Exploring Centralized, Decentralized, and Hybrid Approaches to

Micro-Credential Issuance in HEI Alliances

Padmasheela Kiiskilä

and Henri Pirkkalainen

Tampere University, Tampere, Finland

Keywords: Micro-Credentials, Digital Credentials, MC Governance, Knowledge Management, Data Governance.

Abstract: Micro-Credentials (MCs) are seen as a way by Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) to equip learners with

the essential skills for their careers or professional development. In Europe, HEIs are joining forces to form

alliances to offer a broad range of MCs and make them tamper-proof, verifiable, and shareable. Although

extensive research is being done on MCs, there is a major research gap in identifying and comparing different

ways alliances can manage issuance of MCs. We identified two approaches in practice and through a case

study, identified a third approach alliances can utilize. This paper also addresses this gap by using the data

governance contingency model to provide a comparison of all three approaches that alliances can utilize in

selecting the most suitable one for their business strategy. To achieve this, a qualitative case study is conducted

with in-depth interviews with administrators from HEIs that are partners of an alliance. This study contributes

to the governance of MCs through identification and comparison of the three approaches - centralized,

decentralized, and hybrid in the context of MC issuance by HEI alliances.

1 INTRODUCTION

In recent years, interest in micro-credentials (MCs)

has been on the rise for multiple stakeholders,

including higher education institutions (HEIs).

Multiple alliances have formed in Europe, consisting

of HEIs and other institutions to pilot MCs at different

levels (ECIU, 2023; ENHANCE 2022; Una Europa,

2022). MC governance depends on management of

data, processes and technology within an alliance

(Doering et al., 2022). Current research focuses

mostly on the implementation (Abdullah & Ghazali,

2024), security and recognition (McGreal, 2024; Saad

et al., 2024), and affordances (Reed et al., 2024) of

MCs but discussion on issuing MCs is limited to

technology used such as blockchain (EBSI, 2022;

Kiiskilä et al., 2023) and platforms (Saad et al., 2024).

Two approaches, as referred in this study as hybrid

and decentralized, can be found from practical

examples (ENHANCE, 2022; SDG Campus, 2024;

Una Europa, 2022) for MC governance by alliances.

In the hybrid approach, one or more partners in the

alliance issue on behalf of all partners and in

decentralized, each partner issue on their own.

https://orcid.org/ 0000-0002-6347-9595

https://orcid.org/ 0000-0002-5389-7363

However, empirical studies evaluating different

approaches for MC governance in alliances including

how to issue MCs that satisfy the MC

recommendations are missing.

Issuing MCs require knowledge of data such as

student data, MC data, institutional data and

processes to use specific technologies such as EDCL

platform. Through knowledge management, alliances

can develop the required processes to offer and issue

MCs that might not be possible as individual

institutions (Jiang and Li, 2009). The complexities of

HEI alliances, combined with the need to use

platforms and the data residing in multiple systems in

multiple HEIs need to be taken into consideration for

MC governance. MC governance in an alliance can

also depend on the scope of the alliance (Oxley and

Sampson, 2004).

Traditional data governance involves structured

data managed locally (Al-Ruithe, 2018) and presume

that the same model can fit any organization (Weber

et al., 2009). While research on using contingency

factors to find the right data governance approach is

available (Chelliah et al., 2016; Lee et al., 2017),

empirical studies evaluating contingency factors

238

Kiiskilä, P. and Pirkkalainen, H.

Exploring Centralized, Decentralized, and Hybrid Approaches to Micro-Credential Issuance in HEI Alliances.

DOI: 10.5220/0012946700003838

Paper published under CC license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

In Proceedings of the 16th International Joint Conference on Knowledge Discovery, Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Management (IC3K 2024) - Volume 3: KMIS, pages 238-245

ISBN: 978-989-758-716-0; ISSN: 2184-3228

relevant to alliances issuing MCs is missing.

Moreover, current studies do not address how these

contingency factors can be used in choosing the right

approach for MC governance in an alliance setting.

