Managing Sustainable Performance and Governance in Higher Education Institutions

The fast-changing evolutionary process of global Higher Education systems systematically poses new challenges related to the appearance of innovative elements that lead academic governing bodies to question current managerial structures and methods. Due to this, theory and practice have gathered multiple contributions and experiences to support and further develop this evolutionary pathway during the past decades. Global competitiveness, economic and social growth are driven worldwide by knowledge and innovation. In this context, Higher Education Institutions play a crucial role as they primarily contribute to knowledge transfer and development and, as a result, foster regional development, employment, and economic wealth. The relevance of this role leads Universities to explore alternative solutions for managing their performance according to a sustainable perspective.

This book draws on this flourishing debate on Higher Education policy and management and investigates an innovative systemic perspective to design and implement sustainable performance management systems for academic institutions. The conditions for the success of Universities, the critical issues underlying the creation of academic value, the dynamic complexity characterizing academic governance settings, the pluralistic audience of stakeholders and related expectations, the causal interplays between organizational performance variables, represent some of the central themes around which this work is developed.

More specifically, the book suggests and discusses the adoption of a Dynamic Performance Management approach to frame the inherent organizational complexity of Higher Education Institutions, thus supporting a strategic learning perspective to design and implement relevant performance measures. This approach originates from the combination between conventional performance management and System Dynamics modeling. Many research and practice contributions prove that this methodological combination can boost the understanding and interpretation of value creation processes by identifying and exploring the causal connections amongst strategic resource allocation and consumption, corresponding performance drivers, emerging outputs, and outcomes. To test the effectiveness of this approach in University settings, a wide range of examples is offered in each book chapter. This allows readers to explore the advantages, limitations, and practical implications of adopting Dynamic Performance Management in Higher Education Institutions, as well as guide academic decision-makers towards a more robust approach to design and implement strategic management mechanisms in Universities.

Federico Cosenz is currently an Associate Professor of Business & Public Management at the University of Palermo, Italy. There, he teaches several master-level courses, such as Performance Management in the Public Sector and Business Strategy. He is a board member of the international doctoral program in “Model Based Public Planning, Policy Design, and Management” run at the Department of Political Sciences and International Relations.

Federico Cosenz held the role of University delegate for scientific support to planning, management control, performance evaluation, and statistical reporting at the University of Palermo from April 2020 to November 2021. In such a role, he coordinated the working group for designing the Strategic Plan 2021-2023, as well as the working group for the implementation of management control.

He has been a visiting scholar at the University of Bergen (Norway), the Radboud University of Nijmegen (Netherlands), the Universidad Militar Nueva Granada of Bogota (Colombia), the IESE Business School of Barcelona (Spain).

Federico Cosenz has authored several academic and professional journals. He has also presented his research contributions at numerous national and international scientific conferences. In 2013 he won the “Best paper” award at the AIDEA – Italian Academy of Management annual conference, with a contribution titled “Designing Performance Management Systems in Academic Institutions: a Dynamic Performance Management View”.

His scientific and applied research interests include the following areas: performance management and governance for public and private organizations, strategic planning and management control, business model design for start-up companies and SMEs, business model innovation also from a sustainability perspective, management information systems, development of simulation models to support strategic learning and decision-making. He also carries out training and scientific support activities on the same topics through external collaborations (e.g., with the Italian National Research Council - CNR).