Purpose The purpose of this study is to investigate conceptually and empirically the direct and indirect relationships between university social responsibility (USR), university social innovation strategy (USIS) in terms of social awareness (SA), intention for social innovation (ISI), organisational structure for social innovation (SSI) and innovativeness in social value creation (ISVC) and gaining a sustainable competitive advantage (SCA) at quality-accredited faculties of an emerging market. Design/methodology/approach A conceptual model was presented and a mixed-methods approach was exploited to fill a research gap detected in strategic corporate social innovation literature. The authors formed a data collection team that contacted all the quality-accredited public and private/international faculties, of which 109 faculties in 11 Egyptian governorates responded and their quality units filled questionnaires that were analysed by structural equation modelling. For comprehensive understanding, qualitative interviews were set to gather data from managers/leaders and teaching staff working at those faculties in quality management and community engagement practices as well as students. Findings Results demonstrated that USR positively and significantly influenced SCA and USIS. Further, USIS (in terms of ISI, SSI and ISVC) positively and significantly influenced SCA. However, USIS (in terms of SA) had a positive yet insignificant influence on SCA. Indirectly, USIS was found to be partially mediating USR–SCA relationship. Practical implications University leaders/staff can gain insights on how to adopt differentiation strategies, which enable their institutions to shift from being just socially responsible to becoming socially innovative by presenting solutions to social, economic, cultural, environmental and health-care problems/challenges within their communities in general and during pandemics. This can be sustained through developing innovative quality-based processes/programmes/services related to education, research and community outreach that better serve social needs to be quality-accredited and unique over their rivals. Social implications Satisfying social needs through promoting innovative processes/services can reinforce a favourable social change. Originality/value From a cross-disciplinary perspective, the authors interwove conceptually sparse literature of strategic, operations, knowledge capacity and innovation management that studied university social innovation research area. Also, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first research that examined empirically USR–USIS–SCA relationships of quality-accredited faculties in an emerging economy during Covid-19 pandemic.
Despite the abundance of researches that have explored the importance of internationalization in higher education, there is a paucity of research that has analysed the effective management of the internationalization process – in terms of strategy formulation, implementation and evaluation – in an emerging Egyptian–British universities’ partnership. This article adds to the contemporary management research by integrating the literature of the internationalization of higher education, education management and strategic management in an interdisciplinary practice-based manner. Specifically, this study analyses the main elements of the internationalization strategy in addition to the different phases of the effective management of its process in a higher educational institution and its international partners. The current article uses a strategic management perspective to analyse the internationalization processes carried out by an emerging university in Egypt and its international partners in the United Kingdom. A qualitative practice-based case study approach was chosen through conducting in-depth interviews and focus groups with the subject matter experts (i.e., academics and leaders) working in the internationalization processes of this Egyptian–British universities’ partnership in Egypt and United Kingdom. The findings of the current study have various implications in the area of higher education management for the academics/managers/leaders who are coordinating activities related to the management of the internationalization processes at their universities. Furthermore, the study recommends different developmental practices to be adopted for the purpose of quality enhancement at the academic and managerial levels, thus sustaining a process of continuous improvement.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.