To address these research gaps, the following two

questions are studied:

RQ1: What are the different approaches alliances

can issue MCs to their students?

RQ2: Based on the data governance contingency

factors, how do different approaches compare for an

alliance to issue MCs?

Through the qualitative case study, we present a

new centralized approach that is currently not utilized

in the issuance of MCs by alliances. Taking

inspiration from Weber et al.’s (2009) contingency

model, the factors for the governance of MCs are

identified and used for comparison of all three

approaches in issuing MCs by alliances. Because

issuing MCs, especially by alliances, is a rapidly

growing practice-based area with limited theoretical

understanding, we chose qualitative approach to gain

a deeper understanding of this important area for

HEIs.

The present paper contributes to MC literature by

identifying a third approach that alliances can use and

also to compare the three approaches for issuing MCs

by alliances using data governance contingency

factors. As a practical contribution, this can help HEI

alliances understand the pros and cons of the three

approaches to issuing MCs using the data governance

contingency model. The rest of the current paper is

organized as follows: Section 2 provides a theoretical

background related to MCs and data governance

models. Section 3 presents the data collection and

analysis, which is followed by the findings in section

4. Section 5 covers the discussion and conclusion.

2 BACKGROUND

2.1 Micro-Credentials

After an extensive effort that was coordinated by the

European Commission, MCs have been defined as

“the record of the learning outcomes that a learner

has ac-quired following a small volume of learning”

(European Commission, 2022). Along with these

efforts, the frameworks, and related technologies of

MCs (DCC, 2023; Digivisio, 2023; MicroHE, 2021)

started developing, and the metadata that they should

contain have been described (European Commission,

2022). Within the context of HEIs, most of the

literature focuses on the content, importance, and

implementation of the MCs (Flynn et al., 2023;

Oliver, 2019). Although some studies have explained

the features needed in MC platforms, (Kiiskilä et al.,

2022), and new technologies are emerging to

facilitate some of those features such as tamper-

proofing and verifiability (EBSI, 2022; EDCL, 2022),

there is a limited understanding of how they can be

used in an alliance setting for MC governance.

Most of the literature is focused on what type of

MCs are offered by the alliances (Shanahan and

Organ, 2022), why alliances offering them benefit

learners and HEIs (Romiță et al., 2021) and

recognition of MCs (Ashizawa et al., 2024). From

knowledge management perspective, literature also

covers how alliances can be a differentiating factor in

offering unique products such as MCs (Parise and

Sasson, 2002), how alliances can leverage strength

from the partners to create new opportunities (Inkpen,

1998) and governance adaptation at alliance level

(Reuer and Zollo, 2000). Literature on how alliances

can issue MCs and their strategy for MC governance

is, however, limited to a few practical examples (Una

Europa, 2022; ENHANCE, 2022). There are two

approaches that can be seen in these practical

examples for alliances to issue MCs.

(a) Hybrid approach: One or more of the alliance

partners issue MCs on behalf of all the

partners. This requires one or more of the

partners to develop a system internally to

issue MCs for all the partners (Una Europa,

2022). It includes a system in place for

alliance partners to offer the MCs in a

mutually agreed platform or their own

internal platform (SDG Campus, 2024) and

clear path for students how to apply for the

MC (credential portion) when they

successfully complete it.

(b) Decentralized approach: Each partner issues

their MCs. In the decentralized approach, the

MCs might be offered through the alliance,

but each partner need to develop the MC

issuance system internally or use commercial

systems such as BC Diploma (BCDiploma,

2023). The decentralized approach is similar

to existing practices in HEIs in issuing study

records to students coming to their institution

to study a single course or a fixed amount of

time for mobility (Cuzzocrea and

Krzaklewska, 2023). While in normal

mobility programs, regular study records are

issued to students from other HEIs, for MCs

partners need to either enhance their existing

systems or partner with external systems to

issue MCs.

