The purposes of this paper are twofold: a presentation of the theoretical basis of benchmarking and a discussion on practical benchmarking applications. Benchmarking is also analyzed as a productivity accelerator. The authors study benchmarking usage in the private and public sectors with due consideration of the specificities of the two areas.…

The purpose of this paper is to identify common patterns in central authorities' steering of universities and the institutional power in neo-liberal higher education regimes. The paper examines the regulatory mechanisms of England and Japan through Foucault's idea of "governmentality" and utilises the concept of autonomy to identify the…

The purpose of the paper is to explore students' perception of university teaching behaviours in Pakistan. Three hundred and fifty students from the six public sector Pakistani universities returned questionnaires. Assessment framework, learning activities and instructional strategies emerged from factor analysis as common factors. Students' views…

New public management (NPM) approaches have informed policy in the public sector in advanced countries in the last decade. Some authors suggest that the main objective of NPM at the organisational level is to change the traditional way professionals are regulated. This study examines the impact of NPM on the working conditions of Portuguese higher…

All workplaces are sites in which people learn. To state such a fact still seems fairly revolutionary given that many employers and policymakers tend to restrict the meaning of job-related learning to formal episodes of "training" that can be counted and costed. This view is rooted in a wider perception prevalent in society in general…

We explain in this article the need for board training in rural America irrespective of industry or government sector. We discuss how an assessment of training needs has led to the launch of a new project called the National Board Basics Curriculum (NBBC) project. In this project, we have identified four key core competencies that every board…

Corruption was symptomatic of business and government interactions in Russia and other countries of the former Soviet Union before and during the economic transition of the 1990s. Corruption is difficult to quantify, but the perception of corruption is quantifiable. Nations can even be arranged along a hierarchy by the degree to which they are…

The study aimed to determine the impact of organizational climate on performance of college teachers. The researcher selected the area of college education as the focus of the study. The study was delimited to all the public sector degree colleges of Punjab. Population of this study consisted of all the principals and teachers working in public…

In response to significant changes in the global economic, social, and cultural context over the past decade, the teaching, research, and public service missions of public universities and colleges are being reshaped significantly. Faculty professional development programs are a vital but under-examined resource for institutional and academic…

With pressures from employers, government ministries, and the new paying student/customer, New Labour has begun to restructure higher education and worker training in the United Kingdom to accommodate global markets, in the context of increasingly intimate relations between business and the public sector/education. This essay looks at the process…

This study sought to broaden the understanding of the role that academic professions play in shaping the values and attitudes of faculty toward CES. This study explored faculty perceptions regarding the factors that encourage or dissuade them in the pursuit of CES within public administration programs. As a framework for research, a conceptual…

This paper uses a combination of quantitative and qualitative evidence to assess the ways and extent to which, by 2007/2008, higher education graduates in the South Caucasus capitals were, and were not, deriving labour market benefits from their higher education. The quantitative evidence is from representative samples of approximately 200 in the…

The purpose of this work is to provide higher education lobbyists with empirical evidence to support their arguments for better funding in today's tight budgetary times. This work explains two primary factors that contribute to the largely false impression of higher education's wastefulness which, unfortunately pervades both legislatures and the…

The interplay of public and private sector dynamics in higher education has impacted not only on the roles and identities of academic staff, but also on those of professional staff, who often have the task of bringing together, and achieving congruence between, activities that are geared towards the public good and also towards more commercially…

The idea of creating a national university is not new. More than two centuries ago, George Washington, James Madison and Thomas Jefferson advocated for a national university. Today--energized by concerns about the performance of civil servants and the need to recruit a new generation of talent into key federal, state, and municipal positions--a…