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This paper contributes to the research on discrepancy between employers' needs and graduates' competencies acquired at bachelor education. Given the fact that internationalizing SMEs have considered international relation competency (IRC) to be the key competency for starting export professionals, this qualitative study examines whether this key competency with its selected knowledge, skills and attitudes has been integrated into the curriculum of a bachelor program in International Business at a Dutch University of Applied Sciences. Based on a document analysis of this bachelor program and interviews with lecturers and alumni of this program, we found that the training of international relationship competency is almost absent in the curriculum. Both lecturers and alumni envision skills and attitude development to be incorporated into the curriculum of this internationally oriented bachelor program. The findings offer some suggestions for further research concerning developing cooperation between business and education and the assessment of international relation competency within the context of IB education.

The pressure on higher education institutions (HEIs) to realize third mission activities continues to grow, intensifying the search for incentives to motivate academics to engage with stakeholders outside their HEI. Previous studies have found limitations in intrinsically motivating academic engagement; therefore, this study investigates the extrinsic regulation of motivations via incentives. The authors identified a broad range of incentives for third mission activities, belonging to four motivation categories: pecuniary incentives, career advancement, appreciation and research support. Drawing on self-determination theory, incentives (nudges and rewards) are empirically compared in a between-subject design with a sample of 324 academics from the business and economics disciplines. The analysis showed that nudges affect business and economics academics' intention to engage with society in a joint research project. Furthermore, these academics responded well to incentives concerned with the research support motivation category. The findings contribute to the literature by highlighting the relevance of marginal incentives--nudges--in implementing appropriate incentives in HEIs.

The organizational world has long recognized action learning (AL) as an invaluable tool for managerial development. However, AL's popularity among organizations did not translate into its adoption by business schools. A lack of evidence on what competencies AL fosters in students and whether these competencies transfer to practice has limited its wider acceptance. We address this issue by examining the learning outcomes of an undergraduate business program that has been using AL as a central didactical feature for the past 10 years. Based on a qualitative cross-sectional study following five alumni cohorts, results show that AL fosters the development of knowledge (theoretical and practical), skills (communication and collaboration), and attitudes (self-knowledge and self-efficacy); competencies graduates transferred to practice years after completing the program. Although management education has been continually criticized for its inability to provide undergraduates with the competencies necessary for practice, our study shows that AL contributes to narrowing this relevance gap. It also expands our understanding of the effectiveness and impact of AL beyond executive training to include undergraduate education, thus informing and inviting educators to consider AL as an alternative to expand their teaching practices.

Notwithstanding the growing importance of university-business cooperation (UBC), our understanding of education-driven UBC remains nebulous, so does our knowledge of facilitators of academic engagement in such cooperation. This research explores psychological facilitators underlying academic engagement with business in education-driven activities such as student mobility, curriculum design and delivery. Drawing on a self-determination theory (SDT), it investigates the factors facilitating academic engagement in these activities with a specific focus given on their UBC autonomy, competence and relatedness. Based on an extensive and wide-reaching European survey, this research shows that academic autonomy does not only play an important role in teaching and research, but also in facilitating academic engagement in education driven UBC, with UBC competence and relatedness being highly relevant too. This research contributes to the literature by shedding light on education-driven UBC and by applying SDT framework of need satisfaction in this context.