Exploring Centralized, Decentralized, and Hybrid Approaches to Micro-Credential Issuance in HEI Alliances

239

In both cases, issuing MCs should include the

requirements such as making them tamper-proof, for

example, by using an electronic seal to sign the

credentials (eSealing). Depending on a variety of

reasons such as institutional or national strategy for

MCs, institutional bandwidth to enhance existing

systems or partner with external systems (Kiiskilä et

al., 2023), these options might not work for all

alliances.

2.2 Data Governance

Data governance can be described as a framework of

policies, processes, and guidelines for managing data

as a strategic enterprise asset (Abraham et al., 2019).

It specifies rights and accountabilities for an

organization’s decision-making about its data (Khatri

& Brown, 2010). Different frameworks have been

proposed with a focus on traditional IT assets (Weill

and Ross, 2004), and domains relevant to data (Khatri

and Brown, 2010; Otto, 2011).

Possible data governance approaches include

centralized, decentralized and hybrid (Asgarinia et

al., 2023; Colona & Jaffe, 2016; Xie et al., 2024).

Although most of the data governance models

presume the same model can fit any organization,

Weber et.al. (2009) proposed a model that takes

contingency factors into account for data governance.

By using these contingency factors, organizations can

determine the right data governance approach (Otto,

2011). The data governance model for any

organization depends on the external and internal

organizational factors that determine the

organizational context related to data governance

(Otto, 2011). According to the Weber’s contingency

model (Weber et al., 2009), a specific data

governance configuration needs to be designed so that

it fits the organization’s context factors. It consists of

two distinct parameters (a) organizational placement

of data quality management (DQM) activities and (b)

coordination of decision making for DQM.

However, the factors proposed by Weber do not

consider external contexts such as platforms used by

organizations. For institutions and alliances to issue

MCs, platform(s) are a key component and so the

governance factors related to platforms should also be

considered. Lee et al. platform governance model

(Lee et al., 2018) is an extension to the Weber model

that includes factors specific to organizations using

platforms. For this case study, we adapted Weber’s

contingency factors and two of the factors from the

platform governance model namely, Open strategy

and Platform maturity that contribute to the MC

governance. For alliances offering and issuing MCs,

open strategy can open the platform for multiple use

cases and platform maturity ensures strict data

governance.

3 DATA COLLECTION AND

ANALYSIS

A case study was conducted with an alliance of

multiple HEIs offering MCs to students of the

alliance partners. At the time of data collection, there

were 12 HEIs in the alliance from 12 different

countries throughout Europe. All the partners were

already offering courses through the alliance and

issued a certificate of completion, along with the

required academic transcripts to the students.

Multiple sources have been used for data

collection, here following the recommendations of

Yin (Yin, 2009). These include internal documents,

project documents, white papers, and external

documents such as platform documentation.

However, data from the interviews are the major

source. 19 individuals in administrative roles were

interviewed. The interviews lasted between 28 and 63

minutes, with an average of 52 minutes. The

interviews were conducted remotely using Microsoft

Teams and were recorded with the permission of the

participants. Furthermore, all the institutions

participated in an early adopter program with EDCL.

All the interviews were transcribed. The research

approach can be considered as an interpretive case

study (Elliott & Timulak, 2005). In the present study,

the three coding procedures proposed by Strauss and

Corbin (1990) were used: open, axial, and selective

coding. NVivo software was used to identify concepts

from the interview transcripts. The incident(s),

action(s), or event(s) from the raw data were given

conceptual labels (Strauss & Corbin, 1990). Then the

identified concepts were compared with the emerging

theories and the most relevant and acceptable

concepts were categorized. These categories were

further developed into subcategories, ensuring the

existence of linkage between them.

The two approaches, named in the present study

as hybrid and decentralized, were derived from the

practical examples as mentioned in section 2, and the

third approach is derived from the empirical analysis.

The contingency factors were used as influencing

factors in providing the comparison of all three

approaches for MC governance.

