Institutionalisation of the TM

practice, infused with value and supported by other aspects of the system. (as cited in Goodman & Steckler, 1989, p. 60.)

Just like Goodman and Steckler (1989), Eiseman, Fleming, and Roody (1990) stress that institutionalisation symbolises a final transition of a project or programme to an acceptable part of the regular operation of an organisation. It is the critical last step in the process of change, the end result of prior phases, initiation and implementation, but not a natural result of these phases. What, then, characterises institutionalisation? Goodman and Dean (1982) point out three defining features of an institutionalised act: performance of the act by multiple actors, persistence of the act and existence of the act as a social fact. Likewise, Miles and Louis (1987) suggest seven characteristic features, namely:

1. Acceptance by relevant actors—a perception that the innovation legitimately belongs

2. Stable, routinised implementation; widespread use of the innovation;

3. Firm expected continuation, usually accompanied by negotiated agreements;

4. Legitimacy, normality;

5. Change is no longer seen as a change, but has become “invisible,” and is taken for granted;

6. Person independence—that is, continuation does not depend upon the actions of specific individuals but upon organisational structures, procedures or culture; and 7. Routine allocation of time and money (as cited in Eiseman et al., 1990, pp. 12–13;

Saxl et al., 1989, pp. 6–24).

identify nine organisational aspects that denote the institutionalisation of the TM at the institutional level: campus mission statement, presidential leadership, policy, publicity, budget allocations, broad staff understanding of and support for the TM, infrastructure, faculty roles and rewards, and integration of TM activities into other aspects of institutional work (pp. 82–83). Institutionalising the TM, therefore, implies embracing the TM as a university-wide activity that can survive changes in funding, academic staff and campus leadership. In short, it involves (a) accepting the TM as a core rather than a peripheral function, (b) tying the TM in with the curriculum and university policies and structures, (c) providing routine administrative support, (d) widespread involvement of staff and students and (e) existence of organisational structures to coordinate and/or to support TM activities, among others (Brukardt et al., 2006a; Furco, 2002; Holland, 1997; Lazarus, Erasmus, Hendricks, Nduna, & Slamat, 2008; Saxl et al., 1989). Therefore, although the institutionalisation of the TM would look different across different universities,

[It] usually entails a redefinition of the university culture,²⁵ includes curricular change, involves and empowers faculty and staff, and necessitates new institutional infrastructure and accountability mechanisms. (Brukardt et al., 2006a, p. 10.) In essence, full institutionalisation of the TM is envisaged to involve regulative aspects (e.g., policies, structures and programmes), normative aspects (e.g., consensus about the appropriateness of the TM) and cognitive elements, such as the active involvement of staff, students and external communities in TM activities (Colbeck, 2002). However, as Hollander, Saltmarsh, and Zlotkowski (2002) observe, “It is unlikely that all [the above- mentioned indicators] will be apparent on any one campus. [In addition] these indicators should not be regarded as prescriptive; their value lies in the possibilities they suggest” (p.

35).

Challenges to institutionalisation of the TM

Although discussions in the foregoing sections show that the TM is a vital function that every HEI should embrace, Jongbloed et al. (2008) observe that day-to-day practices show that HEIs usually interact with traditional communities of students, researchers, funding organisations and research sponsors, among others, but encounter challenges to a wider type of community outreach and engagement. Therefore, institutionalising the TM so that its practice, forms and supporting structures become sustainable and integral aspects of cultures of HEIs faces various challenges. In their study, “Institutionalization of Computing in Complex Organizations,” Perry, Kraemer, King, and Dunkle (1992) note:

25 A rather stable set of taken-for-granted assumptions, shared beliefs, meanings, and values that form a kind of backdrop for action (Smircich, 1985, p. 58, as cited in Scott, 2003, p. 318).

The failure of the organization’s members to conform to and embrace the values embedded in [the innovation] … raises the interesting research question of why even carefully planned … reforms often do not meet the critical expectation of institutionalization, wherein … [an innovation] becomes a routine and background part of everyday organizational life. (p. 48.)

Thus, for both academic and practical reasons, there is a need to examine issues that challenge the institutionalisation of the TM at universities. Because the institutionalisation of the TM entails the adoption of new norms, more interdisciplinary and applied work and forms of scholarship and pedagogy (Vidal et al., 2002), one of the challenges to the institutionalisation of the TM is the longstanding traditions of the academe. First, although academic culture, standards and norms can differ significantly among universities and among academic departments on the same university campus, certain traditions—for instance, the structuring of universities along academic disciplines and professions—are broadly shared (Jongbloed et al., 2008; Vidal et al., 2002). One problem of structuring HEIs based on academic disciplines is that advocating the autonomy of HEIs and the independence of academics to decide what to teach and what to research “runs counter to the multi-disciplinary nature of many community problems and the collaborative approach that partnership-based responses require” (Vidal et al., 2002, p. 75). Disciplines and professions also exercise control over academics by “defining reality—devising ontological frameworks, proposing distinctions … and fabricating principles or guidelines for action [e.g., what counts as significant problems, what constitutes good science and academic beliefs that are biased towards research]” (Scott & Backman, 1990, as cited in Scott, 1995, p. 95). Such frameworks, especially frameworks for knowledge production, often treat universities as the sole creators, conservers and transmitters of knowledge, skills and values (Duke, 2010); thus ignoring the relevance of external communities in the production of knowledge.

