Recent studies have highlighted the major challenges faced by managers in the higher education sector and shown the contradictory demands which foster paradoxical tensions. Previous works have also underlined some specific tensions and rigidities that business school deans regularly face in their role. Yet, few studies have empirically explored…

French principals are exposed to paradoxes. Their ethics and values lead them to maintain a republican moral stance by affirming their attachment to public services and secularism. Their membership to a professional group within a bureaucratic organization does not predispose them to endorse managerial ideas and practices. However, as the New…

This book examines governance reforms in higher education in six European countries: Austria, Denmark, Finland, France, the Netherlands, and Portugal. It focuses in particular on the governance of the systems and institutions in these countries. The book shows that each of the national reform processes has been characterised by its own specific…

This paper, based on 14 case studies of schools situated in six local urban spaces (within the urban agglomerations of Budapest, Charleroi, Lille, Lisbon, London and the Creteil/Paris region), will analyse the internal logics of action of these schools and show that they are conditioned by the interaction between internal (school narrative…

The transformation of higher education systems under the pressure of new needs required by the "society of knowledge" in France and Italy has had a deep effect on the relationship between state and university, and therefore a direct impact on university governance. This article sums up the main results of a research carried out on…