Purpose – The aim of the paper is to theoretically and empirically explore the issue of well-being (WB) of female administrative employees who work on managerial positions at higher education institutions (HEIs).
Design/methodology/approach – This study is based on both literature studies and explorative empirical research conducted in Poland with the use of snowball sampling. It adopted a questionnaire authored by Parker and Hyett and covered 121 respondents.
Findings – Literature studies show that invisibility of work, low level of empowerment, increased stress, workload and expectations, reduced resources, high level of anxiety, fatigue and low level of vitality negatively impact the WB of HEIs’ administrative staff. The presented research provides insight into the internal structure of the administrative staff’s WB. Both the main construct (i.e. employees’ WB) and its subconstructs are on moderate level. Respondents’ age and tasks performed are correlated only with the subconstruct of WB in the form of intrusion of work into private life.
Research limitations/implications – Although the research is not based on large sample, it provides both practical and theoretical implications.
Originality/value – Most of studies discuss the issue of WB of scholars. The paper fills the research gap in terms of examining female administrative employees who work on managerial positions at HEIs.

Purpose: This study aims to verify the quality of the teacher competency inventory as a pedagogical competencies measure of teachers in higher education institutions.

Design methodology: The development and testing of the teacher competency inventory covered three phases: (1) item generation, (2) dimension identification and data reduction (factor analysis), and (3) scale evaluation. The current study tests its construct validity, using an independent samples t-test, variance analysis, and Anova in two different environments.

Findings: Results indicate that the inventory measures unitary constructs and provide its predictive capacity. The developed instrument measures levels of future-oriented pedagogical competencies with comparable reliability and validity.

Practical implications: Teacher competency inventory may be applied to teachers’ recruitment, selection, development, and performance evaluation with the goal to identify current and required levels of competencies. The inventory allows one to compare teacher competencies with the expected competency profile. Possible differences may indicate deficits or overruns in relation to the expected profile.

Originality: Teacher competency inventory is a meaningful tool to improve human resource practices – including recruitment, selection, and teacher performance monitoring – and to indicate the current and required level of competencies. The identified competency gap can help plan teacher development to increase job performance.

Purpose: The article explores changes in the institutional autonomy and accountability resulting from university reforms carried out over a period of 28 years under the influence of the traditional public administration and new public management logic.

Design/methodology/approach: This qualitative study uses rich empirical material, which includes archival documents as well as 16 semi-structured, in-depth interviews with deans, professors, representatives of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education, and HEI experts. For analysis, we used the general inductive approach. Institutional logic has been used as the theoretical framework to analyze changes in resource allocation, autonomy, and accountability of HEIs.

Findings: Following the idea of reform as routine, our study shows that the implemented reforms have proven ineffective in comprehensively increasing the autonomy and accountability of HEIs and that they tend to turn into a routine. However, over the past 30 years, a certain increase in autonomy, combined with accountability shifts from input toward output control mechanisms can be observed. An important finding of this research is also the limited understanding of the concept of accountability by the top management of universities and by the ministry’s representatives. Moreover, this illustrates that accountability is understood only as a formal obligation to report to the funding agency and is treated as an integral part of the Polish HE landscape, increasing from reform to reform.

Originality/Value: This article explores the evolution of the Polish state funding systems of universities and analyzes the development from a stable traditional funding model – that was in place before the collapse of the communist system – to a complex multi-tier system and to recent attempts at reforming the HE field, aimed at increasing the autonomy and accountability of Polish universities. More efforts should be made by policymakers to create a sustainable balance between autonomy and accountability in the HE field.

Purpose: Because of the growing interest in the literature in education and political skill as facilitators of firm performance, this article aims to reveal whether there is a moderating role of women entrepreneurs’ political skill on the relationship between their education level and firm performance when firm- and entrepreneur-level characteristics remain under control.

Methodology: The study was conducted in Istanbul, Kocaeli, and Bursa, cities with the lowest gender gap in Turkey. The participants of the questionnaires were 291 entrepreneurs who are members of the Women Entrepreneurs Association of Turkey (KAGIDER), the Women Entrepreneur Members of Endeavor Turkey, and the TOBB Women Entrepreneurs. Hierarchical regression analysis was performed to analyze the dataset.