The philosophy of Industry 5.0 recognises the transformative power of the industrial sector to add value to society and employees. Industry 5.0 is distinct from its predecessors because it relies on a tripod of sustainability, human centricity, and resilience. These three thematic principles aim to improve work safety, research, and innovation and strengthen industrial resilience and competitiveness. However, a perfect storm is brewing for the future of work, brought about by the concerning trends of displacement and low skill levels of workers' competencies in handling the new technologies of Industry 5.0 in emerging economies. This conceptual paper will describe Industry 5.0 and provide historical insights on the importance of acquiring the desired twenty-first-century competencies needed in the workforce for Industry 5.0 and how these competencies can be cultivated. Two research questions guided the study in identifying these twenty-first-century competencies, how these competencies can be cultivated and taught in the education curriculum and policies of emerging economies, and the crucial importance of adapting Industry 5.0 to these emerging economies. The study concluded that emerging economies must play an active role in shaping the future by creating policies that will advance social stability, resource preservation, and climate objectives, which will enable more productive production processes with lower waste and energy usage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the core elements of universities applied sciences (UAS) is its connection with professional fields. Lecturers establish relationships with private organizations and guide students in internships, projects, assignments and towards graduation. In this role, lecturers are confronted with developments in their field of expertise, thereby deploying their networks of relationships through their social capital. From these relationships, a certain reciprocity is created, resulting in possibilities for mutual support. We interviewed UAS lecturers via email about these relationships and the importance they attach to them. The theory of social capital is used to analyse the interactions between lecturers and companies or organizations in the professional field. Above all, these lecturers expressed interest in students' learning processes and used social capital to achieve this aim, while indirectly recognizing its added value for the development of knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we analyse 53 Dutch accreditation reports in the field of information technology to assess the mechanisms of the reported involvement of the professional field in the undergraduate programmes of universities of applied sciences. The results of qualitative content analysis reveal a coupling effect in reporting on mechanisms of interaction. Although the involvement of the professional field is tightly coupled with the undergraduate programmes at universities of applied sciences at the strategic level, there is an under-representation of university-industry interaction on an operational level, which suggests the need to explore the actual interaction taking place between the professional field and the programmes. Simultaneously, our results indicate that accreditation reports are not able to provide a holistic picture of professional field engagement in the curriculum of undergraduate programmes at the operational level, which questions their role in acknowledging the role of industry in shaping and achieving intended learning outcomes. Perhaps policymakers should consider introducing other tools or standards for addressing the outcome of the engagement and the responsiveness of the programmes at universities of applied sciences to the professional field.

This article addresses academics who innovate in higher education and their characteristics. We undertake a qualitative case study of six individuals who implemented disruptive and transformative pedagogical approaches and curricular practices in their departments and/or at their institutions. Our findings point to six common characteristics--motivation to change institutionalized practices, interest in change, experience in the field, multi-embeddedness, authority to act, and the strategic use of social networks--which seem to play a role at individual levels in driving these disruptive and transformative approaches. While acknowledging studies in higher education that address innovation as a response to exogenous influences, this study highlights the role of individuals with certain characteristics in driving innovation and processes of endogenous change in higher education institutions. These findings are also relevant for higher education practitioners in their desire to foster innovative initiatives in institutional settings.

This article is concerned with the emergence of the science-business (SB) profession and the role of the SB professional (SBP) in both academia and business. Transferring science to markets can take a variety of routes depending on the stage of development and the people and skill sets involved. An SBP may co-develop opportunities for exploitation as part of a team in a university or in the business world in a spin-off or a mature company. In both settings, the SBP connects with scientists and co-develops knowledge or technology into an exploitable commodity. The need for this type of professional was the starting point for a new curriculum: a 3-year bachelor's programme in science, business and innovation that integrates fundamental sciences (physics, chemistry, mathematics), life and health sciences, energy and sustainability sciences, business/social sciences, innovation and entrepreneurship. The authors provide the context and rationale for the development of the programme and discuss how it meets its objective to address a critical skills need in both academic and business sectors.

Over the last few decades, globalization and ever-increasing demands of the knowledge-based economy have caused higher education in most countries around the world to undergo significant transformation. Notwithstanding the dramatic changes in higher education, it is clearly noticed that the influence of the European higher education models is still present despite the fact that the American model has then become dominant on higher education in Europe or even worldwide. The changes have been seen in the evolutionary roles of universities, which share the common trend from traditional missions of teaching and research to the third mission for economic development. Despite various viewpoints about the third mission, the common one concerns the entrepreneurial role of university for socio-economic development, underlying the concept of entrepreneurial university in which the collaboration between university and external stakeholders is emphasized. This paper is aimed to present a review of the taxonomy of the three European higher education models, namely the Humboldtian, Napoleonic, and Anglo-Saxon model, which is followed by a discussion on the emergence of the Anglo-American model of higher education. The paper then presents the third mission in relation to the roles of a university in developed countries, which is followed by the elaboration on the transformation from mode 1 to mode 2 in knowledge production, and a pathway toward entrepreneurial universities.

