from the conferences organized by TANGER Ltd.
In the current socio-economic context, where demographics, public policies, internationalization, and other factors have brought major changes to higher education institutions, these institutions must increasingly adopt concepts and practices from the business environment to position themselves competitively in the market. Mergers between educational and research institutions thus represent an effective method for creating stronger entities and increasing regional influence by diversifying activities and gaining access to new resources and/or technologies that can provide competitive advantages. Such mergers are also complex processes that involve aligning and integrating different management systems and organizational cultures. Evaluating and correlating these systems are essential to ensuring the success and efficiency of the merger. In this study, a series of surveys were conducted across universities and research centres from Romania that have undergone or are about to undergo a merger process, focusing on a target group of professors and administrative staff from the field of materials science and engineering, in order to evaluate the management systems, how they have been correlated and implemented, and to identify key factors contributing to the success or failure of these mergers. This case study was conducted, focusing on the largest technical university in Romania, POLITEHNICA University of Bucharest, which in 2023 became the National University of Science and Technology POLITEHNICA Bucharest. Through the analysis of the institutions involved, the evaluation of the management systems, and the assessment of the impact of the merger on metallurgical and materials science field of study, a model and a set of recommendations were proposed for evaluating and correlating management systems in the case of mergers in higher education and research institutions.
Keywords: Higher education, research institutions, mergers, management system, metallurgical and materials science© This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.