Making decisions in higher education institutions is realized in the context of the VUCA-world – that is, in the conditions of instability, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity, which are significant markers of today’s social, cultural, and organizational reality. The article is a case study of designing and implementing a new educational program in one Russian university. The analysis is shaped in a chain of interconnected decisions revealing the specifics of management decisions in modern universities. The study is based on mixed research methods, including five in-depth interviews with the most important actors involved; observation of the situation development stages; interviews with other actors involved; analysis of state regulatory documents and standards; analysis of university regulatory documents and standards. The case is studied via organized anarchy theory, power and authority in organization theory, risk avoidance and bounded rationality perspectives were used. The analysis of the case has identified the involved parties’ power boundaries blurring, the uncertainty of the «game rules», the exclusion of some important stakeholders from the decision-making process, the experience and expertise partially lacking in new decision-making situations, the ambiguity of several demanded organizational procedures. There are presented a number of strategies that can potentially reduce the level of uncertainty and improve the quality of decisions taken at universities. These include decomposing a problem situation, using techniques for analyzing complex decisions, increasing the role of participation and involvement, managing the distribution of information flows, preventing the phenomenon of group thinking. The article proposes measures of organizing political negotiations, improving the quality of communication, applying the principles of self-learning organization. The article contains a new and weakly presented in Russian scientific literature analysis of the theory and practice of decision-making management. The described strategies are designed to create solid background for mostly mature management decisions in universities.

This article presents an analysis of management practices that lead to increase of competitiveness of St. Petersburg branch of the National Research University Higher School of Economics on the national market in 2013– 2018. The authors discuss a list of the main indicators of success of changes in Russian universities in the context of the institutional and market conditions of Russian higher professional education in the early 2010s. The article highlights and analyzes the main groups of factors of changes in university management: a new strategic vision and the formation of a critical mass of supporters of change, introduction of internal institutions of change along with external institutions of change. The authors argue that radical increase of market competition drives complex changes within Russian universities, which require significant changes both in the strategic positioning and in the organization of primary and support business processes. Such changes are close to changes in corporate sector of firms in conditions of radical transformation of the external environment. The analysis presented in the article can be useful for the management of Russian universities when choosing tools to accelerate university changes.

This research paper describes the design and approbation of the Russian university employees’ engagement study. Employees engagement is one of the most important HR-trends of the XXI century, widely established in the business environment, but little popular in the academic community. The purpose of the study was to develop a tool for university managers to help them build and adjust the personnel policy of the educational organization. The study analysed key models of employee engagement (Aon Hewitt, Gallup Inc., Hay Group etc.), defined indicators and factors of engagement. On the basis of the obtained data, there was designed a methodology to specify the typology of university positions as oriented to the process and customer-oriented management approaches. The methodology was tested, conclusions and recommendations concerning the personnel policy of the educational organization were formulated according to the results of the pilot study. The further research challenge is validating the methodology on a larger sample and on different types of universities. This article can be useful both for universities’ whole management staff within HR-structures and for those who rely upon the employees’ development, potential, loyalty towards the organization, role engagement. Original and new in the article does appear the development of focused methods to be used in higher education institutions.

The article considers the conceptual issues for psychological studying various forms of social capital consolidation within universities. The main aspects of social capital consolidation are university reputation, trust, commitment to university goals, identification with the university, organizational culture, and an opportunity to put personal motives into life. The main goal of this paper is to examine the peculiarities of social capital consolidation in three Russian leading universities and to make theoretical conclusions to confirm our model of organizations’ social capital components. The article step by step studies the concept of university’s social capital and its connection with both organizational culture and reputation. An organization’s social capital and its consolidation are defined; the basic components of social capital for representatives of different university subcultures (students, administrative staff, and faculty) in three leading Russian highly-ranked universities are named according to the research. There is described the interrelation between the university’s reputation and the opportunities to put personal motives into life, the dynamics of the social capital formation for students in Russian universities and determinants of socialization for employees in higher educational institutions. In order to make managerial decisions and conduct further empirical studies, all the phenomena are considered according to their psychological contents, the research objects (leading Russian universities) taken into account. Altogether 590 people participated in this study. Various statistical methods are used: content analysis, ANOVA (analysis of variance), correlation and regression methods. The research showed that the consolidation of universities’ social capital combines both internal and external focuses of this phenomenon that can be presented via reputation characteristics, for instance, «reputational platform», a combination of clan and market cultures as well as socialization (trust, organizational commitment and identification). This concept can be considered as a positive basis to understand different managerial problems and find focused efforts to solve them. This article contributes to understanding psychological aspects of university management and to studying its cumulative social capital, which can significantly improve university’s reputation, as well as its competitive advantages within entrepreneurial environment.

