How to assess and enhance the strategic capacity of universities? This article suggests a managerial perspective derived from evidence-based social science knowledge. It lists major facets any local strategizing should address. It underlines the key role endogenous organizational capabilities play to make it happen or not in a sustainable manner. Three sets of social properties are evidenced: the way academic human resources are actually managed, the cultural norms appropriated by its members about their affiliation to their institution as a community, and the organizational governance at work between the various parts of the institution. Reminding us that the capacity to strategize is an outcome of actual organizational fabrication processes, the article also lists a series of booby-traps to avoid.

This article presents two different perspectives on the relation between university governance and creativity. It argues that although perceptions of the relation between European university governance and creativity differ and vary over time, the space for creativity also seems to have been shaped by some common factors: fragmented authority structures, support and protection by centres of economic and political power, and values emphasizing openness and tolerance for new ideas. The importance and interplay between these factors have varied over time. This is illustrated by contrasting two examples of the development of the European university: Perkin’s historical perspective on universities in Medieval Europe and the modern university – as it has developed from about 1800 until today.

The paper addresses the question of how, in a research-intensive university, choices should be made to determine strategies that are appropriate for ambitious and creative institutions committed to both teaching and research at a high level. The paper calls for accountable real leadership at the university level and at lower levels. It also calls for organizational flexibility and flexibility in the allocation of material and immaterial resources.

Creativity is the generation of novel and useful ideas. Organizations, including universities and other research institutions, need to develop novel and useful products to satisfy constantly evolving customer needs. Furthermore, organizational procedures and processes develop over time, and continuous improvements in processes contribute to organizational efficiency. Thus, the development of novel and useful ideas in relation to products, procedures and services is mandated from many employees in modern organizations, including researchers and scientists. This creativity can take on many different forms, for example unconventional solutions to a wide variety of problems related to research, teaching and administration. Because many of these problems are comparable to that of workers in all kinds of jobs, I believe it is possible to draw on the rich knowledge in the field of organizational creativity to provide some insights into how to foster scientific creativity. The work of researchers and scientists is in many ways comparable to that of knowledge workers in other kinds of organizations: they are high-level employees who apply knowledge to do their work, oftentimes using creative thinking. A rich body of literature has dealt with creativity in these jobs where creativity is a core requirement, and has examined the organizational factors related to creativity. Before I summarize this research and highlight some important research findings concerning the rewards for creativity, the design of jobs, the processes leading to creativity, the organizational climate, and daily work events associated with creativity, I will disentangle different forms of creativity at work and describe a general model of creativity in the context of work.

The main resource for a country’s endogenous growth is its human and cultural capital. Universities play a very important, but not the only, role in maintaining and building this resource. Universities are institutions situated amongst strong and changing forces. They are caught between government, market and academia. In many institutions, this has led to a strengthening of the executive leadership at the expense of the influence of collegial bodies, and external (to the institution) members have been introduced into the governing bodies. This development has resulted in diminished state control, and more flexible and autonomous systems, but also to expanded reporting and accounting, which often in reality limit freedom and are perceived as control. Will academic creativity thrive within this reality? How would research universities evolve? This article claims that today’s university development starts out from Wilhelm von Humboldt’s universe but will play out in that of his brother Alexander’s.

This article describes the recent requirement for UK universities to account for the social and economic impact of their research, and asks whether this impact agenda may change the conduct of research itself. Three critical issues are highlighted: the epistemology of impact; the problem of quantifying qualities; and the likelihood of impact growing in significance and changing the landscape of research – so-called ‘impact creep’. Overall, the article identifies some features of the research impact agenda that pose risks to creativity and risk-taking by academics.

The contemporary university is subject to two, apparently contradictory, forces. The first is the drive towards the modernisation of its governance and management, often in ways that reflect corporate structures more familiar in the private sector (and other parts of the reformed public sector). This drive has been accompanied by the growth of performance management, both of institutions and individual teachers and researchers; the more prescriptive identification of goals and targets (at the expense, perhaps, of traditional notions of autonomy and academic freedom); and more explicit – and intrusive? – forms of audit, accountability and evaluation. The other force is the development of new modes of learning, a more open curriculum and more distributed patterns of research. Examples include the popularity of (technology-enhanced) self-directed learning, the growth of massive open online courses (MOOCs), the spread of open-source publication and greater emphasis on the impact and application of research. Both forces reflect deep-rooted changes in the nature of modern higher education and research systems, and it would be misleading to see them as always or inevitably in conflict. However, they do pose new dilemmas about how to maintain an appropriate balance between the necessary management of the large, complex and heterogeneous organisations that modern universities have become and their capacity for innovation and creativity.

