Glenda Kruss

Employment and employability: expectations of higher education responsiveness in South Africa

This paper explores the expectations of higher education responsiveness of key employer, education, and training constituencies in South Africa. Empirical data was gathered through a series of focus group and individual interviews, and analysed in terms of distinctions in the ideal relationship between education and the workplace. The paper demonstrates that there are clear differences in the way the call for responsiveness is framed and legitimated in the expectations of representatives of the private and public sectors, Professional Associations, Sectoral Education and Training Authorities, and higher education institutions. Nevertheless, a common new model of ‘employability’ that assumes a direct link between higher education and the labour market increasingly underpins these expectations. The tacit skills, knowledge, and attitudes formerly developed through work experience are now expected to be an integral part of higher education programmes and curricula, to provide the ‘soft’, ‘transverse’, ‘life’,...This paper explores the expectations of higher education responsiveness of key employer, education, and training constituencies in South Africa. Empirical data was gathered through a series of focus group and individual interviews, and analysed in terms of distinctions in the ideal relationship between education and the workplace. The paper demonstrates that there are clear differences in the way the call for responsiveness is framed and legitimated in the expectations of representatives of the private and public sectors, Professional Associations, Sectoral Education and Training Authorities, and higher education institutions. Nevertheless, a common new model of ‘employability’ that assumes a direct link between higher education and the labour market increasingly underpins these expectations. The tacit skills, knowledge, and attitudes formerly developed through work experience are now expected to be an integral part of higher education programmes and curricula, to provide the ‘soft’, ‘transverse’, ‘life’, or ‘high’ skills—as they are variously termed by different sectors. In developing these insights, the study aims to inform the ways in which the higher education sector in South Africa can actively negotiate the terms of its engagement in a new global and national policy context that assigns it new economic roles.

Reconceptualising engagement: a conceptual framework for analysing university interaction with external social partners

ABSTRACT Currently in universities there is a widespread and formal promotion of ‘community engagement’, but there is also conceptual confusion, debate and contestation, as reflected in vastly differing interpretations of what counts as ‘engaged practice’. Universities are grappling to define what ‘community engagement’ means, and a lively debate on the relationship between the university and society in a developing country like South Africa is emerging. This article contributes to theoretical debate around the definition and conceptualisation of ‘community engagement’ in South Africa. It presents a conceptual framework that was developed to conduct empirical research to measure existing ‘engaged’ academic activities, in order to map forms of interaction in different types of university and disciplinary fields. The objective of the article is to show how the conceptual framework was developed, and how it can be used to guide empirical research, institutional strategic planning and national higher education policy processes. The conceptual origins lie in an unfolding body of research on the changing role of universities in economic development, using a national system of innovation framework. The article begins by developing a working conception of the role of the university in economic and social development in the first section. It then shifts to consider the policy debate and emerging research literature in South Africa, highlighting a disjuncture between higher education and innovation studies in the second section. A growing alignment provides a foundation for developing a new conception of university engagement. The third section then focuses specifically on the adaptation and extension of a conceptual framework used for studying university–firm interaction, to the study of university interaction with a range of external social partners – community, government, civil society, firms or farmers. The final section sets out how such a framework can be used to map interactive practice within a university and across the national system of innovation.

Universities and Knowledge-based Development in sub-Saharan Africa: Comparing University-Firm Interaction in Nigeria, Uganda and South Africa

Abstract Research on the changing role of universities in firm learning, innovation and national economic development has not extended systematically to low income countries of sub-Saharan Africa. Drawing on an empirical survey of firms and case studies of university practices, the article examines conditions of universities, firms and their potential for interaction across a national system of innovation in three countries, Nigeria, Uganda and South Africa, in order to contribute to such analysis. In so doing, it attempts to open up a research agenda in terms of the specific challenges African countries face.

Harnessing Innovation potential? Institutional approaches to industry-higher education research partnerships in South Africa

This article presents an overview of research partnership activity across the South African higher education system, in three cutting-edge high-technology fields. An analytical matrix of partnership forms is developed, shaped by distinct responses to the tension between the new financial imperatives and the traditional intellectual project of higher education. Using the matrix, four groups of institutional response to partnership are identified. These may be distinguished in terms of their level of research capacity and the sets of strategic policies, institutional structures and interface mechanisms they have in place to promote partnerships with industry. The core argument of the paper is that more institutions need to develop the capacity to harness the potential for innovation, rather than allow the unregulated proliferation of contract and consultancy forms of partnership with industry that can undermine their core long-term knowledge-generation function.

