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This article aims at presenting the concept of the Brazilian university’s third mission and its relevance for predicting teaching behavior. To that end, this article presents a conceptual model of that third mission in Brazil and how its relationship with stakeholders was built.

This is a conceptual article. The authors analyze the third mission and the Brazilian educational model to suggest predicting teaching behavior as a possibility to optimize the third mission in higher education institutions.

The Brazilian third mission is related to civilian participation, John Dewey’s democratic education management, Paulo Freire’s transformative education, Triple-Helix and the knowledge ecology. This association enables insight into the relevance of the third mission and into the need for professors’ participation.

Revealing the factors of behavior prediction to perform the third mission is the first mission of the theory of planned behavior. Based on these data, the theory suggests interventions without changing teaching behavior. This possibility might increase the adherence of the professor to activities related to the third mission.

This article contributes to studies on the development of the third mission and to the sharing of a conceptual model that is partially different from the European model, thus promoting broader results for stakeholders. The indications made here can lead to empirical studies to further approximate the higher education institutions and the various sectors of society. Moreover, there is room for investigations that aim at a conceptual convergence at the international level for the third mission, as it happens for teaching and researching.

This paper aims to argue that innovation system foresight (ISF) can significantly contribute to the third mission of universities by creating an active dialogue between universities, industry and society.

This paper’s approach is conceptual. The authors analyse the third mission and relevant literature on innovation systems and foresight to explain how and why foresight contributes to the third mission.

The authors propose that foresight contributes to the third mission of universities, particularly to the research and development and innovation dimensions through the development of joint understanding of the agendas and future needs of stakeholders. In addition, foresight enables education to be designed to address identified needs.

The findings are both conceptual and exploratory in nature. Thus, the argument needs further examination through a broader study on foresight in the university–industry context and/or longitudinal research on the outcomes and impact of foresight in this context.

The findings highlight the importance of understanding the systemic nature of innovation and its role in economic development. Universities must understand their role within the larger innovation system to fulfil the potential of economic development and by extension, their third mission.

The paper outlines a novel approach of using ISF to promote university–industry partnerships and the growth of innovation systems. The paper also contributes to the discussion of the third mission by outlining that mission in practical terms.

Using the quality evaluation approach, the purpose of this paper is to analyze the contribution of intellectual capital (IC) to the development of the third mission in Italian universities, defining the impact of these activities in the regional context. This research aims to verify if the mandatory reporting on quality discloses the contribution of IC to value creation, enhancing the universities’ awareness about IC management and third mission development.

The convergence between IC framework and quality evaluation approach is tested through an empirical research on a sample of 71 Italian universities funded by the government. Statistical analyses use data collected for the period 2004-2014 during the national assessment for research activity and third mission performance. The impact of third mission on the university ecosystem is verified using the indexes related to the territorial development rates.

This research found significant IC disclosure in the quality evaluation model and it highlights the possible integration between the IC measures and the quality evaluation indicators. The research findings show also a positive impact of third mission activities in the university ecosystem and the relevant role of structural capital and relational capital in the development of third mission. These findings encourage a collegial discussion in the university governance and among academics, stimulating a strategic behavior in the whole system

The paper focuses the attention on research activity and third mission, considering the final results provided by an external stakeholder of university. Further research must include the role of teaching activity and the opinion of universities’ managers, researchers and administrative staff.

Following the neo-institutional sociology perspective, this research analyses for the first time the convergence between the solid experience of quality assessment and the immature IC culture in Italian universities. This analysis explores the value created by intangible activities in the university ecosystem, with a longitudinal perspective, contributing to the fourth stage of the IC literature.

Over the past few decades, higher education institutions (HEIs) have become key players in regional economic development and knowledge transfer, which has led to a third mission for HEIs and the entrepreneurial university. The purpose of this paper is to assess the challenges of HEIs in fulfilling the third mission for economic development and the changing role of being an entrepreneurial university, and the changes that need to be implemented to fulfill this new mission.

The authors have drawn on current literature to examine academic entrepreneurism and the entrepreneurial university, and how universities are fulfilling their third mission.

The findings from our review of the literature demonstrated the varied economic and social benefit of universities conducting external third mission/entrepreneurial activities in the community, as well as how the changing role and expectations of universities to become more entrepreneurial, has not only changed the expectations and role of university administrators, faculty and staff but also the business community which they serve. The review also showed the varied challenges for universities in fulfilling the third mission of economic development.

