Search

An invisible revolution, known as the third mission, is claimed to be occurring within universities. Accordingly, the canonical missions associated with research and teaching have been integrated with the one aimed at territorial development. But do all universities conceive the third mission in the same way? This paper tries to elucidate which organizational orientations emerge by classifying the espoused values embedded within the statutes of 75 Italian universities. Using a qualitative content analysis, we highlighted four orientation patterns: first, need for coherence, focused on balancing public functions and third-mission activities; second, exploitation, focused on patent disclosure; third, openness, readiness to participate in external change and to satisfy external needs; and finally, old school, focused on entrepreneurial activities as a source of funding. This classification shows a more complex phenomenon for the institutionalization of the third mission with respect to a simple binary public-private opposition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the determinants of professors' career advancement in Italian universities. From the analyses, it emerges that the fundamental determinant of an academic candidate's success is not scientific merit, but rather the number of years that the candidate has belonged to the same university as the president of the selection committee. Where applicants have participated in research work with the president, their probability of success also increases significantly. The factors of the years of service and occurrence of joint research with other members of the commission also have an effect, however, that carries less weight. Nepotism, although it exists, seems less important. The scientific quality of the members of the commission has a negligible effect on the expected outcome of the competition, and even less so the geographical location of the university holding the competition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent decades, many disciplines have dealt with the relationship between scientific research and policy-making, and many different models for science-policy interactions have been proposed. This paper aims to investigate the models of science-policy interaction implicitly or explicitly adopted by stakeholders, by means of a Delphi study performed with Italian researchers, politicians, doctors and journalists. The study was developed within the framework of the European project on Research into Policy to Enhance Physical Activity, which aimed to improve evidence-informed policy-making using the field of physical activity as the case study. Our results show the persistence of the traditional linear model and how it coexists with subsequent models in the same individual visions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]