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The involvement of stakeholders such as employers, alumni, and students has always been considered a key element in improving the higher education (HE) system. While considering stakeholders as key players in serving the market and in improving HE instruction, a two-sided collaborative involvement should aim at satisfying the mutual interests and overcoming existing barriers. Quality assurance systems have always supported crossing these barriers to link with the external stakeholders. However, many of the external quality assurance agencies (EQA) in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region specify a group of external holders, limiting the various types of key stakeholders needed to enhance the academic programs. On the other hand, there are encountered risks in involving stakeholders if left with no objective guidance, especially that quality agencies are formidably urging the universities to consider the external stakeholders’ inputs to satisfy the quality assurance standards. The main objective of this chapter is to investigate the types of stakeholders’ and their levels of involvement within the local higher education institutions (HEIs). The chapter aims to provide an insight to invest in this involvement and utilize it to further improve the programs and their graduate attributes and suggests actions that would proficiently and truly enhance the involvement of external stakeholders. The outcomes of this chapter are expected to guide the EQAs and the HEIs to develop new practices in involving stakeholders, such as curriculum input, collegiate internships, aligning graduate attributes to market needs, financial support through endowments, professional development, and partnerships in service-level agreements.

This chapter presents and analyses the application of the novel version of the Intertwining Model in two tourist destinations which are strongly and successfully related to Christmas events and products in Brazil and in Finland. This analysis serves as an attempt to monitor the process of tourism development taking into account the policies implemented through time and the inter-relations between them, from the destinations' vocation for Christmas tourism. This analysis identifies stages in the evolution of public policies and their relationship to the networks of different actors, at the phases of development. This chapter confirms that as the model indicates, stakeholders have multiple roles.

Organizational theorists and strategy scholars are both interested in how organizations deal with ambiguity, especially in relation to implementation. This chapter examines one source of ambiguity that organizations face, which is based on their efforts to implement moral mandates. These mandates, which are related to areas such as environmental sustainability and diversity, are inherently ambiguous, as they lack a shared understanding regarding their scope and associated practices. They are also often broad and systemic and may be unclearly aligned with an organization's strategy. Due to these challenges, in this chapter, we theorize that collective action at the field level is necessary for organizations to advance and concretize moral mandates. We examine this theorizing through the case of the implementation of sustainability in higher education. We hypothesize and find support for the idea that when an organization's members engage in collective action at the field level, those organizations have an increased likelihood of achieving sustainability implementation. To gain insight into this field-to-organization relationship, we qualitatively examine 18 years of conversations from an online forum to develop a process model of moral mandate implementation. We theorize that collective action functions as a field-configuring space, in which actors from a variety of organizations come together to (1) refine the scope of the mandate and (2) create an implementation repertoire that actors can draw on when seeking to bring sustainability to their own organizations. Overall, our study provides a model of how ambiguous moral mandates can be implemented by highlighting the important role of collective action across organizations in concretizing those mandates and providing actors with the tools for their implementation.

The aim of this chapter is to stimulate debate and critical thinking about the relevance and effectiveness – especially for ‘non-core’ areas – of prevailing methodological approaches to entrepreneurial ecosystems (EE) research and policy development and to argue for the exploration of critical realism (CR) as a potential framework for researchers, practitioners and policymakers. I argue that prevailing theoretical and methodological frameworks are insufficient to enable researchers to adequately understand the dynamics of diverse EE or for policymakers to act appropriately on research findings. I posit CR as an alternative framework, providing a ‘lens’ through which researchers, policymakers and other ecosystem stakeholders can collaboratively explore the role of context and its interplay with agency. CR addresses the disadvantages associated with deterministic models of entrepreneurship and ‘Valley envy’ policy prescriptions, thus generating more meaningful insights for policy and practice, especially in relation to ‘non-core’ areas.

