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This paper analyses the inbreeding phenomena in Portuguese public universities. Inbreeding is defined as the recruitment of academics by the same institution that awarded their PhDs. Focusing on 1,217 PhD-holding Portuguese academics, belonging to four public universities and to six disciplinary areas, inbreeding is analysed in order to understand whether it might be influenced by the age of the institution and by how long ago the disciplinary area was established in a particular institution. Although a higher level of inbreeding was observed in older universities and in some of the longer established disciplinary areas, suggesting that institutional and disciplinary age play a role, it is possible to conclude that the inbreeding phenomenon is quite complex, and is influenced by other factors such as the disciplinary areas' core academic values and practices.

This article aims to analyse academics' perceptions on changes in the governance and management of higher education institutions (HEIs) under a generational perspective. It is empirically based on the analysis of national data resulting from the "Changing Academic Profession" international survey. Findings reveal a general tendency for the three different generations of academics to have similar perceptions on HEIs' governance and management. The three groups tend to consider that faculty boards and academics hold the control of decisions in areas related to the regulation of academic work and career. However, this is especially evident among the younger generation. Furthermore, the three generational groups acknowledge having low influence in the definition of institutional policies at the top levels. Again this is more evident for the younger generation. Finally, all three generations identify the same features as characterising their institutions' management model.

The paper analyses the Portuguese academics' perceptions about changes in their research activities and modes of knowledge production. Quantitative data gathered from an on-line national survey have been used to develop this analysis. Results reveal that the majority of academics declared that they were not involved in knowledge and technology transfer and that their research activities were not influenced by external sponsors or clients. However, they did recognise that were strong external pressures to reconfigure the epistemologies, ontologies and the institutional conditions under which knowledge is produced. The data analysis also reveals that academics recognise forms of hybridism between autonomy and endogenous dynamics and heteronomy and exogenous dynamics in the development of their research activities and knowledge production.

This paper addresses the interaction between European Union policies and national higher education sectors in the countries involved in the TRUE project (England, France, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, Norway, Portugal and Switzerland) making the case for European governance. Relevant for this matter is the role of political processes that evolve at European level shaping political discourses and practices, thus creating a common grammar for European higher education governance. By empirically focusing on evaluation and funding policies the paper argues that European governance reflects in how this common grammar is being created and reconfiguring the environment within which European higher education systems and institutions are developing.

In Portugal, as elsewhere, the rhetoric of managerialism in higher education is becoming firmly entrenched in the governmental policymakers' discourse and has been widely disseminated across the institutional landscape. Managerialism is an important ideological support of New Public Management policies and can be classified as a narrative of strategic change. In this paper, we analyse how far the managerialism narrative has been injected into the discursive repertory of Portuguese academics in their role as the co-ordinators of the higher education institutions' teaching and academic middle levels. Based on an analysis of interview responses, it seems that most academics support traditional academic values such as autonomy and collegiality, and reject university or polytechnic governance based on corporate philosophy.

Although students are considered major actors in the quality assessment of universities, the way they perceive this process and the meanings they ascribe to it are still neglected as a research subject. This article aims to reduce this gap by focusing on the social representations of students on quality assessment. Specifically, it tries to understand how these social representations reproduce elements of two common discourses thought to exist on higher education, universities and the assessment of their quality: one more traditional, the other more driven by managerialism and market assumptions. Based on the findings of a study taking the Portuguese case as a reference, it is possible to conclude that students' social representations seem to be shaped by and replicate many of the features characterising the latter discourse. Because these social representations certainly influence the relation of students with quality assessment, it would be appropriate to take them into account when (re)defining quality assessment systems. (Contains 1 table.)

Despite being one of the major reasons for the development of quality assessment, students seem relatively unaware of its potential impact. Since one of the main purposes of assessment is to provide students with information on the quality of universities, this lack of awareness brings in to question the effectiveness of assessment as a device for promoting institutional accountability. Aiming to contribute to increase knowledge in this field, the paper addresses Portuguese students' perceptions of the impact of quality assessment. Resorting to the findings of a qualitative study on this subject, it is argued that students seem to assume a rather ambiguous position "vis-a-vis" this impact. While seeing assessment as having only a limited capacity to produce changes, students seem reluctant about the possibility of measures being adopted to increase it. (Contains 2 tables.)

A progressive attempt to replace traditional public administration values and concepts by others that are closer to private management can be observed in the replacement of the service user concept by that of consumer or client. This redefinition's more implicit or explicit intent is to increase consumers'/clients' status, their capacity to choose and make rational choices in the market, and, ultimately, to ensure that organisations fulfil their needs. Influenced by this tendency, higher education institutions (HEIs) also started to see students as clients or consumers and to influence their choices by trying to define HE demand. This is evident in the shift in their external communication strategies: "institutional information", based on HEIs' prestige, is being progressively replaced by "marketed information", based on economic consumer logic. In trying to understand how students are perceived by Portuguese HEIs, we undertook qualitative research based on the content analysis of undergraduate degrees' announcements in newspapers. Major findings evidence that their content: (1) can be classified in a "continuum" bounded by two poles: the use of "institutional information" and the use of "marketed information"; (2) show the presence of a social representation of students as clients or consumers; (3) seems related to HEIs' nature (public vs. private), positioning in the HE system (universities and polytechnics) and "symbolic capital" (traditional vs. new institutions).