In the current educational landscape, international accreditations are becoming an increasingly important tool of external evaluation of quality. Academia has ambivalent views on the role of international accreditations and points out the perils of bureaucratization and substitution of quality of outcomes with the quality of reporting. However, preparation for international accreditations stimulates self-reflection of faculty members with respect to their activities, definition development areas and problem-solving. The article discusses the potential of international accreditations in terms of engagement management in business schools and universities. The authors consider faculty engagement as a major development concept reflected in the missions of modern universities and requirements of international accreditations. The article presents comparative analysis of standards, criteria and processes of international accreditations in business education: AACSB, ЕFMD и AMBA and makes a linkage to international accreditations and the development of faculty engagement. The case of HSE St Petersburg School of Economics and Management is provided as an example of managing faculty engagement in the context of international accreditations.

This case-study article presents the results of a field 2016–2017 study done in the universities of Great Britain and France. The purpose of the research was to identify the features of the professional identity of university lecturers in these countries including the applicability of their experience to harmonize Russian higher education. According to this purpose, there were in-depth interviewed about 50 representatives of British (more than 20 interviews) and French (about 30 interviews) higher education institutions. In advance, there had been worked out a guide containing five blocks of questions. In the course of the study, there were clarified typical reasons for choosing the profession of a university lecturer; the lecturers’ views on the competencies required to work at the university, on the advantages and disadvantages of their profession, on the existence of a code and/or unwritten rules of the relationship within the team, on typical conflict situations. The problem of the relationship between academic freedoms and bureaucratic bonds has become the leitmotif of the whole study. As result, there have been distinguished the deep foundations of the transformation processes at the university. The study showed that British and French lecturers understand their profession, as a rule, in a similar way. The differences identified are not serious. The results can be applied to the Russian university system, which is at the initial stage of transforming towards innovative-entrepreneurial type. British and French universities have already gained the skill to overcome the difficulties of this transformation. The article written on the unique author’s material summarizes the experiences of several dozens of modern university professors from Europe. It is important to fix the state of affairs and developments in British and French higher education today.

The article reviews the research on flagship universities’ personnel potential development mechanisms. The purpose of this review is to classify the forms, methods, and tools for the human resources development in flagship universities, as well as to assess the effectiveness of mechanisms for the human resources development with the help of 2016–2018 monitoring data of the universities effectiveness. According to the results of the study, the flagship universities’ development programs have been designed to present such forms of human resources development as developing effective contract systems, involving young scientific and pedagogical workers, improving continuous education systems, forming a personnel reserve, maintaining highly qualified personnel potential, and increasing the universities’ attractiveness as places of career development. These forms are implemented through methods and tools that are both invariant and specific. As for the end of 2017, there is no noticeable increase in the share of flagship universities’ teachers younger than 40, the arrays of values of this indicator being poorly correlated with the arrays of values of other important indicators. The authors’ study does not claim to be a complete description of the whole group of potential reference universities, as it covers the winners of 2015 and 2017 competitions. However, the research makes it possible to generate the basic directions of personnel potential development mechanisms efficiency increase in flagship universities. The problem of improving the mechanisms of flagship universities’ human resources development is solved by identifying best practices in forming mechanisms for the human resources development in flagship universities and by approaching to assessing their effectiveness in the context of different groups of these universities. This makes the article original and brand-new. The practical significance of the study lies in the methodological potential of the proposed classifications of forms, methods and tools for the development of flagship universities’ human resources, these classifications to be used in the practice of regional universities without special status. The article attempts at generalizing approaches to the human resources development of the universities in this country and at distinguishing on this basis certain ways to improve the effectiveness of HR-management mechanisms. It may be of interest to researchers of university governance mechanisms in the context of university development programs.

