Sustainable Higher Education Management: Career Drivers of Academic Staff

Abstract The quality of higher education (HE) is dependent on many factors, including the quality of teaching. As any profession, teaching is based on internal values and motives of individuals. The goal of the research is to identify the most dominant career drivers of academic staff based on their career motives and values in order to provide HE managers with information relevant to academic staff engagement policies to enable shaping of sustainable education policies at higher education institutions (HEIs). The research goal is grounded in the purpose of human resource management that is designed to stimulate certain employee behavior so that employee actions and intentions could be aligned with corporate strategic goals. If there is a wide gap between the needs and interests of employees and their employer, employee productivity gradually declines, thus decreasing the competitiveness of an organization. The following research question has been formulated: Is there a discrepancy in values between academic staff and managers of HE, who create the work environment for the academic staff? To attain the goal of the research, university lecturers from Ukraine completed Schein’s questionnaire online in 2021, while in 2023 middle- and senior managers of universities from Ukraine, Latvia, and Lithuania were asked to prioritize career drivers for academic staff. Both groups ranked technical / professional competence and service / dedication to a cause as primary priorities. However, the value of security / stability was prioritized only by academic staff, while autonomy / independence and entrepreneurial creativity were selected by HE managers. The research outcomes indicate converging and diverging points in opinions on the career drivers of academic staff. Having this knowledge, HE managers are in a better position to modify the academic workplace to stimulate academic productivity, and enhance business models and quality assurance policies at their institutions on the path towards Sustainable Development Goal 4 “Quality Education”. The diversity of opinions both within and between the groups of academic staff and HE managers supports the need to design human resource management policies consistent with the theory of personalized human resource management for higher productivity. The findings of the study contribute to the global discussion of career drivers of teachers by providing evidence in support of the increasing importance of professional (technical) competences and creative abilities for quality education.