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Over the past three decades, professions across the European Union have faced significant and radical challenges. This book analyses three professional groups involved in the academic and health sectors and how they are affected by different national Welfare State models such as Mediterranean, Scandinavian and Anglo Saxon

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore the way gender may be used as an instrument to avoid New Public Management (NPM) potential processes of deprofessionalisation in nursing.Design/methodology/approachIn total, 83 nurses with managerial duties were interviewed in autonomous and corporate public hospitals in Portugal.FindingsNurses used gender as an argument to legitimate their presence in management, and in this way, to keep their control over the profession. Gender stereotypes were used to legitimate their position in two different ways. Firstly, nurses reproduced and reinforced gendered inequality by supporting their male colleagues careers. Secondly, they valorised their feminine skills sustaining that women were in better position to manage hospitals as an extended role from the private domain.Research limitations/implicationsThe paper uses a sample from only one country and care must be taken when extrapolating conclusions to the wider population.Practical implicationsAcknowledges the way NPM reinforces gender stereotypes and contributes to redefine professionalism.Originality/valueRecognition of the complexity and diversity of gender issues in the organisational context and in the structuration of professional legitimacy.

Within the knowledge society framework, higher education has become a driving factor for democratizing and rising equality in societies and consequently stimulating economic development (Panitsidou et al., Procedia Soc & Behav Sci, 46: 548–553, 2012). In Portugal, as elsewhere, higher education institutions (HEI) were expected to play a key role within the changing dynamics in the orientation of knowledge production and dissemination. Research and the national scientific system are closely connected to the higher education system, with knowledge production being mostly concentrated in universities, especially in public ones. In this context, HEIs are considered as a privileged locus of change framed by the knowledge society providing the new epistemological, ontological, and methodological logics as well as legitimacy for a new "political economy" of knowledge. However, this chapter has a double purpose. On the one hand, it intends to present an overview of the Portuguese higher education system and its relation to the research and innovation system. On the other hand, the paper seeks to analyze the contemporary conceptions of the "knowledge-based society" in the Portuguese state policies and HEI narratives, as well as the expected role assigned to academics in the new knowledge production, dissemination, and transfer systems. ; This work was financially supported by the project POCI-01-0145-FEDER- 029427- funded by FEDER, through COMPETE2020 - Programa Operacional Competitividade e Internacionalização (POCI), and by national funds (OE), through FCT/MCTES. ; published

This book represents the first-of-its-kind comprehensive discussion of the non-university higher education sector in Europe. Higher education throughout the world is facing rapid change. Despite the enormous attention devoted to that reality, this volume fills an important void. It describes and offers critical comparisons between the systems in 10 European countries. The book brings together the thinking of leading scholars on the non-university sectors in Austria, Belgium, Finland, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, and the United Kingdom, with a chapter devoted to each country. National case studies are presented for the non-university sector in these countries that address issues such as historical developments, policy changes, governance structures, levels of institutional autonomy and future trends. The editors offer a critical comparative analysis of the systems in these countries followed by a probing look into the future of the non-university sector in Europe. The book is essential reading for those who want a comprehensive, timely and in-depth understanding of the European non-university sector. It will be informative to anyone involved in system or institutional governance, as well as those pursuing research. It should be a reference in every institutional library.