To make their mandate more efficient, universities have to either offer services to students either produce innovation and scientific research. From this point of view it is difficult for universities to focus their attention on economic and financial performance. Instead, it is much more relevant for the university to find models of governance that are able to bring together profitability, financial sustainability, and social and communitarian commitment. Universities generate knowledge that can be used to improve the standard of economic and social life in the territorial environment. For these reasons it is important to analyze relations between university and community of reference. We found that italian universities that perform better are associated with communities able to generate individual and social welfare. Better universities have also more active and skilled student populations. Monthly data are considered for the period 2012 and 2017 for 58 italian universities. Data are collected from BES-ISTAT, Almalaurea and Center for World University Rankings-CWUR. The complex database has been realized by using KNIME mixing different sources in an original metric environment. We use panel data approach to estimate the level of italian ranking in CWUR statistics by the usage two different sets of variables: BES-ISTAT and SIOPE. The increasing in the Global International Ranking can be realized either directly by increasing the level of services and products generates, either indirectly improving the spillovers effect of universities in respect to a certain community of reference.

This paper extends and complements previous research on unethical leader behavior by examining the social and cultural perspectives that inform the understanding of objectional conduct among secondary school leaders in Kenya. The study used a social constructivist theoretical framework, and qualitative case study, and semi-structured interviews with school boards of governors, principals, and heads of department and school bursars. The findings revealed that cultural beliefs underpinned by the ubuntu ethic informed the school leaders' perceptions of unethical leadership behavior in the Kenyan secondary school contexts. Four sub-themes highlight acts that contradict the ubuntu values of altruism, humanness, care, and solidarity. They include disregard for community interests, neglect of care for one's kin, disregard for harmony, and elders' respect. The study concluded that western universal perspectives and definitions could not solely be relied upon to describe unethical leadership behavior in schools in non-Euro western contexts. The study contributes to the literature on unethical and ethical leadership by proposing a potential benefit in recognizing and incorporating non-western perspectives in exploring and defining the unethical leadership construct.

Teacher Leadership Teams (TLTs) are cross-functional teams, and thus knowledge integration is central to their teaming. Importantly, the existing literature maintains that cross-functional teams apply the traverse or transcend approach differently to integrate divergent knowledge, but few studies have directly focused on it within the context of TLTs. Studies on leadership teams in schools have highlighted political and/or cultural perspectives and mainly stressed team/organizational conditions that might influence the TLT process of using two knowledge integration approaches. Therefore, our research analyzed how one TLT employed two knowledge integration approaches in consideration of team/organizational conditions. More specifically, we conducted qualitative research using the Cultural-Historical Activity Theory as an analytic lens. We identified that the TLT used traverse, transcend, and mixed approaches, and that its context influenced the team’s hybrid use by determining when the team utilized each approach. We believe that our findings contribute to revealing TLTs’ actual knowledge integration process by empirically examining one TLT’s use of knowledge integration approaches. Our findings also contribute to developing a more comprehensive framework to understand TLT knowledge integration by addressing existing research from political and cultural perspectives and suggesting further areas of focus (i.e., functional conditions) for future research.