Findings: When firm- and the entrepreneur-level characteristics remain under control, women entrepreneurs’ political skill shows a moderator role in the relationship between women entrepreneurs’ education level and firm performance.

Practical Implications: A bachelor’s degree or higher, along with political skill, allow women
entrepreneurs to increase their firm performance. Furthermore, the higher the political skill, the higher the effect of education level on firm performance.

Originality/Value: This is the first study to investigate the moderating role of political skill of women entrepreneurs in the relationship between education level and firm performance. Moreover, political influence and human capital theories are jointly applied to the theoretical model.

Purpose: The aim of the article is to examine the selected determinants of the expected rate of return on human capital.
Methodology: We conducted an anonymous survey of expected salaries among the Accounting and Controlling students at the Cracow University of Economics, which provided a unique setting for the analysis. On the basis of collected data for the cost of living and the cost of professional education for every participant, we used the human capital model developed by Dobija to compute the perceived level of the human capital of each individual. Then, we compared the expected salaries with the perceived levels of human capital and computed expected rates of return on human capital. The following research methods are used: literature review, statistical tests, econometric modeling.
Findings: On the sample of 754 respondents, we found that male students expect a higher rate of return on their human capital than female students, while older students expect a lower rate of return on human capital than younger students.
Research limitations: Only one field of study was used to measure the determinants of the expected rate of return on human capital.
Originality: We contribute to the salary expectations and human capital literature by identifying a significant gender salary expectations gap that holds even after considering individually assessed costs of living and professional education. Our findings are consistent with the well-known observation that women tend to expect lower salaries than men.

Purpose: The technological progress of production processes causes changes in the social structure
of work, i.e. modifies the content of most, if not all, workplaces. In that respect, the identification
of changes in the intensity of creativeness, the level of education, and the experience of employees
in production processes and occupational tasks is a particularly important issue. The article investigates
the interdependence among work creativity, education, and job experience of employees of
one of the municipal companies operating in Poland.

Methodology: The study employs firm-level data covering over 2,200 observations. The study gathered
data from three major internal sources of information: the scopes of responsibilities of organizational
positions, personnel documentation regarding the individual level of education and
professional experience, and the results of interviews with executive staff and employees on particular
posts. The research proceedings base on document analysis, structured interviews, teamwork
methods, and a classification technique.

Results: Research revealed that the complexity of work increased in the company. Jobs requiring
higher levels of creativity are occupied by employees with relatively higher education. However,
their average level of education in the analyzed period decreased as opposed to jobs that require
relatively lower levels of creativity. The analysis of interdependence between creativity and job
experience identified that there emerged a relatively shorter average job experience for employees
who perform cognitive work. Moreover, the average job experience increased in the group of employees
who perform routine manual and non-routine cognitive work.

Implications: The study refers to the job polarization issue by confirming the tendencies of labor
markets. It also addresses issues concerned with technological progress, although they are not
confirmed by research in this paper.

Originality/Value: The main contribution of the paper is the interesting dataset gathered. Furthermore,
the paper addresses an interesting question where empirical research at the firm level is
lacking, particularly municipal company.

Purpose: Since the higher education environment has become highly competitive, the application of marketing principles to the education environment becomes increasingly evident. In order to attract new students and continue business, the institutional brand also gains on importance. Considering the scant literature on the influence of the perceptions of service quality dimensions on brand equity in general and higher education in particular, this exploratory study seeks to determine whether the SERVPERF dimensions of service quality make significant influencers of the overall brand equity of select (South African) universities, and whether the overall service quality significantly influences the overall brand equity.

Design: The authors conducted a survey among a judgmental sample of 400 students from two selected university campuses, using the SERVPERF scale. The data were analyzed with inferential statistical methods, such as multiple regression analysis, with the help of SPSS.

Findings: Tangibles and Empathy were significant and positive influencers of the students’ perception of the institutions’ overall brand equity and the overall service quality as a significant predictor of the overall brand equity. It also became evident that the overall service quality has a significant and positive influence on the overall brand equity when it comes to the students’ perceptions of the surveyed universities.

