Italian Universities: Institutional Mandate and Communitarian Engagement

Angelo Leogrande,Giuseppe Birardi,Alessandro Massaro,Angelo Maurizio

doi:10.12973/eujem.2.2.85

Abstract

<p style="text-align:justify">To make their mandate more efficient, universities have to either offer services to students either produce innovation and scientific research. From this point of view it is difficult for universities to focus their attention on economic and financial performance. Instead, it is much more relevant for the university to find models of governance that are able to bring together profitability, financial sustainability, and social and communitarian commitment. Universities generate knowledge that can be used to improve the standard of economic and social life in the territorial environment. For these reasons it is important to analyze relations between university and community of reference. We found that italian universities that perform better are associated with communities able to generate individual and social welfare. Better universities have also more active and skilled student populations. Monthly data are considered for the period 2012 and 2017 for 58 italian universities. Data are collected from BES-ISTAT, Almalaurea and Center for World University Rankings-CWUR. The complex database has been realized by using KNIME mixing different sources in an original metric environment. We use panel data approach to estimate the level of italian ranking in CWUR statistics by the usage two different sets of variables: BES-ISTAT and SIOPE. The increasing in the Global International Ranking can be realized either directly by increasing the level of services and products generates, either indirectly improving the spillovers effect of universities in respect to a certain community of reference.</p>

Highlights

Universities are called to play an international role in the global competitive challenge (Shin, 2012)
The italian university model seems is chracterized by a twofold dilemma: on the one hand universities lack financial resources (Agasisti & Salerno, Assessing the cost efficiency of Italian universities, 2007), on the other hand universities suffer for an inefficiency in resource management
In conclusion we can say that the presence of universities high positioned in the global rankings is determined by a set of variables defined either on a sociological point of view either demographic

Summary

Introduction

Universities are called to play an international role in the global competitive challenge (Shin, 2012). That is the territories within which the university structures insist must be involved, or actively participate, in the processes of scientific, cultural and technological empowerment produced by the universities (Bringle & Hatcher, 2002) This creates an important spillover relationship between the university body and the local reference market that constitutes an essential dimension of the complex system of value-added creation within the economy and the knowledge society (Fitzgerald, Bruns, Sonka, Furco, & Swanson, 2016). Universities have to realize a multi-objective productivity function generating education and knowledge for students and creating the conditions for a social, economic, institutional and enterpreneurial improvements (Christensen, 2011) In this sense it is very important to analyze what are the possibilities for the universities to improve private bargaining and university statues to increase the relationships among multiple stakeholders.

ORGANIZATIONAL EFFICIENCY

Conclusion

Limitations