KMIS 2024 - 16th International Conference on Knowledge Management and Information Systems

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4 FINDINGS AND ANALYSIS

4.1 Approaches for Credential

Governance

As described in section 2, the issuance of MCs can

happen in two ways for alliances. (a) Hybrid

approach, where one or more of the alliance partners

issue MCs on behalf of all the partners or each partner

issues their MCs. (b) Decentralized approach which

requires all the partners to build the capability to issue

MCs. In our case study, during the EDCL early

adopter program and our interviews it became

evident that no one institution from the alliance would

like to take the responsibility to issue for other

institutions nor have the capability to issue MCs.

It became clear that neither hybrid nor

decentralized approaches would work for this

alliance. This resulted in the need to identify a

different approach to offer and issue MCs for

alliances such as the one in the present study. Based

on the empirical analysis, a third approach is

identified:

issues the MCs on behalf of the partners.

The centralized approach requires the alliance to

have a central platform to offer and issue the MCs.

This platform becomes the central management and

governance entity for all the MCs offered by the

alliance. The central platform becomes the repository

of all the MCs offered by the partners, ensuring all the

information required to issue a MC is captured. This

approach requires the central platform to provide a

way for the partners to indicate when students

complete the requirements to issue the MCs. The

central platform also needs to have a mechanism to

re-issue the same MCs if the need arises in the future.

4.2 Contingency Factors for the

Governance of Credentials

4.2.1 Comparison of Approaches

To understand and evaluate the best approach for the

governance of MCs by alliances, the contingency

model was applied. As discussed in section 3, the

contingency factors include both organizational as

well as platform context factors. Table 1 shows the

comprehensive contingency factors and the

comparison of all three approaches.

Certain contingency factors such as the degree of

market regulation stay the same for all three

approaches because, irrespective of how the MCs are

issued, all the data regulation policies need to be

followed. The centralized approach provides an open

strategy because the platform is specifically designed

to offer and issue MCs and customizing to a different

market is easier. Similarly, it is easier to expand the

portfolio of MCs offered in the centralized approach

because it is a cumulative effort of all partners. The

quality of the portfolio can be higher in both hybrid

and centralized approaches because interoperability

and uniformity are inherent.

Table 1: Contingency factors and comparison of the three

approaches for MC governance.

Contingency

facto

Hybrid (A) Decentralized

(

)

Centralized

(

)

Performance

strategy (High<-

>Low)

Quality

Growth

High

Low

High

Diversification

breadth (High<-

>Low)

Portfolio/Marke

Low

Medium

High

Organizational

structure

(Centralized<-

>Decentralized)

Centralized

Decentralized

Centralized

Competitive

strategy

Branding

(High<->Low)

High

Low

High

Process

harmonization

(Global<-

>Local)

Semi-global

Local

Global

Degree of

market

regulation

(High<->Low)

High

Decision making

style

(Hierarchical<-

>Co-operative)

Hierarchical Segmented Co-operative

Platform

maturity

(Robust<-

>Scalable)

Robust

Scalable

Robust &

scalable

Open strategy

(Open<-

>Closed)

Closed Closed Open

4.2.2 Case Study

The contingency factor matrix shows the comparison

of the three approaches to issuing MCs. The alliance

in the present case study chose centralized issuance

as the best approach because it solved the issues

identified earlier and opens other opportunities. As

mentioned in the previous section, none of the

partners in this alliance were ready to take up the

responsibility of issuing MCs on behalf of all the

Exploring Centralized, Decentralized, and Hybrid Approaches to Micro-Credential Issuance in HEI Alliances

241

partners, and not all the partners were ready to issue

MCs on their own. When asked for preference in the

method of issuing MCs, administrators from all the

partner institutions responded with a unanimous vote

for the centralized issuance of MCs. The reasons

included administrative ease and control over what is

issued.

“Administratively, it makes much more sense to

have a centralized process and to have one place that

issues all the credentials and has the control of

accreditations and all the parameters that you need

to issue the credentials”. - National co-ordinator.