Although ample literature and cases about universities’ third mission of economic development and the new entrepreneurial university (especially with research universities) were available, literature or research was limited on the specific challenges and obstacles faced by administrators, faculty and departments in fulfilling this mission, and few studies recommended changes that needed to be implemented in HEIs to support this new mission.

The paper supports the potential role that HEIs play in implementing economic development in their communities or region. The paper also highlights some of the necessary resources and policy changes that policymakers and university administrators need to implement to reward and recognize faculty in conducting outreach activities as part of the university’s third mission.

The findings from this study highlight the challenges and barriers for faculty, staff and HEIs in fulfilling the third mission and becoming an entrepreneurial university.

This paper aims to inquire about the types of measurements used by international university rankings and their connection to the higher education institutions’ (HEIs) third mission activities, namely, the contribution to society.

The paper is based on a review of literature and content analysis of nine international rankings.

This empirical study corroborates that rankings focus on teaching and research activities but rarely measure the HEIs’ connection to practice.

As the measurements used by international university rankings are claimed to have a huge impact on the structuring of the academic environment, this paper shows that international rankings fail to measure the HEIs’ success in developing third mission activities.

The paper analyses the emerging role of Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) universities in contemporary society via third- and fourth-mission activities. In particular, the paper investigates the potential contributions that SSH universities can offer in developing and enhancing capacities, supporting the changing conception of innovation coherently through a Smart Specialisation Strategy (S3) approach.

The case study presents multiple third- and fourth-mission activities carried out by the University of Macerata (Italy). The activities are framed according to the roles universities could have in supporting S3.

Within third- and fourth-mission activities, SSH universities can play different and broader roles (generative, absorptive, collaborative and leadership), which could support regions in designing and implementing S3.

The paper shows the important contributions that SSH universities can make in their regions, both to support S3 and enhance the transition to sustainable development.

The article emphasises SSH universities’ multiple contributions to sustainable development and to innovation in the knowledge society/economy framework.

This case study captures SSH universities’ contributions to S3 and the wider innovation paradigm, by highlighting their transformational effect on regional economies.

The objective of sustainability assurance (SA) is to give credibility to nonfinancial information (Cheng et al., 2015). In France, certain companies are subject by regulation to the implementation of SA in particular with the transposition of European Directive 2014/95/EU into national law. SA mission is a process by which an independent third-party organization (ITO) assures companies' nonfinancial information. Although this assignment is mostly performed by professional accountants, other providers can perform this assignment (Cohen and Simnett, 2015). In this research, the authors are interested in strategies for legitimizing the SA missions of independent third-party bodies. Assurance providers use their website to promote their missions. How do independent third-party bodies legitimize their assurance mission in a regulatory context relating to European Directive 2014/95/EU?

The authors carried out a discursive analysis of the promotion of SA missions on independent third-party body websites. A content analysis was performed on the collected textual data.

The results highlight different strategies for promoting the implementation of assurance missions aimed at legitimizing their new skills. Nevertheless, it appears that the providers make very little reference to the quality of nonfinancial information as the objective of SA missions.

The research made it possible to study the promotion of SA through the websites of ITOs. Nevertheless, it would have been interesting to be able to question the ITOs to study their perceptions on their new SA missions.

The research enriches the literature on SA, particularly in a regulatory context relating to European Directive 2014/95/EU. It sheds light on the different strategies put in place by the providers appointed by regulations. From a managerial point of view, the study may allow ITOs to adapt their communication to promote extra-financial missions relating to the European Directive and thus to attract new clients. Finally at the institutional and regulatory level, this research highlights the need to put in place a precise framework relating to extra-financial assurance missions. This may also encourage countries not subject to the verification obligation to introduce such an obligation into their national law.

This is the first study to examine the promotion of SA practice by providers. In addition, very few studies have looked at this practice in a regulatory context and in particular within the framework of the European directive.

The purpose of this paper is to present a case study of a university that uses a collective intelligence approach for managing its intellectual capital (IC). Specifically, the authors investigate how one of Europe’s oldest business schools, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice (Italy), manages IC through stakeholder engagement to achieve academia’s third mission so contributing to social and economic development.

Data are collected through semi-structured interviews and Ca’ Foscari University’s strategic plan. Secundo et al.’s (2016) collective intelligence framework is used to analyse the data. Alvesson and Deetz’s (2000, pp. 19-20) critical management tasks – insight, critique and transformative redefinition – are adopted to frame and discuss the results.