Changes in the governmental policies aiming at restructuring the Portuguese Higher Education system and institutions have been, over the last years, defined under the influence of New Public Management. External pressures induced by these reforms translate the attempts to create a new institutional environment particularly by changing professionals and organizational cultures. In this context, actors with managerial positions are those over whom more pressures for change are exerted, mainly because they are seen as leaders who have a strong influence over other professionals and can, in this way, promote more acceptable and convergent changes in higher education institutions. This study aims to analyse the attitudes, values and identities of Portuguese deans in the context of increasing state managerial pressures based on a qualitative study with 26 interviews of heads/deans from four public higher education institutions in Portugal. Data analysis allows us to conclude that deans identify homogeneous pressures in the institutional environment and perceive several changes in their managerial roles. Nevertheless, the majority of them still feel like academics and reject the idea of restringing their roles or their positions only to management.

This paper provides an analysis of the potential impact of changes in recruitment and hiring processes in Portuguese higher education institutions--under the New Public Management framework--on the representation of women in academia. Based on official data from the Portuguese Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education, two major conclusions emerge. First, Portuguese higher education institutions reproduce the same inequalities in career structures that are dominant in other occupational spheres, with the same phenomena of horizontal and vertical segregation both in universities and polytechnics careers. Second, recruitment and selection processes have an important influence on women in academia with the use of informal procedures emerging as an obstacle for women entrance into academic careers. (Contains 4 figures.)

Traditionally, and from a Humboltian perspective, research was conceived as an important part of the tripartite mission of universities, with teaching and services to the community being the other two. The traditional idea of universities as cultural and social institutions is increasingly being replaced by another: the entrepreneurial, capitalist or, even, industrial university. In the new university, research also changes in line with the economic instrumentality of higher education. In this article, we shall analyse if these new ideas were institutionalised in Portuguese public universities. To do this, we analyse the way in which research is signified in communication processes by analysing the content of universities' websites. In the main webpages, the dominant implicit social meaning of research seems to be a traditional one. However, a more specific analysis reveals the presence of entrepreneurial elements. In Portuguese public universities, creating and commercialising intellectual property could be an institutional objective, but it was not used in the web communication as such. One could say that, despite the New Public Management influences on universities, the idea of research as an entrepreneurial issue was not yet completely institutionalised and, consequently, communication tools such as websites showed hybrid meanings of research. (Contains 3 tables and 1 figure.)

In the last years, the increasing pressure over higher education institutions to promote alternative non-state funding sources has lead to an increasing importance given to research and, more specifically to applied research. The notion that women dedicate less time to research may be seen in the new context, as a prominent threat for women to reach universities top positions. In this article, which draws from an exploratory study case of two public universities in Portugal, we examine whether there are gender differences on perceptions about time dedicated to different academic activities. Findings reveal no significant gender differences in the academics' perceptions about their work. (Contains 3 tables.)

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 education academics. The empirical data are based on official statistics, and the analysis leads to the following conclusions. Changes have been slow, but already reveal a corrosion of traditional employment practices. Employment has become more precarious as professionals are increasingly employed on non-tenured contracts. This tendency is more evident in the polytechnic sector. In short, this means that the growth in skilled employment in higher education in Portugal is based on precarious employment relations.

There are many studies about the experiences of higher education students, but few analyze their representations of the governance and the management of their institutions. Our study will describe, analyze and compare students' representations of institutional evaluation at three institutions in Portugal and Brazil. Our results, based on an open questionnaire which sought to collect students' views on institutional evaluation, show that students' views are neither homogeneous nor do they simply reproduce the dominant external perspectives on the subject. A significant amount of students thought that evaluation is a legitimate exercise, resulting from a political decision, which is useful to improve the quality of universities and the relationship between students and academic staff. Some students also recognize that evaluation will lead to institutional comparisons, functioning as a mechanism of control, regulation, monitoring, and possibly of standardization. It is also noted to be "an impossibility," since it can never comprehend the existing diversity of institutional performance. (Contains 2 tables.)

Much of the writing on higher education in recent years has tended to assume that the new management push in higher education is both universal and irreversible. This paper, however, presents evidence from Portugal to challenge that assumption. While elements of the new managerialism are clearly evident in the perceptions and attitudes of academics in charge of the basic academic units (departments/schools and faculties) in the country's universities and polytechnics, academic management remains faced with a complex, contradictory and conflicting set of demands and expectations which is likely to take a considerable time to resolve.

How does the rhetoric of managerialism influence actors' perceptions about the ultimate goals of Portuguese higher education (HE)? From the data, based on interviews, three major themes were extracted: teaching/research relationship, HE's cultural and social relevance, and its economical relevance. The actors' narratives led to the conclusion that the "managerialist rhetoric" is not dominant. In the teaching/research relationship, most actors considered that research should be the main force behind teaching. In cultural and social relevance, the actors' discourses reflect an idea of HE based on "traditional" academic values. Finally, a more utilitarian perspective of HE emerges in some actors' discourses about developing a closer connection both between teaching and the labour market and between research and economic competitive needs.

Objectives. Computer use, as in typing, might contribute to trapezius myalgia (TM) development by increasing upper trapezius (UT) muscle fatigue. The purpose of this study is to investigate whether 10 min of performing a typing task by a population at risk would show significant changes in surface electromyography (sEMG) and pressure pain threshold (PPT) measurements. Supported and unsupported forearms postures are compared. Methods. Sixteen asymptomatic volunteers with minimum daily use of a computer of 5 h were randomized into two groups: fully supported forearms (n = 8) and unsupported forearms (n = 8). The protocol consisted of 10 min of a typing task, and the workstation was set according to the usual participant profile. sEMG and PPT readings were collected from both UT muscles. Results. PPT and sEMG readings were not significantly different among the two groups. Supported forearms had less reduction of PPT and a smaller increase in electrical activity. Conclusions. Ten minutes of typing seems insufficient to observe any significant changes that could lead to TM development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]