The implementation of management control systems in Italian universities: moving towards New University Management?

The introduction of planning and control systems in the university management is one of the possible applications of New Public Management studies, which are aimed at extending some management tools, that are typical of business world, to the public sector. The extension depends on the widespread belief that these instruments can ensure, even in public organizations, management criteria more oriented to effectiveness and efficiency. The paper describes the results of an empirical research concerning the diffusion and the degree of evolution of management control systems in Italian Universities. The research project pursued two main goals: on the one hand, a descriptive purpose, such as defining the state of art of Italian Universities practices; the other aim was to verify the existence, if any, of a link between the degree of development of planning and control systems and some specific features of state universities, such as size, complexity, degree of rigidity in expenditures and availability of human resources dedicated to administrative activities. The research was conducted administering a questionnaire to the 95 administrative directors (general managers) of Italian universities; the questionnaires that came back were 56, with a response rate of 59%. With reference to only state universities the response rate was 78%, so that we decided to deepen our statistical analysis on this more homogeneous cluster. The results described in the paper highlight a general limited adoption of management control tools in Italian Universities, and a weak correlation between its degree of development and the variables describing the different features of state university