Information disclosed online by Spanish universities: content and explanatory factors

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to analyse how several variables, such as universities' profitability, growth-reduction of student numbers, age tradition, type of university and internationality, among others, influence the transparency practices of Spanish universities as well as the te...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Online information review 2011-01, Vol.35 (3), p.360-385
Main Authors: Gallego-Álvarez, Isabel, Rodríguez-Domínguez, Luis, García-Sánchez, Isabel-María
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Academic Achievement
Accreditation
Applications
Applications (e.g. Digitizing,...)
Colleges & universities
Competitive advantage
Complexity
Conflict of Interest
Content analysis
Corporate governance
Costs
Debt
Debt (Financial)
Disclosure
Doctoral Degrees
Education
Empirical analysis
Exact sciences and technology
Financial reporting
Higher education
Hypotheses
Independent variables
Information and communication sciences
Information and communication technologies
Information communication
Information science. Documentation
Information sharing
Information technologies: storage media, equipment
Internet
Internet resources (portals, blogs, wikis,…)
Mathematical models
On-line systems
Online
Profitability
Public sector
Regression analysis
Sciences and techniques of general use
Social responsibility
Spain
Stakeholders
Stockholders
Studies
Teaching
Teaching Methods
Theory
Universities
Web pages
Websites
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Summary:Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to analyse how several variables, such as universities' profitability, growth-reduction of student numbers, age tradition, type of university and internationality, among others, influence the transparency practices of Spanish universities as well as the technology, interactivity, structure and navigability of their webpages.Design methodology approach - First a content analysis of the Spanish universities' websites is carried out. To do this a disclosure index is created and applied. This index is more complex than those in previous papers, focusing on several issues, such as financial information, corporate governance, social responsibility, research, teaching activities, strategic information, timeliness, contact information, technology, interactivity with users, navigability and web structure. Then an empirical model is estimated by applying a linear regression, taking several factors into consideration.Findings - Three of the independent variables proposed to test the hypotheses - complexity, internationality and profitability - were statistically significant. Moreover, our findings emphasise prioritising use of the internet as a way to disclose teaching and research activities, as well as to monitor university bodies.Originality value - The most valuable output from this paper has to do with the content of the information disclosed online by Spanish universities and with the analysis of the factors that explain the disclosure of information through Spanish universities' websites.
ISSN:1468-4527
1468-4535
DOI:10.1108/14684521111151423