On the assumption that a university is a collective intelligence system, the findings demonstrate that IC management needs to change to incorporate an ecosystem perspective, reflecting the fourth stage of IC research. The IC management at the university incorporates its core goal (what), the collective involvement of internal and external stakeholders to achieve the goal (who), the motivations behind the achievement of the goal (why) and, finally, the processes activated inside the university (how) and indicators to assess value creation.

A new perspective for managing IC in universities that adopts a collective intelligence approach is further developed. Contributions to the fourth stage of IC research – IC in an ecosystem – are highlighted that expand the concept of IC value creation beyond universities into wider society.

Two key consequences of this case study are that more stakeholders have become involved in IC management and that IC management requires critical rethinking, given the universities’ evolving role.

This paper brings together issues that are usually dealt with in separate domains of the literature: IC management and collective intelligence in the university setting.

The importance of relational capital for the university has grown enormously in recent years. In fact, relational capital allows universities to promote and emphasize the effectiveness of the third mission. The purpose of this paper is to propose a case study involving an Italian university that recently set up a new research observatory, and, thanks to its success, succeeded in enhancing its relational capital.

The authors adopted an action research approach to analyze the case study. Consistently, the authors followed the analysis, diagnosis, and intervention phases. First, the authors focused on the identification of the strengths and weaknesses of the process through which the university created relational capital, and finally, the authors proposed solutions to improve the process.

This case study shows that the creation of relation capital for the host university was the result of a process of transfer and transformation of the individual relationships of the observatory’s promoters.

This paper contributes to filling a significant gap in the literature on relational capital and universities and provides useful insights into how these organizations can encourage its creation. It also allows scholars, managers, and politicians involved in higher education to gain a greater understanding of this relevant topic.

At present, Higher Education Institutions around the world are developing and implementing university social responsibility(USR) as part of their strategy. They do so because they seek to assure the quality of higher education systems, as well as to positively impact their surrounding environment. This chapter aims to analyze the university’s role in the process of building social responsibility in line with efforts to adequately fulfill its three missions of teaching, research, and linking with society. The case study herein refers to the Universidad Panamericana (UP), a private university in Mexico with humanistic and Christian roots, which recently celebrated its 50th year. The analysis demonstrates the UP’s significant efforts to build a social responsibility system and its achievement of significant social impact through programs that support the community, healthcare, and people with disabilities. However, management of USR should be done at an institutional level and across the board.

The purpose of this paper is to argue for the need to redefine a mission statement, to develop a clearer definition and show its advantages and limitations.

The paper shows the literature's lack of agreement on the definition of the mission statement and whether it should be defined as a stand‐alone statement or as a broader model. It then demonstrates the discrepancy between these definitions and the actual mission statements of exemplary organizations. This is followed by proposing a new definition of a mission, demonstrating how it is rooted in good practice, and presenting its benefits and limitations.

There are found to be widely varied definitions and models of the mission statement. These are typically complex (composed of many parts) and are not reflected in the mission statements of many exemplary organizations. The need is clear for a more focused definition.

The basic argument is mainly built on conceptual discussions and unsystematic evidence. Therefore, there is a need for more empirical studies to substantiate that argument. The paper discusses the research implications of the proposed definition.

The proposed definition of the mission statement may prove helpful both conceptually and practically. This definition focuses the attention of practitioners on purpose and commitment independent from other related concepts. The paper shows the impact of the proposed definition on the process, participants, and outcome of developing a mission statement.

The paper offers a focused definition of mission statement and shows its relevance to both theory and practice.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a new algorithm for in‐mission trajectories and speed adjustment of multiple unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) participating in a mission that requires them to arrive at target location simultaneously with switching and imperfect communication among the vehicles.

This algorithm, programmed at each UAV level, is based on the repeated consensus seeking among the participating vehicles about the time‐on‐target (ToT) through an imperfect inter‐vehicle communication link. The vehicles exchange their individual ToT values repeatedly for a particular duration to pick the highest value among all the vehicles in communication. A consensus confidence flag is set high when consensus is successful. After every consensus cycle with high confidence value, the mission adjustment is carried out by computing difference value between ToT consensus and a threshold value. For the difference values higher than a certain limit, vehicle's trajectory is adjusted by in‐mission insertion of new waypoint (WP) and for lower values the vehicle's speed is varied under allowable limits. The consensus seeking followed by the mission adjustment is repeated periodically to quash the imperfect communication effects.

