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The purpose of this paper is to report on an action research project carried out in an Italian university hospital that was facing a strategic challenge. The role of intellectual capital (IC) for university hospital strategic management is discussed after developing and applying an IC framework to enhance the visualisation of strategic IC elements.

An action research process has been applied in the studied setting based on Susman and Evered’s (1978) definition of the engaged research cycle.

The action research process allowed a gap between theory and practice to be bridged; the strategic control process resulted supported by new measures; a different approach to strategy management was launched, and other organisations perceived the relevance of the IC representation and wished to import it.

Research limitations are related to those recognised for the interventionist research approach.

The paper contributes to the improvement of managerial and accounting technologies for practitioners managing university hospitals and discusses a university hospital’s strategic goals.

The paper represents a methodological contribution related to the interventionist research stream of literature, and enriches the limited studies focused on IC in health care organisations. Furthermore, the paper enables appreciation of the role of academics in the convergence of theory and practice.

Modernization of Russian higher education is carried out with the purpose of its successful integration into the global educational environment. However, the contemporary management model of most Russian universities demonstrates a low efficiency level. The purpose of this paper is to identify the problems of organizing the universities’ strategic development and to seek the opportunities to achieve strategic competitiveness of Russian universities.

The basic research methods included the following: content analysis, expert evaluations, analysis of the modern concepts of universities strategic management, comparative analysis of high school practice of strategy development, and government regulations in historical perspective.

The major result of the study is the conclusion that the most important problem of the competitiveness of Russian universities is the lack of strategic flexibility. We can say that there is a structural nature of the management crisis affecting the whole system of university education. Over the past 25 years, there has been a radical change in the basic institutional conditions for the development of higher education institutions in Russia: the volumes and changed model of financing; the market landscape and the regional environment; the conditions and the nature of the interaction with international partners, etc. At the same time, in most cases, the platform of this system and standards of internal policy have remained unchanged. Russian education practically lost its individuality. This paper shows the experience of strategic management at leading federal and regional universities of Russia, analyzes the implementation of their development programs, and gives examples of best practices in the use of strategic planning tools.

The relevance and value of the paper is the following: for the first time, thorough attention has been paid to the accumulated potential of Russian universities, which has been formed over a long evolutionary path and now can be positioned as an important management resource in the organization of strategic management for enhancing the global competitiveness of the national system of higher education.

The basic concepts of strategic management from the business world are of great value to university administrators in responding to serious threats in their environment. Although there are strong similarities between business and university strategic management, the differences make university strategic management, and particularly the university chief executive′s role in it, much more difficult for the following reasons: (1) the profit motive in business in not present in universities; (2) faculty tenure restricts universities′ freedom to reallocate resources; (3) faculty governance limits the authority of university administrators; (4) universities are more political than business; (5) state university systems impose many constraints on strategic management. Despite these difficulties in implementing these business concepts in universities, strategic management is important for the success or even survival of a university.

In the literature, there are many methods that can be helpful in strategic management of universities. Some of them are related to the aspect of sustainability, in terms of balancing the level of fulfillment of different, often conflicting objectives, which must be considered when building strategies. These methods include product/service portfolio ones. However, their use is often intuitive and detached from the quantitative aspects of management. The purpose of this paper is to present a proposal of the modification of the portfolio methods through the use of one of discrete optimization problems, namely, the multiple knapsack problem. The proposal is applied to a selected university. The results are presented and discussed.

The research methodology consists in a conceptual work: combining non-quantitative portfolio methods used in strategic management and the quantitative multiple knapsack problem. The analogy is established between a market sector (capacity) and a knapsack (capacity), a university department value and an object value, the university improvement budget and a knapsack, an object cost and an improvement measure cost. Then, the case study is used to conduct an initial validation of the proposed approach.

A quantitative model for strategic management of university as a whole or university departments is proposed. It allows to plan and control the application of improvement measures, allowing the university units to take on a better position in the educational market. It has been initially applied to a small university.

The model requires much more real-world case studies. Also, it will usually be difficult to establish the cost of running individual university units as well as the cost of corrective measures. The capacity of knapsacks – here of market sectors – will also be difficult to calculate. The method to be used here is activity-based costing, but it will not solve all the problems immediately, as its practical application is difficult.