Administrators felt issuing from the central

platform would ensure all the MCs would be

consistent. Each institution can provide the same

information for all the MCs that can be stored in the

central platform.

“It would make it equal and not different from

each university”. – Chief consultant

Institutional strategy and the work needed to

convince and organize is another factor mentioned by

administrators. The strategic vision for the alliance

and making it a good user experience for the students

were at the top of the list for all institutions.

“If you look at the administrative process, then

centralized would be better because it is much more

work if you have to organize this within your own

university”. – Educational consultant

Another factor mentioned by administrators is

branding. It helps with the strategic vision and

branding of the alliance as the individual institutions

can focus on offering high-quality MCs under the

alliance brand.

“Centralized marketing, centralized

administration, enrolment, record, and storage, and

so on”. – Teacher and work package contact for MCs.

The alliance being a legally registered entity,

acquired a Qualified eSeal and acted as the “issuer”

of MCs by eSealing them, and the institutions

offering the MCs acted as the “awarding body”. In

every MC, an evidence statement confirming the

issuer and awarding body roles and responsibilities

was included by EDC.

To facilitate this, the alliance added an addendum

to its existing accord for recognition of credits. stating

that all partner institutions agreed on the alliance to

eSeal and issue all the MCs on behalf of the partners.

This addendum was saved on the central platform

server and a link to that document was included in

every MC. This new ability to let an alliance issue

MCs on behalf of all the partners also led to

identifying steps in the MC process and

responsibilities at the institutional and central alliance

levels.

4.2.3 Potential Barriers for Centralized MC

Issuance

Although numerous advantages were cited for issuing

MCs centrally by the administrators, certain

limitations also exist in the approach. The platform is

central but there are no IT pipeline integrations done

from partner institutions to the central platform to

streamline data transfer. Therefore, all the relevant

information for MCs including content related

information, and admissions requirements for each

MC, need to be entered into the central system

manually. This includes the mandatory information to

be included into a MC such as learning outcomes,

description of the course, and workload. This can be

time-intensive and requires dedicated resources from

each institution to manage the information.

Because most of the MCs offered by this alliance

can be formal and credit-based, the grade was an

important factor to include in MCs. Due to lack of IT

integration, they need to be entered manually by each

institution into the central platform. Grades are

sensitive information for a student and so a decision

was made not to include grades in the MCs as it is

considered too risky and error-prone to enter them

manually. Since the students need a proof of

completion including the grade to receive credit in

their own institution, all the institutions still need to

provide proof of grade, such as transcript of records.

This renders MCs complementary to the existing

process, a digital proof of participation and not

replacement of current study record

Even though students register to a MC in the

central platform, the admission process is done by the

institution offering the MC and students receive

access to their learning management platform. Since

the MCs are created and issued from the central

platform, there is a need to establish the identity of

the students to ensure the MCs are issued to the right

students. A process was established to obtain the level

of security for the students either from their home

institution or the host institution who is offering the

MC by conducting an identity check. In cases where

host institutions do not conduct an identity check if

partner students register and home institution doesn’t

have an established process to set the security level

for the students, the level of security remains low

which results in MCs not issued to those students.

This requires either an additional workload for IT

team in the institutions or an additional process to be

followed in the central platform to do manual identity

checks for those students with low level of security

through video chats. This adds additional burden

either on the institutions to ensure the level of security

KMIS 2024 - 16th International Conference on Knowledge Management and Information Systems

242

is added or on the central staff to perform manual

checks. This may also increase privacy and security

related issues for the students with additional identity

checks.

Centralized issuance of MCs can add additional

privacy and security related governance issues and

need to be carefully considered including discussions

with data protection officers and designing

comprehensive policies.

5 DISCUSSION AND

CONCLUSION

5.1 Theoretical Contributions

The first key contribution is the identification of a new

approach in the context of MC issuance by alliances.