Creating Knowledge Networks: Higher Education, Industry and Innovation in South Africa

This article focuses on a new organisational form that is emerging in the South African context—knowledge networks of higher education, industry and intermediary partners. The article focuses on seven case studies in two high-technology fields and their related industrial sectors—biotechnology, being relatively new, and new materials development, being relatively mature in South Africa. It shows the complex nature of the research partners at each node of a network, and of the structure and dynamics of the interaction that results. The study suggests that we need to open up the ideal enshrined in South African policy, of the desirability of research partnerships, to more informed analysis of the complexity of creating networks, in specific industrial sub-sectors, knowledge fields and institutional contexts. The major insight offered for developing countries like South Africa is the value of a contextualised analysis for informing cross-sectoral coordination of interventions within a national system of innovation.

Balancing old and new organisational forms: changing dynamics of government, industry and university interaction in South Africa

The paper considers changing triple helix relations in the South African context after 1994. The organisational form of university–industry partnership, stimulated by government incentives, is emerging. However, old and new organisational forms, shaped by a tension between financial and intellectual imperatives, co-exist in the shifting relationship between university, industry and government. The capacity to harness the potential of research for innovation by creating new institutional interface structures is evident on a significant scale in a small number of universities, and in isolated pockets in others. Old forms tend to prevail, and may have counter-productive implications. Creating new forms of knowledge-intensive networks requires analysis of the complex inter-dependence between firms, universities and government intermediaries. The paper considers implications for universities, arguing for a strategic balance of old and new forms of partnership across more institutions, taking into account the diversity of university contexts, knowledge fields, industrial sectors and technology platforms.

Tensions in Facilitating Higher Education‐Industry Research Partnerships in High Technology Fields in South Africa

Based on a study of research partnerships with industry across the higher education sector in three high technology fields in South Africa, the paper identifies five key tensions, the resolution of which shapes the way partnerships are facilitated and constrained in distinct institutional contexts. The paper highlights the significance of policy coherence between organizational levels within an institution, the importance of seeking a balance between financial and intellectual research imperatives, the necessity of promoting a strategic balance between the forms of partnership that are allowed and encouraged to develop, and the need for flexible regulation within institutions to provide levers and incentives without being heavy‐handed or constricting.

A methodology for unveiling global innovation networks: patent citations as clues to cross border knowledge flows

This paper presents a new methodology to describe global innovations networks. Using 167,315 USPTO patents granted in 2009 and the papers they cited, this methodology shows “scientific footprints of technology” that cross national boundaries, and how multinational enterprises interact globally with universities and other firms. The data and the map of these flows provide insights to support a tentative taxonomy of global innovation networks.

Global interactions between firms and universities

This paper investigates interactions between firms and universities in a global context. The point of departure is a review of the ever-evolving literature on innovation. Three major strands of the literature can be identified: interactions between firms and universities, transnational corporations and their global reach, and more recently, global innovation networks (GINs). These strands have intersections that provide a starting point for a theoretical framework presented in order to assist the analysis of the role of universities in innovation networks, and the ways in which emerging countries are inserted into global hierarchies. Underlying the framework is the notion that the nature of national innovation systems shapes the national role in existing innovation networks. Therefore, immature national innovation systems will be associated with immature or incomplete GINs.

Knowledge-Intensive University Spin-Off Firms in South Africa: Fragile Network Alignment?.

This paper analyses the conditions for sustaining spin-off firms from university-based research in South Africa through follow-up case studies of three high-technology networks, using a ‘network alignment’ approach. Commercialization failed in the first case because of a lack of interactive capability and an absence of networks between the university and the industrial sector. Initial success was short-lived for the second case, given misalignment between firm and market conditions and in the coordination of key functions in the firm. In the third and most successful case, there was misalignment between the firm and a key global supplier, impacting on networks between firm and market and threatening turnover and future viability. The degree of alignment in the South African national system of innovation is fragile, in that networks may exist but not sufficiently widely across the system, or they may not function effectively. Hence, as the empirical evidence suggests, it is difficult to sustain competitive spin-off firms.