A Matter of Responsible Management from Higher Education Institutions

Abstract

Higher education institutions (HEIs) are influential social institutions which disseminate knowledge, promote innovation, and educate future decision-makers. The increasing awareness of HEIs as social actors has increased the pressure on them to accept and act upon their social responsibility. Processing this responsibility requires a structured management approach. The little attention given thus far to management performance and structured steering processes of social responsibility in HEIs marks the research gap the present study is focused on. This article provides a systematic review of scientific and academic publications, applying the concept of Social Performance after Wood (1991). The study aims to combine different research and modeling approaches to examine individual elements of social performance along the dimensions of processes of social responsiveness and outcomes of institutional behavior. With this approach, the study aims to answer the question of how HEIs assume their responsibilities as social institutions. The results show that observable outcomes of social behavior in the academic environment reflect a broad understanding of different approaches. By clustering the encoded literature into processes and outcomes, the study structures the fragmented body of research reflecting the various characteristics of the higher education sector.

Research on Critical Factors in University-Corporation Social Responsibility

“…Through community participation, universities can utilize their professional knowledge and resources to cooperate with local community to solve local problems, promote community development, and bring practical advantages to local community (Buchta et al, 2018). At the same time, local community can offer valuable suggestions to the universities to further realize their social responsibility (Roos, 2019). On the other hand, such participation can promote relationship between universities and local community to produce winwin situations.…”

Pro-environmental awareness of university students – assessment through sustainability literacy test

“…Generally, environmental sustainability in HEIs is prevalent in scientific reporting; however, the assessment tools in many of these institutions need to be enhanced, while other external and social demands should also be considered (Roos, 2019).…”

Trust in Higher Education Management and Organizational Culture

“…Sharpen the Saw: Principles of Balanced Self-Renewal (p. 9.844.1). The academic's functions encompass teaching but go beyond this and include the community's duty functions Erdem, 2016;Prieto-Jiménez et al, 2021;Roos, 2019) in a context of internationalization of the curriculum and exchange of both students and academics (Sá & Serpa 2020d). Dzimińska, Fijałkowska and Sułkowski (2018) highlight the relevance of the role played by HEIs in society, which is multidimensional.…”

“…The changes brought about by COVID-19 (Ferreira & Serpa, 2021) have been, and still are, remarkable in most people's lives, and also in the context of education (Sá & Serpa, 2020a) and higher education (Sá & Serpa, 2020b, 2020c, 2020dAyman, Kaya, & Kuruç, 2020;Rasiah, Kaur, & Guptan, 2020;Croucher & Lacy, 2020), in addition to the challenges for academics, including their (un)professionalization or (re)professionalization (Ferreira & Serpa, 2018a;José Sá, Ferreira, & Serpa, 2019). This change occurs in a context of social re-legitimation of higher education (Roos, 2019;Adhikariparajuli, Hassan, & Siboni, 2021;Prieto-Jiménez, López-Catalán, López-Catalán, & Domínguez-Fernández, 2021), characterised by increasing complexity. Thus, it is necessary to be careful about the increasing reliance on digital technologies in education and virtual learning, which may jeopardise the richness and complexity of the face-to-face teaching and learning process.…”