Studies have examined MCs and their potential in

various fields for career development (Vordenberg et

al., 2024) and possible hurdles in implementing them

from HEI perspective (Raj et al., 2024; Saad et al.,

2024). Issuing MCs is discussed only as an end to

means rather than as an important influencing factor

(Alsobhi et al., 2023; Halim et al., 2024) especially in

the case of alliances. Few studies that are available on

alliances offering MCs (Ipsilandis et al., 2024) focus

on dynamics of alliances themselves. MC governance

required to issue MCs is critical and needs thoughtful

consideration for the success of alliances in offering

MCs. The two approaches we identified through

practical examples work for certain alliances but not

for all. Factors such as an individual institution’s

ability to issue MCs and willingness to take the

burden of issuing MCs on behalf of all the partners

determine whether either of the approaches can be

used. Alliances where neither option is viable are left

with no solution. With the centralized approach that

we identified, alliances can consider building a

central system and using the alliance legal entity to

eseal and issue MCs for all the partners. This gives

the institutions the flexibility to build the capability

of issuing MCs in step with their institutional

strategy. This centralized approach for the alliances

to issue MCs has not been used in practice or studied

to our knowledge. This contributes to the MC

literature to include different approaches for MC

governance.

The second key contribution is the comparison of

the three approaches in the context of MC issuance.

Although the three approaches namely: hybrid,

decentralized and centralized can be found in existing

literature in the data governance context (Coche et al.,

2024; Lemieux et al., 2020), the same cannot be

applied to MC governance. Existing studies offer

knowledge about technology to use for MC

governance (Subramanian et al., 2024). Studies

involving governance in alliances also discuss about

governance mechanism that promote knowledge

sharing (Eden et al., 2011) and how governance form

can enable partners to develop, transfer and protect

knowledge (McGill, 2007). However, our findings

illustrate that in an alliance setting, who and how

MCs can be issued using the technology is still

needed. To meet requirements such as making the

MCs tamper proof and include certain information

mandatory in each MC, every alliance needs to look

at how management and governance can be done and

choose the right approach for them. This paper

provides an understanding how the contingency

factors from data governance can be used to find the

right approach for any given alliance. To the best of

our knowledge, this is one of the first studies to

provide a comparison of all three approaches in the

context of MC governance which includes issuing

MCs. This contribution extends extends the MC

literature to compare different approaches alliances

can take. This also contributes to the data governance

literature to use contingency factors in determining

the right approach for alliances to take.

5.2 Practical Contributions

The findings make practical contributions by

explaining 1) reasons why certain approaches such as

hybrid and decentralized, might not meet the needs of

some alliances for MC governance and 2) provide

comparison of approaches from data governance

perspective so alliances can make informed decisions.

MC research has lacked empirical studies that could

inform alliances different approaches feasible for MC

governance or how to choose the right approach. Only

a handful of practical examples are available and the

approaches from those examples, don’t necessarily fit

for all alliances as was evident from the findings. The

present case study presents a centralized approach for

MC governance and a comparison of all three

approaches provided in this study from data

governance perspective can help alliances when

considering the right approach for their MC

governance.

5.3 Limitations and Future Research

Topics

The present study has certain limitations that warrants

further research. First, the interviews were done

Exploring Centralized, Decentralized, and Hybrid Approaches to Micro-Credential Issuance in HEI Alliances

243

during spring 2022, when MCs were still new for the

administrators who were interviewed. However, all

the administrators had considerable knowledge of the

early adopter program in which the alliance

participated in and helped in understanding the

institution’s ability to issue MCs at that time. Second,

the comparison of the three approaches was done

specifically, with a focus on the issuance of MCs by

the alliances. Upcoming studies should also explore

the validation of these approaches for other business

strategies. Third, the contingency factors considered

for the case study were specifically for an alliance of

HEIs. Further research is needed to better understand

the influence of contingency factors on data

governance for other types of alliances as well.

Fourth, the alliance in this case study is an established

entity with an existing history. Further research is

needed to understand whether a similar approach

would work for alliances that form just for a single

project.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This research was supported by ECIUn+

(101089422) European Universities funding.

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