The process of knowledge transfer has been extensively studied in the context of a variety of theoretical considerations. In this paper the authors adopt a communication theory perspective and focus on capacity for dissemination. Many studies assume that universities are able to disseminate and commercialize their knowledge (and technology). However, it has been shown in practice that dissemination and commercialization can be problematic. Following a review of the literature, the authors identify four topics connected with dissemination capacity: (1) the purpose of knowledge transfer; (2) the transformation of knowledge; (3) the importance of valuable knowledge from a respectable source; and (4) issues of network and inter-organizational dynamics that offer suggestions for further research. For each of these four topics, propositions are formulated as signposts for further studies and the implications for research in this area are outlined. (Contains 1 table.)

The dissemination and transfer of knowledge are an important source of value-added in research activities, and the transfer of new knowledge to society is now seen as a key responsibility of universities. Transnational research cooperation is pivotal to European research funding and, with this in mind, the authors examine the state of cooperation among European universities in knowledge transfer activities. They identify the key modes of academic knowledge transfer as patenting and licensing; spin-offs and enterprise creation; university-industry networks; and continuous professional development. From their study it appears that, although universities wish to increase the extent of cooperation, structural cooperation in knowledge transfer does not seem to be the ambition of many universities. The study thus confirms that knowledge transfer in Europe remains largely a regional and national affair. (Contains 1 note, 5 tables and 4 figures.)

It is becoming increasing clear that a new industry--the entrepreneurship industry--is in the ascendant and that universities are a part of this development. Furthermore, the idea of the entrepreneurial university has only recently entered the debate. Promoting the entrepreneurship agenda within constituencies where it is not traditionally acknowledged is a peculiar challenge that requires the adoption and adaptation of traditional selling approaches ("valorisation mechanisms"), mindful that the product on offer ("entrepreneurship") is a service. Via three case studies, the role of universities in this new industry and the role of academic entrepreneurship are highlighted. (Contains 1 figure and 8 notes.)

New stakeholders and new roles for old stakeholders have emerged with the development of entrepreneurial universities. A new systemic framework is therefore required which includes these various stakeholders and their goals and thus gives a clear picture of the process of entrepreneurship encouragement and business development support (EE&BDS). The authors propose a model for knowledge transfer and company growth in the context of entrepreneurial universities and science parks. This integrative approach to the roles of the different stakeholders, activities, tools, goals and needs facilitates the arrangement and management of the EE&BDS process. The authors describe and assess their EE&BDS model, presenting the case of the Polytechnic University of Valencia (UPV) and the science park linked to it, the Polytechnic City of Innovation (CPI). The analysis identifies the roles of and relationships among the UPV-CPI stakeholders and shows how this integrative approach can enhance the EE&BDS process for the institution. (Contains 6 figures, 4 tables and 6 notes.)

How do European universities organise the knowledge transfer (KT) task? We consider the institutional organisation of knowledge transfer as encompassing 1) the knowledge transfer office structure, i.e. the way universities have embedded and organise their KT activities, 2) the focus towards the KT task, linked to the KT strategy, and 3) the KT activities themselves. Four exploratory cases of European universities show various motives to perform the KT task, different KT strategies and distinct interpretations of KT activities. Hence, the knowledge transfer office does not exist: all have hybrid structures. However, this structure depends on the university's KT strategy. The KT strategy in combination with the KT activities, and not the knowledge transfer office structure as such, is therefore advocated to be the topic of further research.

A growing body of academic research has examined the effectiveness of entrepreneurship training and support initiatives, with recent studies focusing on the provision of training and other skills development opportunities. An important theme that has emerged from this work is the failure of many programmes and initiatives to take on board the particular needs of the entrepreneurs in developing training and support systems. By extending research in this area, this article considers the importance of education and training to the economy and focuses on the particular value of entrepreneurship education and training. Some of the fundamental themes in the literature are reviewed, including the difficulties involved in categorising entrepreneurship education and training; the issue of whether or not entrepreneurship can be taught; the content of entrepreneurship programmes and the cultural and evaluative considerations. The article discusses and compares training and support provision for entrepreneurs in Ireland and The Netherlands. (Contains 6 notes.)