Abstract

The article focuses on university third mission as a field, aiming at understanding it not just as a set of activities, but as an emerging area of institutional life structured not only by organizations, institutions, actors, relationships, activities, agendas but also by struggles among actors involved in it. Those struggles' stakes are related to the way the third mission fields and activities should operate, should be structured and organized, which goals and interests are to be served. Moving from a multiple case study on three public universities located in Northern Italy, the analysis focuses on different degrees of structuration and institutionalization of the third mission. Further, for each case it considers the tensions arising among actors in the field (internal/external dimension) and inside the university setting (internal dimension).