Does the Institutional Governance Model of Universities Matter for Third Mission Performance? An Analysis of Spinoff and Patenting Activities in the Italian Context

University governance has been at the centre of the global higher education reform agenda aiming to enhance the performance of higher education institutions (OECD 2003; European Commission 2006; Santiago et al. 2008). In particular, university governing boards have been profoundly redesigned across Europe as they are expected to have a pivotal role in influencing and controlling the strategic process and key priorities of the institutions (Dalton et al. 1998). They are now involved in decisions regarding structural, developmental, strategic planning as well as budgetary allocation (Kretek et al. 2013; Donina and Paleari forthcoming). While most studies analyzed the policy changes to central university governance structures and organizational responses in different contexts (de Boer et al. 2010; Kretek et al. 2013; Donina and Hasanefendic forthcoming), only few studies have sought to examine the efficacy of these changes (Deem 1998) and the impact on institutional performance. In addition, these studies provide inconsistent and contradictory empirical evidence about the relationship between institutional governance models and performance of universities (e.g. McCormick and Meiners 1989; Brown 2001; Frolich et al. forthcoming). In order to shed more light on this relation, we consider as empirical context for the study the Italian public higher education system, wherein a comprehensive reform of institutional governance structures (Law 240/2010 or Gelmini reform) was approved in December 2010 (see Donina et al. 2015b; Capano et al. 2016). The Italian context is particularly apt for this analysis as previous research stressed that two main types of governance models have been adopted: i) the stakeholder model, wherein internal board members are appointed as suggested by global reform scripts (Donina and Paleari forthcoming) and international organizations (OECD 2007); ii) the democratic model, wherein all the internal board members continue to be elected by the correspondent constituencies as it was with the old collegial decision-making model. By relying on the entire population of Italian public universities since 2012, when the implementation of the reform was completed with respect to university board, this paper tests whether one of these governance models is conductive to better performance related to the so-called third mission. The rationale for focusing on third mission is that an increasing number of universities have recently taken action to develop it, often prompted by policy-makers (Perkmann et al. 2013). Amongst the various channels of third mission, patenting of inventions as well as academic entrepreneurship are those which have attracted major attention both within the academic literature and the policy community (Rothaermel et al., 2007; O'Shea et al., 2008) as they are considered immediate and measurable indicators of academic impact (Markman et al., 2008). Therefore, we consider spinoff and patenting activities as proxy for the third mission activities of Italian public universities. Policy and managerial implications of our findings will be discussed.