The proposed model will allow to plan and evaluate strategic changes of university as a whole and its units’ position using quantitative values and to consider various strategic scenarios.

In order to establish the data necessary to construct the model, various stakeholders will have to cooperate (the university promotion department, the accounting representatives, the student and industry representatives etc.), probably for the first time. Such cooperation will improve the university position even if the model itself will not be able to be applied immediately.

The link between portfolio methods and a quantitative optimization method for university management purposes has been established in the paper for the first time in the literature.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on the comparative analysis of the Balanced Scorecards of four higher education institutions and aims to define the general framework of the Balanced Scorecard for the higher education institution which concerns: the structure and elements of the Balanced Scorecard; development of the Balanced Scorecards on the different levels of the management system of the higher education institution; definition of the main functions of the Balanced Scorecard which it performs in the process of the strategic management of the German higher education institutions. Balanced Scorecard is analyzed as a strategic management system that translates a higher education institution’s strategy into a comprehensive set of performance measures that provides a framework for a strategic measurement and management system.

The comparative content analysis of the Balanced Scorecards of one Austrian and three German higher education institutions – Johanes Gutenberg University Mainz, Münster University of Applied Sciences (Fachhochschule Münster), Cologne University of Applied Sciences (Fachhochschule Köln), Montan University Leoben.

Using a comparative analysis of the Balanced Scorecards of four higher education institutions this paper argues that Balanced Scorecard provides a systemic view of the strategy of a higher education institution. It ensures a full complex framework for implementation and controlling of the strategy and sets a basis for further learning in the process of the strategic management of the higher education institution according to the scheme “plan-do-check-act”.

This paper provides a basis for the substantial further work on the development of the general framework of the Balanced Scorecard for the higher education institution.

The framework presented in this paper can be used as the basis for the development of general framework of the Balanced Scorecard of the higher education institution.

The framework presented in this paper can be used as the basis for the development of general framework of the Balanced Scorecard of the higher education institution.

This paper indicates the particularities of the structure and elements of the Balanced Scorecard, its development in the different levels of the management system of the higher education institution.

This paper aims to explore the possibilities of combining foresight techniques and intellectual capital management, as two approaches of participatory strategic management, in higher education institutions. The objective is to generate concrete benefits for prospective strategic management in the academic sector. It also aims to focus on how it may be possible for universities to address the challenges of major change management programmes by implementing foresight and intellectual capital management models.

The paper reviews recent literature both on conceptual issues and experiences in relation to foresight and intellectual capital. The paper presents an ongoing project focused on the development of a vision for the future of the higher education system in Romania and a frame to differentiate Romanian universities.

A proposal of an integrated use of foresight and intellectual capital management for universities is suggested. The case study presented illustrates how foresight provides an excellent approach to address the question of how to develop a shared vision of the future and jointly define a strategy to best adapt an organization to the new context, and intellectual capital management models play a role in strategic management, resource allocation and monitoring of objectives and organization performance.

The issues addressed in the paper could provide the starting point for better integration of strategic management in higher education institutions.

The paper explores two concepts closely related but that have not been analysed together: the relationship between Intellectual capital approaches and foresight.

The macroeconomic changes as well as the challenges facing universities nowadays result in the transfer and adaptation of various concepts and organizational methods from enterprises to universities. One of such solutions is mergers. Even though there are a very large number of practical examples of university mergers in the world, at the same time there is a shortage of frameworks that would help manage mergers. The purpose of this paper is to present key areas of focus in HEIs’ consolidation processes and the creation of the conceptual model of the universities’ mergers.

In this paper synthesis, the inductive approach for model development and case study description were used. The analysis and findings were based on the systematic literature review taken out from management and public policy areas. The new public management and public value governance approaches as well as strategic and process theories of mergers were applied. The descriptive approach to management was used as well.

Formulation of a Conceptual Model of Universities’ Mergers and ten principles of effective management of universities’ mergers that cover the entire process, from planning, through implementation, to integration.

There is a need to verify the proposed inductive model of universities’ mergers through further qualitative and mixed-methods research studies.

