Article | Open Access
| Ahead of Print | Last Modified: 2 June 2025
Early Career Researchers as Stakeholders in University Decision‐Making in Europe: Comparative Perspectives
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Abstract: The voices of academics have traditionally been strong in university decision‐making bodies, where they participated in the shared governance of the university. It has been customary for senior academics to be represented in managing bodies and to exercise control over the key areas of strategy, finance, quality assurance, study programs, and/or human resources. With the new public management reforms that have swept through higher education (HE) systems, the power of academics has been reduced, while managerial guidance has increased, alongside the fostering of universities’ institutional autonomy. At the same time, the power of other stakeholders, such as students or industry representatives, has also been increasing as part and parcel of the governance reforms, albeit to different degrees and at different paces across various HE systems. In this context, this article seeks to examine the role that early career researchers (ECRs) play in university decision‐making bodies across different countries as internal stakeholders. The research is based on seven case studies from seven European and East Mediterranean countries drawing on documentary data and 55 semi‐structured interviews with ECRs and 14 managers, carried out in 2023–2024. Following stakeholder categories distinguished on the basis of their legitimacy, urgency, and power, this article investigates the extent to which ECRs perceive their voices to be heard. The findings show variance between the case studies regarding formal representation, with most universities in the study having limited representation of ECRs in university and faculty/school‐level decision‐making bodies. The voices of ECRs, however, are heard in informal ways.
Keywords: decision‐making; early career researchers; power; representation; stakeholders; university governance; university; voice
Published:
Ahead of Print
Issue:
Vol 14 (2026): Diversity and Change Agents in Higher Education (In Progress)
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© Liudvika Leišytė, Ivana Načinović Braje, Almog Shulamit, Sultan Baysan, Teresa Carvalho, Dovilė Daunoraitė, Sara Diogo, Panourgias Papaioannou, Anna Farmaki, Shlomit Feldman, Rakibe Külcür, Inga Matijošytė, Sandra Pralgauskaitė, Vanya Rangelova, Dalia Šatkovskienė. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits any use, distribution, and reproduction of the work without further permission provided the original author(s) and source are credited.