Governance, Ethics and Accountability in Universities Strategic Plans

Abstract

Universities mission is not limited to creating and sharing knowledge with students, companies and the society in general. Univer-sities have the responsibility to work for common good improvement and for global important issues solutions. This inclusive mission and the purpose to have a positive impact on society respecting all the stakehold-ers are framed into the University Social Responsibility (USR) concept. USR, as the Corporate Social Responsibility for enterprises, helps uni-versities to gain a competitive advantage and to be legitimated to operate and to improve their reputation. Within the educational field, public education organizations should accomplish the following requirements: be valuable, politically sustainable, legitimated and feasible. To be legiti-mated and to maintain this legitimacy, universities need to implement policies and procedures which ensure transparency and accountability in their decision-making process and governance. The objective of this re-search is to analyze how Spanish public universities talk about governance, ethics and accountability in their Strategic Plan.