The paper offers a significant opportunity for practical application of the presented content, because it indicates how the know-how from one (business) sector can be valuable for the future of another sector (the over-fragmented sector of higher education).

This study presents the key areas of focus in HEIs’ consolidation processes and proposes a novel Conceptual Model of Universities’ Mergers. It concludes with the principles of effective management of universities’ mergers.

The public sector is one of the least addressed areas of intellectual capital (IC) research. Universities are an interesting area of investigation because they are considered critical players in the knowledge-based society. The purpose of this paper is to develop a more general, flexible and comprehensive “IC Maturity Model” for Universities (ICMM), a framework for defining and implementing IC measurement and management approaches, as part of the whole strategic management of universities. Thus, the ICMM proposes a staged framework to initiate a step-by-step change within a university based upon its current level of IC management maturity. The different steps of maturity might be an answer to cope with the huge diversity of European universities, some of which have strong managerial orientation, while others follow collegial forms of governance.

The research approach is based on what has been called the “third stage” of IC research (Dumay and Garanina, 2013), focused on the practices of IC approaches rather than on its theoretical conceptualisation. The ICMM has been developed under the “Quality Assurance in Higher Education through Habilitation and Auditing” project framework, initiated by the Executive Agency for Higher Education and Research Funding of Romania (EUFISCDI). Three Mutual Learning Workshops (MLWs) were organised as a mean to bring together 15 international experts and practitioners to share their views and experience on IC reporting and setting up task forces.

An ICMM, which is a flexible model of implementing IC approaches within public universities, is developed. The ICMM provides a theoretical continuum along which the process of maturity can be developed incrementally from one level to the next, moving from IC data collection, awareness of IC, adjustment of IC specific indicators, measurement of IC, reporting of IC, interpretation and decision making, strategy and planning.

Future research needs to conduct empirical studies in universities to generalise the effectiveness of the ICMM model and guidelines for implementation.

The ICMM provides a staged framework to initiate a step-by-step change within a university based upon its current level of IC management maturity and its IC value creation dynamics. It allows universities to follow different paths, not necessarily a linear sequence.

Although several methods for IC measurement and management exist, most of these cannot accommodate the trade-off between the comparability aims and the efforts to capture the institution’s uniqueness when designing an IC model.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the relationship between governance and knowledge management in an Australian university, paying attention to the ways in which the notions of knowledge, constructions of the role of governing councils and shared understandings about performance in committee roles, might impact on the university's future success.

Earl's taxonomy of knowledge is extended to reflect more recent literature and used as the framework of analysis for a qualitative case study which is based on observations and interview data garnered from key governance committees.

The paper illustrates that effective governance and strategic success are dependent on appropriate knowledge manipulation activities. The authors conclude that in the case example, the types of knowledge targeted are narrow and committee members are focused on processes that do not effectively enable the creation or transfer of knowledge.

This is a single case study and further research would be required in order to confirm the exploratory findings.

An important shift in improving effective knowledge strategies in the organisation will involve the reconceptualisation of the role of knowledge in the university.

This paper makes two major contributions to the literature; the extension of Earl's typology to reflect current knowledge management literature, and the identification of a lack of knowledge management as a major weakness in university governance. The paper begins to unravel the practical issues that constrain strategic decision making.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the constructs and establish causal relationship between factors for strategically governing a technical university in Indian context. Further, the paper carries out a systemic study to emphasize on the need for these universities to design strategies that are endurable and sustainable.

A structured questionnaire survey was carried out (207 responses). Factor analysis was carried out to bring out the latent variables representing the attributes, and later, the causality between these variables was established using structural equation modelling (SEM). These relationships between the factors helped in developing a robust system dynamic model for strategic management of technical universities.

The peak points on the contours for varying strategic orientation revealed the adaptability and the time required for attaining that level of adaptability. The contour plots also revealed the limiting values in each case. Finally, it is concluded that university adaptability increases with increasing strategic orientation. The analysis also revealed that the process by which the technical universities formulate their strategies is an important determinant of various factors.

Universities looking to implement strategic management-related methodologies for the improved management focusing on developing effective methods for developing strategy can be expected to yield better performance, rather than concentrating on the technologies and supporting infrastructures.