The pursuit of sustainable development goals (SDGs) is the primary driver of road infrastructure development (RID), but multiple parties are involved in the process, causing confusion. To effectively manage stakeholder processes, Jeffry (2009) proposed a framework based on a preventative double-path relationship between stakeholders and institutions. Bal et al. (2013) proposed a five-stage framework for stakeholder management, which includes identifying key players and issues, conducting analysis and plans, tightening restraints on making promises, creating a plan and soliciting input from interested parties, and monitoring its effectiveness. Successful stakeholder management for sustainable road infrastructure project (SRIP) implementation has been shown to have several benefits, such as enhanced understanding of the fiscal position, improving status, building relationships, developing trust, and enduring collaborative relationships, distributing skills and practices, and recognizing and mitigating threats and vulnerabilities. Infrastructure projects involving roads include a range of complex activities, and it is essential for infrastructure projects to evaluate potential project partners prior to making a final decision. Dealing with many stakeholders and maintaining a reasonable degree of concordance between their interests is crucial for fruitful endeavours. It is important for project groups and partners to have a shared understanding of the project’s goals and solicit their input and for a precise approach to identify and manage project partners throughout the execution phase. However, RID is still in its infancy when it comes to managing stakeholders and relationships. Stakeholder management has been ad hoc due to a lack of standardized methodologies, approaches, strategies, and processes, and infrastructure development procedures should include a systematic approach to managing stakeholders. The bulk of SRIP implementation needs come from stakeholders, making project partners crucial. The sustainable development (SD) strategy emphasizes the importance of SRIP execution to stakeholders, such as architects, quantity surveyors, conservationists, environmentalists, regional managers, project managers, suppliers, subcontractors, and sustainability consultants. This section of the research addressed the omissions of previously analysed comprehensive factors in SID models and frameworks, including climate change response, public involvement, and stakeholder management. Strategies for filling these gaps were discussed. An analysis of relevant academic literature was conducted.

This chapter of the book aims to achieve sustainability and productivity in light of the interaction between managers and engineers in a lean and agile supply chain management system in today’s organizations. The main innovation of this chapter is the use of the balanced scorecard (BSC) model and fuzzy analysis network process (FANP) to create a suitable platform for the realization of this interaction between managers and engineers and to identify exactly which expert system is ideal for the main purpose. Indeed, this chapter introduces its readers to the application of strategic management tools such as the BSC accompanied by FANP in the elements of supply chain management where data analysis of lean and agile networks in supply chain management can create a competitive advantage in the organization.

The speed of integration has been a salient and longstanding topic in the literature on managing mergers and acquisitions. Yet over the decades, speed has also been the subject of extensive debate. While many have advocated for fast integration, others have recommended a more measured pace. In this chapter, the authors reflect on the discussion by canvasing the variety of views on the speed of integration. The work is positioned at the nexus of the literature on mergers with that on stakeholders, in particular its attention to urgency in stakeholder management. It approaches urgency in mergers and acquisitions as a “dilemma of stake,” a new lens on a well-established but challenging topic. The study draws on ethnographic research to examine accounts of speed of integration in a New Zealand public sector merger. The chapter juxtaposes varied views on the topic against the respective arguments within the merger literature. It examines the overarching themes of “go slow” and the “need for speed” by attending to the tensions between a prosocial service ethos on the one hand and a managerialist ethos on the other. The explication of the respective dilemmas of stake shows how participants articulate their views on urgency both in terms of its effects on their individual professional role, their own stake, as well as in terms of the effects on employees as internal stakeholders. The analysis also explores the role of internal and external context in shaping the views on urgency in merger integration. The work concludes by outlining an agenda for future research.

This chapter explores how industrial PhD students are engaged in authentic leadership processes while coping with challenges through self-leadership. The authors illustrate how self-leadership can be a helpful approach to managing the leading-and-being-led dilemma. They argue that self-leadership is a process of goal achievement in collaboration with key stakeholders and, therefore, an important aspect of authentic leadership. The authors identify four aspects of self-leadership that influence authenticity: roles, resources, relations and results. Kringelum, Mortensen and Holmgren call for research into the emergence of self-leadership and authentic leadership, the leadership capabilities required and the double-sidedness and dilemmas inherent in such emergences across different contexts.