brazilian HEI to validate and adjust it.

A method that adopts a participatory process to integrate sustainability into HEIs’ strategic planning was proposed.

This study provides university leaders with a simple and practical method to aid with elaborating on strategic plans for holistic sustainability integration.

This study uniquely applied a framework called “HEIs sustainability action archetypes” as the foundation for selecting sustainable objectives, goals and actions to be integrated into these institutions’ strategic planning.