Implications: Tangibles and Empathy must be closely monitored and carefully managed, while the important role that service quality plays in the overall sense in increasing brand equity perceptions implies that – in the branding efforts of higher education institutions – management and leadership should pay particular attention to offering high levels of service quality to increase the value of their brands.

Research limitations: Only two campuses from one public higher education institution in South Africa was included in the survey, thus any generalization of the research findings must be circumspect.

Originality/value: Management and leadership of higher education institutions must know the service quality dimensions which promote the brand of the institution and manage them to promote a positive image of the institution since these are the dimensions of quality emphasized by the students.

Purpose: The article addressed the problem of relationships between university funding and efficiency on the one hand and the quality of teaching and research on the other.

Methodology: The measurement of teaching and research quality in Polish universities was derived from two sources: 1) evaluation scores of teaching quality given to universities by the Polish Accreditation Committee, and 2) the research category grades given to university departments or units by the Polish Committee for Evaluation of Scientific Units. Subsequently, the quality measurements were correlated with financial indicators and efficiency scores obtained from data envelopment analysis.

Findings: The correlation and regression results indicated that public universities that have received higher scores of teaching quality simultaneously have higher average scientific categories. There was also a substantial relationship between the revenue per student and the revenue per teacher and variables describing quality but the regression analysis exhibited opposite directions regarding the type of quality indicator.

Research limitations/implications: The quality of teaching and research at universities was assessed despite the limited availability of internal information gathered from higher education institutions (HEIs).

Practical implications: The authorities of a university can simultaneously track the improvement of quality or financial efficiency without losing their interdependence when reforms of HEI operations are conducted.

Originality: The study proposed new measurements of quality derived from external evaluation bodies and investigated the relations of these measures with selected financial and efficiency indicators.

Purpose: The aim of the study is to analyse marketing challenges facing Polish public universities. Polish universities must urgently adjust their educational offers to deep declines in internal demand and to increased internationalisation of the educational market. The author explores the impact of management decentralisation in faculties of higher education institutions upon their market orientation, relationships with the external world and commercialisation of educational services targeting foreign students.

Methodology: The study is based mostly on direct observations and an extensive review of international literature devoted to the model of the university of the future and its relationships with the environment. The author has been lecturing on marketing for many years; he also manages educational business programmes at a large public university in Poland where he acts in the capacity of a dean.

Findings: Future universities should develop an array of services based on the relationship marketing with key strategic partners (business, local authorities, students and graduates). The idea of a modern educational service should be based on an individual approach to students expanded with complementary services. Educational services should be developed interactively in cooperation with key stakeholders.

Practical implications: Polish public universities should become more marketing oriented and develop a set of commercial educational services addressed to foreign students and to entrepreneurial and internationally-oriented Polish students.

Originality/value: Conclusions formulated by the author result from his long personal experience and knowledge of the specifi city of the educational market in Poland and across the world and his experience in managing an interdisciplinary faculty of a large public university. The interdisciplinary approach to the subject combines elements of the relationship marketing and interactive development of new educational services.

Purpose: To explain the conventions and conditions for implementing internationalization of a university as a strategic course for its development, as well as to provide universal strategic scenarios for expansion of the university abroad as well as to outline the factors contributing to success.

Methodology: The paper while conceptual in nature, is based on the diagnosis and analysis of the market for university education in Poland. Studies of specialized literature highlighted the main phenomena conditioning performance and trends in higher education which constituted the general background for deliberations and detailed projections.

Conclusion: The author underscores strategic conditions and decision-making procedures for a University’s expansion into foreign markets of higher education. He emphasizes the major opportunities and risks associated with the university going international. The proposals are not only cognitive but also can be the basis for application in the realism of Polish universities.

Originality: The activities of foreign universities in the domestic higher education market is a fact which is existent in many countries. This paper proposes a general concept for the internationalization strategy of a University in conjunction with a scenario accompanied by a detailed analysis and decision-making procedure. In the literature, this aspect of development of the university has been expanded in accordance with the objectives
international marketing.