Internationalisation

In recent years, research on higher education has increasingly examined the realities of internationalisation, with a particular focus on international students’ experiences and internationalisation at home programs. These studies have explored the friendships of international students, including their relationships with both locals and internationals from other countries. However, local students’ perspectives and experiences of friendship are largely absent from this literature. The few accounts examining local students’ lives explicitly focus on improving their cross-cultural knowledge and engagement, or on rare cases of local–international student friendships. The overriding assumption in this literature is that the understandings and social practises of local students are major barriers to their relationships with internationals. This paper addresses this gap by exploring local students’ perspectives on the absence of friendships with their international peers. We utilise findings from a research project on internationalisation at home, involving interviews and focus groups with local and international students and staff at an Australian university. Focusing on locals’ discussions of potential friendships with internationals, we propose that these missing friendships are an important area of study. We find that these friendships are missing for several interrelated reasons: local–international friendships are considered unnecessary and are therefore unimagined by locals, who tend to assume that similarity and affinity naturally lead to friendships, and the structures and spaces that might facilitate friendships are absent. Ultimately, uncovering why these friendships are missing sheds fuller light on how relationships might be facilitated, potentially informing and improving universities’ internationalisation initiatives.

The main objective of this paper was to analyze the internationalization process of a small and medium-sized enterprise, with special emphasis on the headquarters-subsidiary relationship, which is a little-studied subject in the field of this type of company. A qualitative approach was followed, based on case studies in which the evolutionary perspective and the headquarters-subsidiary relationship were analyzed; in addition, the resource dependency theory was used. It is concluded that there are several paths and relationships between the headquarters and each branch. Moreover, these trajectories changed during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The authors argue that as the international dimensions of higher education have developed their own momentum and become a global topic of interest, ‘globalized internationalization’ requires a more nuanced approach to its interpretation and delivery.

Overall, the results of the 2014 survey highlight the impact
of major national policy initiatives on the internationalization
goals, strategies, and priorities of Japanese colleges and
universities, and indicate a fairly close alignment between
government and institutional objectives. Student mobility
and global learning are at the forefront for much of the sector,
while international visibility and research are key priorities
for a subset of universities, whose international activities in
these realms are supported by targeted government policies.

The book presents research results of Polish companies’ investment activity abroad. The research was carried out under the second research project conducted within the same scope of interest by a research team at Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, Poland (the first project was completed in 2008). The six chapters in this book presenting the results of the research are preceded by a presentation of the subject matter and the research methodology, the results of which are described in the book. The first chapter is devoted to a discussion of changes in the value and structure of Polish FDI. Rating the scale of direct investment by Polish companies abroad required comparisons with global or country specific values. Their brief discussion starts the main part of this chapter. The second chapter contains a presentation of incentives and disincentives, identified in the course of the research, affecting direct investment made by Polish companies abroad. The next chapter deals with the important issue of
considering risk in making decisions about foreign direct investments by Polish investors. The fourth chapter refers to the global research on the uses of the methods of economic evaluation of investment effectiveness applied by direct investors. Results presented in this chapter contribute to filling the gap in the global research effort by demonstrating evaluation methods applied by companies in developing countries as illustrated by Polish companies. The fifth chapter is devoted to the presentation of the results of the research on Polish companies’ FDI impact on their competitiveness. Chapter six debates the important issue of intangible asset use in building competitiveness among Polish companies – foreign investors.

ISBN 978–83–231-3186-1

Internationalisation and employability development are important themes for UK higher education (HE) and the Higher Education Academy (HEA). One aspect of many UK HE institutions’ internationalisation strategies has been to increase the number and range of UK programmes delivered ‘offshore’ as transnational education (TNE) – through overseas partner institutions, international branch campuses or distance learning. There has been increasing attention within the UK HE sector to enhancing the employability of students, either as development embedded in the curriculum or in other ways, and assessing its effectiveness, most prominently in the form of measuring its impact on the employment outcomes of graduates.

There is a quality assurance requirement for institutions providing TNE programmes that they offer the learning and development, academically and through other experiences, that is comparable to those within their UK programmes. This means that any enhancement of employability within a UK programme should also be provided in the equivalent TNE programme. This research was commissioned to discover the extent to which this is the case. It was investigated through an international literature review, a call for evidence from UK higher education institutions (HEIs) of examples of such activity, and participant perspectives through TNE alumni (who had studied first degree and taught postgraduate programmes).

Previous reviews indicate that there is little evidence of the incorporation of generic employability skills as graduate outcomes, in international HE or TNE. Our review reveals a paucity of literature relating to:
• graduate outcomes from international education and TNE in particular;
• support for enhanced employability, and specifically the incorporation of employability development in the curriculum, in TNE programmes.

This confirms the distinct research gap as far as outcomes of TNE are concerned and, more specifically, the need to assess the development of generic, transferable employability skills in TNE programmes. We also contend that the distinction between employment skills and employability skills is as important in TNE as it is for other forms of provision, perhaps even more so in some country contexts where TNE is designed to address key skills gaps. Employment skills relate to qualifications and credentials for specific jobs or professions, while employability indicates transferable skills which are not job-specific but support employment generally.

The existing literature and our primary research indicate complex variations in how the value of TNE programmes is perceived and how this relates to the motivations of those studying TNE programmes. Generally, it is clear that overseas study tends to be seen as the ‘gold standard’ by employers, and to some extent societally, and TNE study is commonly seen as a ‘second best’ option. On the other hand, there are strong variations, geographically, in perceptions of its value relative to types of local provision, and some variations in relation to the value of different countries’ TNE provision, meaning that each country context may need to be considered separately. A further implication of this is that despite current perceptions that may suggest otherwise, it cannot simply be assumed that an overseas TNE qualification carries any inherent ‘employability’ beyond what it provides in practice.

When it comes to the motivations of TNE students, the relatively limited literature suggests that these are largely career-focused or employment-focused, either ‘positional’ (more directly workrelated or job-related) or more ‘transformative’ (more developmental personally). Interviews with the alumni confirmed this range, although relatively few had studied in order to acquire specific short-term employment outcomes. Rather, they viewed studying via TNE as part of a wider approach to progressing their career, either in their current role or in another sector or profession. Few understood the difference between employability and employment, and many believed there was no need to develop greater employability than would be afforded to them by achieving the qualification. On the basis of these alumni (who mostly graduated 3-5 years ago), this suggests that TNE students at that time had a much less nuanced view of employability than comparable UK students.