Nowadays education has been significantly transformed by the widespread use of digital solutions. This has made it popular to carry out the new approaches to educational processes, which cannot be easily implemented before. Оne of such forms is blended learning, and it becomes possible everywhere thanks to the global distribution and convergence of telecommunication technologies and to the appearance of cloud-based educational software. At the same time digital technologies have brought the apparent profit for the routines automatization and have become the reason of rethinking as in casual teaching and learning processes as in the modern educational management. This paper focuses on how to support educational processes with technologies. It is also answers several significant questions about effective blended learning support, especially at the administration level.

This research article aims at observing the results of studying Russian students’ life priorities, social sustainability, their readiness to manage their life and professional activities, and at developing on this basis a set of educational technologies supposed to improve the graduates of Russian universities’ competitiveness. There are analyzed the works of Russian and foreign authors (I. B. Tselyugina, E. A. Sokolova, V. P. Podvoisky, A. A. Laskin, Yu. O. Kustikova, S. Е. Metelev, E. V. Kudryashov, V. D. Panachev, O. N. Knyazkova, Zh. V. Puzanova, A. G. Tertyshnikova, V. A. Tishkov, R. E. Barash, V. V. Stepanov, Zee Marjolein, Peter F. de Jong, M. Y. Helma, I. Cunningham, C. Longobardi, N. O. Iotti, T. Jungert, M. Settanni, R. S. Adams, H. Bradbury), devoted to the problems of students. Within the study, the methods of questionnaire, expert survey, comparison, decomposition, and grouping have been used. The research referred to students from Russian regional universities. The sample included more than 400 students from 13 state universities located in 5 federal districts of the Russian Federation, and involved 36 experts. There are analyzed Russian students’ life guidelines and prospects for increasing their readiness to manage their own lives. Changes in the organization of education are shown to be affecting the students’ livelihood. According to the results of the survey, it is the understanding of the importance of personal and professional development for successful future employment and professional career that has the priority influence over the applicants’ desire to study at the university. The motives for getting higher education are its necessity for the chosen profession, demand for it at the labor market, prospects for improving their material well-being. The main factor that influences the choice of profession is considered to be the students’ abilities. The research is original, as it studies the important problem of students’ social sustainability, their readiness to manage their own lives. This problem has not been previously considered by domestic and foreign authors. The results of the monitoring indicate the necessity and possibility of purposeful work within our universities on more active involving students in the processes of educational, scientific and social activities, on preparing them for future professional activities and independent life. The article presents the experience of working out and using special educational technologies, which should increase students’ social sustainability when solving problems identified within the research. The results of the research should show to the Russian students the ways to increase their social sustainability and to accelerate their readiness for independent life and activities.

There are a lot of studies devoted to organizational culture of the academics and students at the universities. However, these studies refer either only to the former or only to latter. This provides no opportunity for comparing the perception of organizational culture by academics and students of the same university and, hence, for conclusions regarding needed or possible changes of this culture. This research is supposed to eliminate this shortcoming. The widely known method of OCAI has been used for the study. The study has covered academics and students of all academic departments of Tomsk Polytechnic University. The traditional OCAI questionnaire has been adapted to the university specificity, as well as to the level of students’ organizational culture perception. The study shows that organizational profiles of academics and students are very similar, but the academics demonstrate heavier accent on hierarchical culture. Therefore, the regular staff of the university possesses a strong culture, which is very likely to be imposed on the university’s variable – students. The research also reflects the trend to enhancing hierarchical culture at the university, this tendency seeming rather dangerous. The research has taken place in a Russian technical university. It seems to be reasonable to do such a study in other kinds of universities in order to obtain a comprehensive picture of organizational culture in Russian higher school. The article describes the first experience of combined studying the academics’ and students’ organizational culture. Its results might orient university administrators and academics to paying special attention to their own organizational culture, since this culture is translated to society via values fostered in university graduates during their student’s life.