A mathematical analysis has been carried out to establish the conditions for convergence of the algorithm. The simultaneous arrival of the vehicles subjected to switching communication is achieved only when the union of the switching links during the consensus period enables a vehicle to receive information from all the other vehicles and the switching rate is sufficiently high. This algorithm has been tested in a 6‐degree‐of‐freedom (DoF) multiple UAV simulation environment and achieves simultaneous arrival of multiple fixed wing UAVs under imperfect communication links that meets the aforementioned conditions.

The presented algorithm and design strategy can be extended for other types of cooperative control missions where certain variable of interest is shared among all the vehicles over imperfect communication environment. The design is modular in functionality and can be incorporated into existing vehicles or simulations.

This research presents a new consensus algorithm that repeatedly performs polling of ToT among the vehicles through intermittent communication. The continual nature of consensus seeking covers the weakness of the imperfect communication. A two‐level mission adjustment provides better accuracy in simultaneous arrival at the target location.

Successful promotion of academic entrepreneurship is a determining factor in the pursuit of university entrepreneurialism. This paper aims to illustrate how qualitative data on the performance of the technology transfer office (TTO), based on access to intellectual capital (IC) indicators, can be transformed into a metric to provide insights that assist in strategy development for a university moving towards a more entrepreneurial configuration.

The TTO performance metric takes the form of a self-assessment of access to IC indicators, which are determinants of effectiveness. This study involves the use of the metric through the completion of an online survey and follow-up interviews, to collect and analyse the data.

The performance of 34 TTOs in continental Europe and the UK are measured, and insights into the success of promoting academic entrepreneurship were gained. The qualitative data are studied in detail to illustrate how the university can strategically leverage IC to enhance academic entrepreneurship.

This study recommends that the university align the mission statement and organisational structure of the TTO, to enable access to IC. This, in turn, may result in increased academic entrepreneurship activities, which will drive the university towards increased entrepreneurialism.

The interpretation of the qualitative data relating to the performance of the TTO, and which factors influence it, aids in understanding the performance of the entrepreneurial university and illustrates, which strategic interventions can be made.

Understanding the link between IC, academic entrepreneurship (as encapsulated in the performance of the TTO) and the characteristics of the entrepreneurial university is particularly useful for university management decisions.

The purpose of this paper is to portray an example of how organizations can harness their employees’ insight. The procedure described here can complement traditional methods such as interviews, open forums, round tables and employee surveys, and can assist HR managers to acquire a unique look inside the company.

The described procedure was facilitated at Intel Corporation and was about The Future of Work. 145 Intel employees took part in an online crowd-deliberation with a methodology called Real-Time Imen-Delphi (RTID). The methodology guided them to initiate 689 questions that were then organized into 258 mission statements, which were rated by importance, priority and feasibility.

A main theme was identified to represent the collective notion with regards to The Future of Work. The participants leaned toward the fractal model for a preferred work environment. This model includes employees who will no longer have a single job description, but rather repeatedly sign up for tasks and projects based on their interests, capabilities, availability, aspirations and future beliefs regarding the path their organization needs to take in manufacturing, research and development.

The result provides an example of how organizations can harness their employees’ wisdom to bring to the table cutting-edge ideas, debate their relevancy to the organization, agree collectively on their vision and generate applicable ideas toward realizing their preferred future.

As social media tools evolve and become a central part in organizations, they will seek to involve employees in effective conversations and in decision-making processes. RTID is a solid way with which they can do this.

Recognising the importance of universities in the achievement of social and global objectives, this paper aims to study the relevance of the global reporting initiative (GRI) methodology for reporting University Social Responsibility (USR) activities, taking into account the specificity of higher education institutions (HEI).

After a review of the literature and background, the European HEI reports prepared according to the latest version of GRI standards are selected and a comparative study is carried out. The analysis focusses on comparing to what extent the standards are responding to the information needs generated in the field of higher education.

General issues, common to all types of organisations, are adequately reported by HEIs, but difficulties are encountered in integrating a vision that incorporates the role of their missions in standards related to economic, social and environmental aspects.

There are few GRI reports with this format and further research is encouraged as the number of reports increase. So far, major limitations have been found by HEIs to account for their societal missions when using the GRI.

The debates on USR are promoting an increase in the number of reports on sustainability. This paper provides some examples of the use of disclosures that can be adapted in this context, to move towards the systematisation of these practices.

This is, to the authors’ knowledge, the first comparative study on the application of GRI to sustainability reports at a European level, focussing on the adequacy between disclosures and missions.