Discussions of creativity and university governance often conflate multiple kinds of creativity–governance relations. Focusing on the ‘third kind’ of creativity–governance relations in universities, I discuss the role of creativity in prospecting governance models. In other words, this paper focuses on the methods for creatively seeking (third kind) creative governance models (second kind) that foster academic creativity (first kind). I argue that the methods of prospecting governance models are subject to institutional dynamics that steer such search off the path of creativity. I note in particular two such institutional dynamics that track the prospecting process – namely, professional expertise and referentiality – and I argue that these institutional dynamics generate inherent tension in the governance of creativity in universities. I illustrate these claims with findings from a large-scope research project on the branding of universities.

Looking at the Spanish impact on Nahuatl both in its full historical trajectory and modern synchronic dimension, I focus on the differentiation between ‘balanced’, long-term language contact and ‘unbalanced’ contact leading to rapid language shift in contemporary indigenous communities. I discuss the connection between accelerated contact-induced language change and language endangerment and shift, highlighting and assessing the mutually interdependent extra- and inter-linguistic variables that influence and shape both processes. Of special importance is the synchronic variation linked to speakers’ proficiency that influences language transmission in the diachronic perspective. On the basis of extensive fieldwork and linguistic documentation I identify several types of Nahuatl speakers as agents of this accelerated language change which leads to individual attrition and shift at the community level. This kind of multidisciplinary approach, taking into account both historical and modern data, can also potentially be useful for other minority languages in the scenario of long-term contact with a dominant language.

The town of Wilamowice (southern Poland) is the unique home to the community of speakers of Wymysiöeryś. The language enclave originates from Colonial Middle High German and – according to diachronic dialectological analyses – is made up of a sub-exclave of the so-called Bielitz-Bialaer Sprachinsel. As a result of social and political cataclysms brought by the Second World War and the following ban on and gap in its intergenerational transmission, it faced an inescapable language death. That doom, however, has been restrained by the activities of dedicated native speakers, with Tymoteusz Król (born in 1993) functioning as an eco- and sociolinguistic relay between the generation of last speakers passing away and, unexpectedly, a growing group of potential new speakers. The microlanguage, now spoken as native by fewer than 20 Wilamowiceans, and still without any official recognition at the administrative level, is experiencing an astonishing, but well-prepared and local culture-based revitalisation course. This article discusses the recent achievements and prospective challenges of the revival processes for Wymysiöeryś – from an internal (including T. Król as the youngest native speaker and intra-community researcher) and external yet engaged (J. Olko and T. Wicherkiewicz as participating academics) perspectives, including the recent results of activities undertaken within an integral revitalisation programme based on the successful collaboration of the community, two major universities in Poland, as well as the local school and municipal authorities. The programme covers all three levels of language planning: corpus, status and acquisition. Efficiently combining grassroots and top-down approaches, the collaborating actors also ground language revitalisation in the social, cultural and economical benefits of preserving and extending the local cultural heritage and linguistic landscape.

Several periods in classical (Greco-Roman) antiquity provide an intriguing mix of being ‘in the grip of the past’ and profoundly innovative in all societal domains at the same time. A new research agenda of the Dutch classicists investigates this combination, under the hypothesis that the two are connected. Successful innovations must somehow be ‘anchored’ for the relevant social group(s). This paper explores the new concept of ‘anchoring’, and some of the ways in which ‘the new’ and ‘the old’ are evaluated and used in classical antiquity and our own times. Its examples range from a piece of ancient theatrical equipment to the history of the revolving door, from an ornamental feature of Greek temples to the design of electric cars, and from the Delphic oracle to the role of the American constitution.

The internationalisation of the academy varies according to individual, institutional and structural characteristics. Among factors influencing it, discipline plays a major role. Relying on data collected by two international comparative studies – the Changing Academic Profession Study and the Academic Profession in Europe Study – this article focuses on two aspects of the internationalisation of the academy – namely, international research collaboration and international mobility – asking whether these two aspects are associated with academic disciplines and how. Results from multivariate data analyses – comparing Europe and the Rest of the World or other meaningful macro-regions – show that in some areas, such as international research collaboration and educational circulation, the international behaviours of academics belonging to different disciplines diverge, while in some others, such as research productivity related to international research collaboration and short-term professional circulation, they converge.