Associated with such frameworks is the notion that universities are “special precisely because they are separated from the passions of the moment, the fads of the day, the flavour of the month, and those shifting political winds that so readily dominate the media”

(Shulman, 2011, p. ix). Likewise, since academic disciplines tend to devalue research that aims to address local problems, and peer review systems also tend to reward scholarship in familiar forms (Hartley et al., 2005), the TM is often treated as a noble but not necessarily a central function of universities. Therefore, despite wide enthusiasm about the TM, academic traditions and disciplinary practices often do not support the TM, and, hence, interactions among various disciplines and between HEIs and external communities are not as frequent as they perhaps should be (Jongbloed et al., 2008).

In addition, since the institutional and individual success of universities and academics depend on prestige,²⁶ university rankings and evaluation systems often reduce the social

26 For instance, a highly competitive and qualified student intake, big research budgets from prestigious sources, a high profile in the most prestigious research journals and a position in league tables and ranking

impact of universities on society to financial and bibliometric measures (Benneworth et al., 2009), which, in turn, leads universities to prioritise league table standings to the TM. Thus, the key barrier to the involvement of the academic staff in TM activities is not necessarily poor promotion practices and reward structures; instead, the problem is more basic—

the TM, just like teaching on some university campuses, is viewed at best as “a laudable deed but not as an intellectually challenging [and rewarding] scholarly activity” (Lynton, 1995, p. 53). However, this is not to denigrate the importance of formally recognising the significance of the TM in university policies for the recruitment and promotion of the academic staff. Such recognition, in fact, has the potential to boost the involvement of academic staff in TM activities and to ensure that such involvement does not impede their career development (Lynton, 1995). Therefore, transforming the TM into a core function and, consequently, an integral aspect of the mission of any university necessitates a fundamental change in the culture of that university.

The second challenge to the institutionalisation of the TM, then, concerns the reward systems for the academic staff. In most universities, academic reward structures, including criteria for hiring and promotion, generate strong pressure towards research publications in peer-reviewed academic journals (Lazarus et al., 2008; Mwiandi, 2010; Preece et al., 2012b;

Vidal et al., 2002). The chances of an academic staff member being promoted or getting a salary increase, then, often depend on his or her research productivity, which is measured in terms of the number of refereed journal publications and the volume of competitive research grants won or his or her workload and responsibilities in terms of teaching (Jongbloed et al., 2008). Therefore, whether it is in a prestigious research university or in a more teaching-oriented university, recruitment, promotion and salary policies often create dissonance with, and subsequently deter academics from participating in, TM activities (Gunasekara, 2006).

Third, institutionalising the TM is also hindered by the lack of clarity about the term

’Third Mission’—that is, it is composed of multifaceted concepts that are based on the history and disciplinary profile of a university as well as the nature of the community, its needs and its enunciated demands (Charles, Benneworth, Conway, & Humphrey, 2010). The problem with such vagueness is that even when universities attempt to articulate strategic goals for the TM, some academics simply do not see the link between the institutional mission and their own work (Gunasekara, 2006). In addition to its multifaceted meaning, the measurement of the TM is fundamentally complex and is still at a formative stage (Lall, 2010). The TM, whether defined as community service, outreach, or engagement, embraces various activities and intentions—such as strategies for economic and social regional development, service learning, collaboration with business, social and cultural activities and support for local health and physical urban development (Charles et al., 2010)—that

systems (Duke, 2010). Despite their growing influence, ranking systems, such as the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU), the QS World University Rankings and the Times Higher Education World University Rankings, have attracted extensive criticism for their relatively partial methodologies, which, for the most part, focus on research output (Benneworth et al., 2009; Schuetze, 2010).

create deep-seated difficulties for the definition, assessment and documentation of the TM (Finkelstein, 2001). In teaching, for instance, there are standard units of work (lectures, seminars) and outputs (students, graduates, degrees or modules examined). Research also yields some standardised performance measures in the form of research grants, levels of income, publication outputs and so forth. Whilst there are problems with assessing quality, which are only partly addressed by citation counts, at least all universities are seeking similar kinds of inputs and outputs. For the TM, outputs may be extremely diverse and the engagement process very varied (Charles et al., 2010).

Furthermore, the insufficiency of, and/or difficulties in mobilising, dependable and sustainable streams of resources, such as human, financial and structural, affects the institutionalisation of the TM at most universities. First, as a by-product of their training, experience and reward structures, Vidal et al. (2002) note that academics usually have little or no experience in community outreach and engagement and that some may not even be aware of the possibilities it offers. Those trained in traditions that emphasise the primacy of individual scholarship often do not have opportunities to develop the types of skills required for collaboration and shared leadership, and many are unfamiliar with roles as co-creators of knowledge. Second, although communities tend to perceive HEIs as wealthy, their resources are frequently fully committed to research and/or teaching, not to the TM (Vidal et al., 2002). At most universities, academic staff members teach, research, advise, serve on standing committees, write letters of recommendation, mentor young scholars and participate in peer review for academic journals, while at others, academic staff members have heavy teaching loads that make it difficult for them to participate in TM activities or to integrate TM-based activities into their teaching and research activities. Unsurprisingly, therefore, academic staff members often see themselves as having little time to pursue any activity the purpose of which may be construed as contrary to their core duties (Hartley et al., 2005) or peripheral to their academic careers.

In addition, since heavy teaching loads are a consequence of very tight budgets, forcing academic staff to participate in TM activities or to incorporate some TM activities into their teaching and research activities could require buying out one or more courses—that is, hiring someone else to teach the course or offering students fewer course options (Vidal et al., 2002). The absence of sustainable financial and human resources to fund and support the TM, particularly in the early stages, therefore, inhibits full the institutionalisation of the TM at many universities (Furco & Holland, 2004; Wergin, 2006).