Transparency and its determinants at Colombian universities

Over the past decade, one of the demands upon public institutions, among which we find universities, has been for transparency and improvement of accountability. In this context, Colombian universities are introducing different methods of management and governance aimed at addressing the demands of society generally in relation to transparency and quality in the activities that they carry out. The objective of the present study is to analyze and evaluate factors which affect the level of transparency at Colombian universities based on the rectors’ perception of these universities. The results obtained indicate that the level of transparency depends on the type of governance which is adopted, the level of prestige and the level of delimitation of its identity. Other questions such as size, budget or the public or private nature of the university have not proved to be significant explanatory factors of the degree of transparency.     

Online disclosure of university social responsibility: a comparative study of public and private US universities

Public and private universities tasked with incorporating principles of social responsibility (SR) into their activities face the multiple challenges of addressing expectations of diverse stakeholders, establishing mechanisms for dialogue, and achieving greater information transparency. This article has two goals: first, to analyze whether SR has become an essential element in activities associated with university accountability, information transparency, and the use of the Internet; second, to analyze whether SR is used by universities as a differentiating factor in relation to their status. A comparative study of public and private US universities shows that neither is strongly committed to the online disclosure of SR information, including in relation to sustainability-related activities. Moreover, there is a uniformity in the accountability activities of both university types, suggesting that the challenges are not being faced, and SR is not being used as a differentiating factor in the pursuit of positional or competitive advantage.     

The impact of explanatory factors on a bidimensional model of transparency in Spanish local government

The aim of this paper is to analyse the transparency provided by local public managers and to determine whether this disclosure is limited to the minimum quantity permissible (in accordance with Agency Theory) or whether a maximum amount of information is supplied (following Legitimacy Theory). To do so, we present a Bidimensional Transparency Index (BTI), developed as an instrument for measuring the provision of information (i.e. e-disclosure), which contains two components, breadth and depth, to reflect the pattern of behaviour observed. The results obtained show that on average local managers disclose information corresponding to 60% of the indicators considered, but that only 52% of these indicators of transparency present a moderate or considerable depth of content. These findings reflect a pattern of limited information disclosure, with incomplete information. In addition, our study shows that explanatory factors have an asymmetric impact on the components of the BTI.