The research article is devoted to studying the university’s organizational culture. To survive and be competitive in the face of strong national and international competition, the university has to be unique as compared to other universities. One of the strategic sources for forming a university’s competitive advantages is to change its organizational culture. It is the university’s development that makes it possible to form new value attitudes, both among teachers and students. The article observes a study of the organizational culture in National Research Mordovia State University. To analyse the surface level of the organizational culture of the university, we have investigated the attitude of teachers and students to the key elements of the organizational environment of the university (tradition, corporate style, encouragement and punishment etc.). The analysis of the subsurface level of the organizational culture has been carried out with the help of adapted versions of K. Cameron and R. Quinn’s questionnaires. Basic value judgments are identified by means of G. Hofstede’s method. The respondents of the questionnaires have numbered 847, including 100 research and teaching staff and 747 students. The results of studying the teachers’ and students’ views on organizational culture provide the general idea of key values, culture orientations, which identify the whole of this culture. The study shows the fragmentary perception of culture elements by the representatives of different departments, which sometimes leads to a diametrically opposite assessment of the parameters of this culture. In this regard, it is necessary to implement a number of training programs aimed at developing the communication system, organizational values, psychological comfort, and corporate image. At the same time, it seems reasonable to consider the development process of the selected components through achieving certain goals, which must ensure the quality of all organizational processes within the university, and, consequently, increase its competitive advantages.

The article studies conceptual approaches to constructing modern systems of higher educational institutions effective management. Constructing such systems is caused by the trend in reforming public sector which higher education institute belongs to. Exceeding workload caused by higher school modernization has invoked a significant psychological and emotional stress of employees at different levels, which has led to certain deformations in their professional activities. Materials and methods. The analysis of modern trends in management development shows that, according to the theory of organizational justice, successful constructing and implementing effective management systems in higher education is determined by the social and psychological state of employees, by their level of professionalism, which excludes intellectual and emotional burnout of the teaching staff. The study hypothesizes that the state of universities’ organizational culture determines the corresponding level of professional (intellectual and emotional) burnout of the teaching staff, as far as the systemic phenomenon of organizational culture is a synergetic combination of employee relationships within the organization in the process of their joint activities and of their adaptive capacity to external influences. There is proposed a diagnostic scale of the individual characteristics of organizational justice. To assess the level of deviations associated with professional (intellectual and emotional) burnout of members of the university community, the article suggests using the difference of general cultural vectors related to the existing present and to the desired states of organizational culture. Diagnostics of organizational culture was made on K. Cameron and R. Quinn’s OСAI procedure. The empirical materials have been obtained within the framework of the investigation conducted in 2016–2018 among 386 respondents from 18 universities representing 12 regions of the Russian Federation. To compare and contrast these materials, the data of the similar research conducted in 2003 have been used. The results of the investigation. The activity of the considered expert and age groups is shown to be under significant influence of hierarchical (bureaucratic) organizational culture (at present state). At the same time, general cultural vectors of a desirable state of the considered groups’ organizational culture come to be within the field of clan (family) organizational culture. This result qualitatively causes objective conditions of university assemblage members’ professional (intellectual and emotional) burnout. The quantitative assessment of professional burnout level as the general cultural vectors difference, which concerns the existing present and desirable states of organizational university culture, shows, firstly, the growing dynamics of university workers’ professional burnout level of (throughout 2003–2018); secondly, the influence of the considered groups’ age over professional (intellectual and emotional) burnout degree. There are also outlined conditions preventing the construction of just, effective management systems in Russian higher education. Discussion and conclusion. The study originally considers the unintended impact of management systems, which are the objective reasons for university workers’ intellectual and emotional burnout. Neglecting the factor of intellectual and emotional teaching staff’s burnout is fraught with the loss of their professional identity, which, on its turn, will lead to a decrease in efficiency, degradation of higher education. The research materials can be practically useful for heads of universities as scientific and methodological recommendations for constructing and implementing fair systems of effective management, as well as enterprises and organizations of various profiles.