Abstract

This article is part of broader research project investigating, through case studies in five European countries, the actual changes occurred in the institutional governance of universities, as a consequence of the governance reforms that involved European higher education systems in the last decades. Specifically, this article deals with the changes brought about by these reforms in the decision making processes related to recruitment and managing of academic staff. The academic staff is a crucial asset for universities and recent reforms incentivize strategic management of academic staff in order to pursue policies of development of higher education institutions. It will be observed that in this field, although a convergence trend toward the implementation of strategic management of academic staff is at work, the five countries studied show different degrees of internal heterogeneity and some features of the unexpected outcomes associated to the implementation of these reforms.