The European Research Council has provided substantial research grants across all disciplines during the period 2007–2013. An analysis of the distribution of the ERC (IDEAS) Starting, Consolidator and Advanced grants shows substantial differences by country. On the one hand, the UK excels in the relative number of awards, in its share among the top receiving institutions, in a high proportion of inwards mobile scholars and in the overall financial gain through ERC as compared with the UK’s contribution to the EU budget. In addition, the Netherlands is among the winners in these respects. On the other hand, Italy fares unfavourably according to these measures. In the search for an explanation of the Italian situation, a comparison is undertaken with other European countries of a similar size. The article arrives at the conclusion that low Italian success in efforts to raise such ERC funds is not due to the low average quality of the Italian education and research system, but rather due to low funding, e.g. to a low proportion of the GDP spent on research.

The paper examines the implications of the extensive and increasingly significant Chinese knowledge diaspora for the Europe of Knowledge. Based on extensive fieldwork, the paper examines the size, significance and key issues surrounding the growth of the Chinese Knowledge Diaspora. A portrait is developed of a highly-skilled group (bi-lingual and bi-cultural) who have the capacity to contribute to teaching and research both in China and their host nations, and who are often willing and eager to act as a bridge between both sides. Reference is also made to China’s numerous Overseas Talent Recruitment Schemes, which often target such individuals, and to the significance of this group to China’s dramatic, and ongoing, scientific rise. Key issues are discussed, as well as some limitations and the prospects for the future. Based on available information, data on PRC students and academics in Europe are presented and an assessment made of both the potential, and of the relatively limited impact, compared with major English-language countries of migration, such as the US, Canada and Australia. The analysis concludes with an assessment of prospects for a new epistemic Silk Road, and some of the barriers to its development.

Although internationalisation of the scientific world is a key issue in public attention and policy, the actual information base on migration and mobility of ‘teachers in higher education’, ‘scholars’, ‘academics’ or ‘researchers’ has remained weak. Most available statistics focus on ‘foreign’ students or ‘foreign’ scholars rather than persons mobile for purposes of learning and academic/research work, and provide information only on a single moment rather than on the life course of moving between countries. In recent years, some surveys of the ‘academic profession’ and ‘researchers’ have been undertaken primarily in economically advanced countries or especially in European countries that provide an overview on various modes, e.g. migration prior study, short-term student mobility and mobility for the whole degree programme, mobility in the phase of doctoral education and training, professional mobility in various stages of the professional career and finally shorter visits linked to academic and research work. All available information suggests that substantial differences exist by country and that no signs of convergence are visible. Moreover, surveys confirm that international experience is a frequently valuable asset of academic research careers but often is viewed as less beneficial than conventional wisdom suggests.

Two broad frameworks are used to describe and analyse the mobility of academic staff. The first, and dominant, framework focuses on flows from the ‘periphery’ to the ‘core’, although that ‘core’ is also evolving (and is no longer dominated by North America and Western Europe but is increasingly likely to embrace dynamic East Asia systems). This first approach is labelled ‘hegemonic internationalisation’. The second framework focuses instead on issues of development, the emergence of global communities and social movements. This is labelled ‘fluid globalisation’. The article argues that the latter may be more useful for understanding trends in academic mobility.

Five major themes are often addressed in the discourse of mobility in science: the definition and classification of the persons in mind (scholars, academics, researchers, etc); the frequency and the configuration of mobility; the roles mobility and migration play for the individuals; the roles they play for institutions (universities, research institutes, enterprises, etc); and finally the relevance of mobility and migration for the overall international activities within higher education and research in a ‘globalized world’. This article summarizes the concepts and findings presented as regards these themes in all of the articles in this special issue of European Review. The discourse both on concepts and findings suggests that mobility and migration are often viewed in isolation rather than in a wider context of features of internationalization. Moreover, attention often focuses on mobility and migration at the apex of the prestige and quality pyramid, notably in the countries most strongly involved; differences by country, sector and position in the reputational hierarchy would be viewed as more relevant if European policies aimed at a balance between market developments and cohesion across Europe and for keeping inequalities between European countries within limits.

International mobility of academics has risen over the last few decades, especially among PhD students and post-docs. This may be the result of deliberate policies to stimulate such mobility on the one hand and of growing imbalances in academic career opportunities on the other. The general belief that attracting international talents helps to ensure that a country plays a leading role in research and innovation, stimulates countries to develop initiatives to attract international students to doctoral programmes or to attract researchers who emigrated back to the country of origin. More traditional intercontinental mobility patterns from the south to the north and the east to the west, are now paralleled within Europe, where the disparities between countries in terms of R&D investment and skills shortages increase, related to the economic crisis. Consequently, brain circulation may easily turn into brain drain, and cultural diversity may decline. Related policy questions are whether this will unavoidably result in a (further) concentration of the minds in a limited number of regions or hubs and how this should be considered from the point of view of quality, competitiveness, diversity, and the future of the comprehensive research university in Europe.