This paper makes a contribution to the debate on university organisational actorhood by theorising the determinants of institutional strategic positioning. It argues that besides environmental forces and managerial rationality, the organisational dimension needs to be accounted for. Addressing the mixed empirical evidence in the relevant literature, we conceptualise the organisational dimension as a meso-level intervening variable mediating both external influences (outside-inside) and organisational action (inside-outside). We operationalise the organisational dimension along three components: organisational structure, identity and centrality, which are further elaborated in sub-components and indicators. A set of hypotheses to be tested in empirical research is provided. The paper offers new perspectives on the dynamics of change in higher education and on strategic agency of organisational actors.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate, through different interpretative theories, the implementation and operation of performance measurement systems (PMS) considering the factors crucial in influencing the development and the operational difficulties of the PMS in a context such as Italy, which is typically unresponsive to new public management-inspired ideas. Design/methodology/approach A theoretical framework is developed through the use of new institutional sociology and management control theory. The empirical study involves the whole ministerial sector, and explores some strategic documents belonging to the new PMS introduced in Italy in 2009. Findings The research illustrates a widespread dissemination of the reform in ministries. However, it has also shown the ceremonial and superficial implementation of the PMS. In addition, the findings confirm that the operation and the actual development of a PMS is strongly affected by the characteristics of the activity under examination. Research limitations/implications The peculiarity of the Italian context limits the generalizability of the findings to countries with similar public sector management and culture. Further studies may investigate the system through an individual perspective, i.e. exploring the role of individual managers in slowing down the operations of the evaluation systems. Originality/value This paper contributes to the debate on the implementation and operation of administrative reforms in legalistic countries also known as Rechtsstaat countries. The use of multiple theories allows investigating the subject matter by considering its complexity in a holistic way.

The study on which this article reports investigated the internationalisation of higher education studies by examining collaborations in the form of international coauthorships. We analyse how network-based mechanisms, related to structural relationship between authors (preferential attachment, i.e., higher tendency to collaborate among the most productive ones) and node level features (homophily, i.e., tendency to collaborate with similar others), affect higher education co-authorship networks. We build a bipartite co-authorship network based on 17,262 publications from 33 specialised higher education journals indexed in Scopus from 1996-2018. Scientific collaboration in higher education mainly occurs within national borders. We found that higher education is not an internationally oriented field of research, with around 90% single-country publications. A geographical divide was observed between the two largest communities (Europe, Asia and Oceania vs. the Americas) which was also reflected in the research themes addressed by these communities, structured around the known divide between (1) learning and teaching, and (2) policy-based studies. Preferential attachment was observed to be a network-based mechanism that contributes to drive the formation of new co-authorships. Similarly, homophily based on academic seniority and research productivity emergedThis is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

This paper argues that university strategic positioning is influenced by the organisational dimension, operationalised along the variables of organisational structure, identity and centrality. A comparative case study is presented including two English and two Italian universities and drawing on a set of sixty interviews with academic leaders, managers and administrators. The analysis of the trajectory of the four universities from 2004 to 2018 illustrates the articulation of the link between organisation and position and makes sense of the distinctive balances between environmental pressures and strategic agency in university strategic behaviour. Finally the paper outlines six propositions on the expected impact of the organisational structure, identity and centrality on positioning processes of universities.

What do positioning paths of universities tell about the diversity of higher education systems? An exploratory study Abstract Diversity in Higher Education system has been a central topic for both scholars and policy-makers for decades. Several studies have investigated how to measure diversity and the nature of its determinants so far; however, contradictory empirical evidence has emerged. This paper contributes to this literature by adopting a methodological approach that starts from the analysis of positioning paths of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in order to explore the diversity of HE systems. A comprehensive quantitative analysis performed across two HE systems over time shows how detecting the positioning of HEIs can provide information that an analysis of diversity at the level of the entire system might hide, in particular (I) if and how compliant and distinctiveness are concurrently displayed (II) in which dimensions positioning shifts are more likely to occur and (III) which groups of HEIs influence more the level of diversity in a HE system.