The purpose of this paper is to empirically test the thesis that universities are developing their different quality management (QM) systems comprehensively and integrating them in their broader management and governance systems, covering different processes, organisational levels and the principles of QM.

The empirical work is based on a country case study which embeds three paradigmatic university case studies. Data are obtained from institutional documents, as well as from individual and panel interviews. A content analysis using N-Vivo was undertaken.

Universities show signs of integrating QM in their overall management and governance framework. They develop their QM systems with a focus on teaching and learning, but they are increasingly trying to integrate their other processes. They seek to involve their different organisational levels, from the programme to the institutional level. Universities cover most QM principles, but show deficiencies regarding customer focus, mutually beneficial supplier relationships, involvement of people and process and system approach.

The research shows the results of three paradigmatic cases regarding QM implementation, since these were the first to have their QM systems certified by the Agency for Assessment and Accreditation of Higher Education. In future work, it would be interesting to understand how other universities are developing their QM systems and whether implementation occurs in an integrated way.

The authors expect that the results will add to the discussion on the implementation of QM in universities, further contributing to the development of truly integrated approaches to QM in higher education.

The paper discusses the QM systems which are being developed and implemented in universities and analyses how integrated they are, as only those that are fully integrated will contribute to improve the overall quality of universities.

This paper aims to propose a thesis about the historical evolution of the relationship of the European University in relation to the idea of social responsibility.

This paper is philosophical, conceptual and theoretical and in proffering a bold thesis, has an argumentative character appropriate to that style.

Three stages can be identified over the past 200 years in the relationship between the university and the matter of social responsibility, being successively tacit, weak and now hybrid. In the present stage, new spaces are opening for the university to transcend social responsibility, moving to a worldly and earthly responsibility. However, this new stage is having to contend against the university in an age of cognitive capitalism. As such, a large but hitherto unnoticed culture war is present, the outcome of which is unclear.

The scholarship informing this paper is wide-ranging and multi-disciplinary (history, social theory, philosophy, critical higher education studies, literature on the idea of the university, comparative higher education, ethics and sociology of knowledge), as it has to be in sustaining the large thesis being contended for, and it has broad hinterlands, which can only lightly be intimated.

The key implication is that the idea of social responsibility is currently being construed too narrowly and that, therefore, universities – in developing their corporate strategies and missions – should be more ambitious and set their responsibility goals against horizons that go well beyond the social realm.

The thesis developed here is original in offering a three-stage theory of a 200-year evolution of the socially responsible European university. A new stage of an Earthly responsibility is glimpsed but it is having to contend with a continuing performative university, so leading to a hidden culture war and such that the future of university social responsibility is in doubt.

Competitive sourcing is the government’s term for transferring the operation of an internal process or function to either an external supplier or a reengineered government team. The competitively sourced function is managed through performance metrics. These metrics must be thorough, appropriate and well designed to ensure the government is receiving the level of service required to fulfill its various missions. This research effort develops a performance metric evaluation system that was synthesized from metric design literature, Total Quality Management concepts, and the Government Performance Results Act. Use of the system in a case study is discussed along with how to evaluate the results. Results indicate that some Air Force performance metrics have insufficient and improperly designed metrics.

In 2003, there was a concern among policymakers that spin-outs were being given undue prominence in consideration of the research commercialisation performance of UK Higher Education Institutes (HEIs) (Lambert, 2003). The aim of this research was to investigate what issues lay behind the data reported on spin-out activity by UK HEIs in the period 1998–2002.

The current gap in the field of community engagement is evaluation and measurement of the impacts on the stakeholders, mainly the community being engaged with. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This paper discusses the need to consider the stakeholder's perspective and their involvement in a community engagement initiative, or in any social program. The authors begin by debating the most common evaluation techniques used, followed by re-introducing stakeholder evaluation to the field of community engagement.

The evaluation using the stakeholders’ approach will not only create a holistic evaluation process, but will also assist in fostering a sense of ownership of the community engagement program.

Community engagement is given much importance nowadays in Malaysia, especially in line with institutes of higher learning's tripartite mission, the third mission being the ability to engage with communities. It is not surprising because community engagement offers enormous benefits for regional and societal development. Community engagement relies heavily on partnership and mutual reciprocity between different stakeholders such as communities, universities, non-government organizations, field experts and funding organizations. In order to sustain the engagement initiatives, it is important to know who are the “owners” or stakeholders of the program.