Ricerc@Sapienza

Purpose – The paper contributes to our understanding of industry-university government transforming a multistakeholder approach to the value co-creation models in socially responsible and innovative universities of Italy and Russia. Recent trends in research of sustainable management outline a growing interest in University social responsibility. There has been a growing number of papers devoted to shared value co-creation models (Chesbrough and Rosenbloom, 2002; Tanev et al., 2009; Porter, 2011; Diaz?Mendez and Gummesson, 2012), which combines the effects of sustainable development, corporate social responsibility, corporate citizenship, social network development, students satisfaction, social and open innovation.

Design/methodology/approach – The paper deals with a complex problem which is best addressed through multiple methodological approaches. The university system can be considered as a key actor of innovation within national economic systems, since its main objectives are the production, dissemination and exploitation of the knowledge. The function of universities is moving towards a more complex role as an active protagonist of the cultural, economic and political scene rather then just satisfying students and other internal stakeholders. Moreover universities are involved in high quality and future oriented education and they cannot skip sustainable management at any level. It is important because the culture of University, its values and beliefs might act as boundaries to future individual or corporate decision-making.
The paper presents a retrospective study of the features of studied countries in terms of business, cultural and social development of government, business and universities partnership in the last decade. This gives an analytical description of the socio-cultural level and economic preconditions for changes in value systems in the countries. A literature review is compared with empirical case study research of key Italian and Russian Universities based on secondary data interpreted via statistically tested results of content analysis.

Originality/value – However, little has been suggested on the topic of value co-creation at the University–Business and Governmental levels in cross-cultural setting. In fact, the relationship between universities and other multiple internal and external stakeholders is most usually dynamic rather than being confined to a one directional model. At the same time, despite the growing research and practical interest in value co-creation models in business, a working multistakeholder model for universities as a partner organisation has not yet been proposed to our knowledge. This paper seeks to form mechanisms to manage positive social and economic change by developing a system of multistakeholder interaction between government, business and universities through the establishment of shared value co-creation model.

Practical implications: The underlying research of this Italy-Russia stakeholder management model involves the development of complex analytical tools for quintuple helix value co-creation models in cross-cultural comparison. The above steps are followed with the development of recommendations on the regulation of the University –Business–Government cooperation quality in studied countries, as well as improve the efficiency of horizontal and learning relations between the subjects of multilateral cooperation.