Higher education and its communities: Interconnections, interdependencies and a research agenda

Abstract

Universities everywhere are being forced to carefully reconsider their role in society and to evaluate the relationships with their various constituencies, stakeholders, and communities. In this article, stakeholder analysis is put forward as a tool to assist universities in classifying stakeholders and determining stakeholder salience. Increasingly universities are expected to assume a third mission and to engage in interactions with industrial and regional partners. While incentive schemes and government programmes try to encourage universities to reach out more to external communities, some important barriers to such linkages still remain. To fulfil their obligation towards being a socially accountable institution and to prevent mission overload, universities will have to carefully select their stakeholders and identify the 'right' degree of differentiation. For the university, thinking in terms of partnerships with key stakeholders has important implications for its governance and accountability arrangements. For the future of the universities we foresee a change towards networked governance and arrangements to ensure accountability along the lines of corporate social responsibility. In order to further explore some of these concepts and to empirically investigate the tendencies suggested here, this article proposes an ambitious research agenda for tackling the emerging issues of governance, stakeholder management and higher education's interaction with society.

Role of stakeholders leading to development of higher education services

“…This way, the competitive environment for non-state HEIs is disadvantageous. This scheme clearly demonstrates the variety of HEIs extending their activities from studies or knowledge transfer and research to community (society) services as well as new types of partnerships within the surrounding environment (Jongbloed, Enders & Salerno, 2008). The stakeholders act as partners, supporters, content makers and change agents.…”

“…Stakeholders can be "all agents (representatives), who can influence or become influenced when implementing organisation's objectives" and" any individual or a group, which can influence or can be influenced when implementing organisation's objectives" (Pesqueux & Damak-Ayadi, 2012;Bourne & Walker, 2005;Mainardes, Alves & Raposo, 2012). Stakeholders acting in field of higher education are interested in the activities of HEIs and are most frequently divided into internal and external (Melewar & Akel, 2005), primary and secondary (Maric, 2013) or overt and latent (Jongbloed, Enders & Salerno, 2008;Garvare & Johansson, 2010;Mainardes, Alves & Raposo, 2013). Higher education stakeholders could also be categorised as commercial and non-commercial (Melewar & Akel, 2005).…”

The Changing Paths in Academic Careers in European Universities: Minor Steps and Major Milestones

“…Universities under conditions of massification across Europe are increasingly expected to be meeting not only changing needs of the state but also changing needs of students, employers, labor market and the industry, as well as regions in which they are located (Pinheiro et al 2012;Benneworth and Jongbloed 2010;Kwiek 2012b for Poland). Demands put on academics are increasingly conflicting, universities are caught in what was termed "mission overload" (Jongbloed et al 2008). Globally, for the vast majority of academics, the traditional combination of teaching, research, and service is beyond reach anyway: as a whole, globally, the academic profession is becoming a predominantly teaching profession; gravitating toward more emphasis on teaching is also the case, to varying degrees, in both Europe and in the US (Schuster 2011).…”

“…As reported, "the criteria for promotion include research, teaching, and contribution (to the department, the faculty, the university and then to the wider community). European universities have to be able to meet sometimes conflicting, differentiated needs (see Jongbloed et al 2008 about "interconnections and interdependencies" of higher education communities and Kwiek 2009 on the "changing attractiveness" of the academic career). These needs sometimes seem to run counter the traditional twentieth-century social expectations from the academic profession in continental Europe, though.…”

“…129-132), combined with "mission overload" (Jongbloed et al 2008). As Clark (1998, p. 129, emphasis in original) argues, National systems of higher education can neither count on returning to any earlier steady state nor of achieving a new state of equilibrium.…”