Organisational

Although the MUK has organisational units (see Section 6.1) that provide TM-related services and help to take the university to the external communities and bring the external communities to the university, some of these units are quite new, small and restricted to specific disciplines, and many interactions between the university and the external communities are fairly individualised, ad hoc in nature, uncoordinated and unrecorded.

The data show that the university lacks a central unit to coordinate the TM and provide up-to-date information about the TM—particularly about the ongoing activities and the available opportunities—to the external communities. Openjuru and Ikoja-Odongo (2012), for instance, note that various colleges and schools at MUK duplicate the provision of short continuing education courses. Therefore, despite their contributions to the TM, such uncoordinated activities and services often fritter away the resources of the university and hamper its usefulness to the external communities. For this reason, there is a need for a centralised office, preferably under the office of the vice chancellor, to coordinate and support the TM and TM-related efforts at the university, to collect and publish information about the university, to facilitate the transfer and commercialisation of inventions and to serve as the gateway to the university.⁹⁶ In addition, such a unit could, as the interviewees noted, be responsible for searching for consultancies, contract research and other funding

96 Research—for instance, Ajayi et al. (1996)—shows that the lack of information about African universities contributes to the marginalisation of the universities by external communities largely because the

opportunities—especially interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary projects—and selecting the most appropriate people to run them. R9, a university professor, noted, for example,

When I was studying in Australia, at our university, we had a unit called Unisearch.

If you wanted a professor to do something, you would first go to it and they would get you the right person, so it was well coordinated. I think we need something like that. (Personal communication, April 17, 2012.)

The office could also be responsible for collecting and disseminating information about the TM to the staff and students; evaluating the existing TM activities, structures and policies;

and disseminating information about the university—particularly its mission, knowledge capabilities, TM-related services and potentially exploitable inventions—to the external communities. The existence of such a coordinating centre and an effective communications system would enable (1) the university to interact with the external communities and to promote the TM in a coordinated way and (2) the external communities to learn more about the capacities and resources of the university. Such an office, however, should not supplant the existing centres and the initiatives of the academic staff and students; instead, it should supplement and support them. In addition, since almost every university college at MUK has a centre, an institute or an academic department that provides TM-related services, the proposed centralised centre should work in partnership with the centres, institutes and colleges to facilitate the smooth flow of information to the staff, students and the external communities; facilitate decision-making; and minimise the duplication of TM-related efforts and the wastage of resources. Alternatively, the university could strengthen some of its existing administrative units—for example, the MUPSF and the Planning and Development Department (PDD)⁹⁷—and/or expand their mandates to include the coordination of the TM. Currently, the PDD works closely with the college communication officers when compiling the annual report of the university. Accordingly, if the university expanded the PDD’s mandate and human and financial resources, it (the PDD) could serve as the coordinating centre for the TM at the university.

Summary

The suggestions discussed above underscore the need for the university to provide leadership and demonstrate institutional support to the TM; sensitise its staff and students to the TM; commit financial and human resources to the TM; align its recruitment, evaluation

external communities, including governments, do not know what the universities do behind or next to their fences (Ntseane, 2012).

97 Its mission is to coordinate planning and to provide support for strategic decision-making at the university through the collection, analysis and interpretation of institutional and externally sourced data.

One of its mandates is to monitor and evaluate the implementation of the planned activities (see http://pdd.

mak.ac.ug/). The PDD publishes the university’s annual report, which provides information about knowledge transfer partnerships and networking, among other things, at the university (MUK, 2014b).

and promotion policy and practices with the TM; integrate the TM into its curricula; and create a coordinating unit. Together, the suggestions aim to enhance the knowledge of the university staff and students about the TM; improve the attitudes of the academic staff towards the TM; facilitate the widespread involvement of the staff, the students and the external communities in TM-related activities at the university; improve the coordination and evaluation of the TM; and support the development of the culture of networking and partnerships that pervades the university. The notion here is that by creating new regulative institutions—policies, structures and programmes—and aligning the existing ones with the TM (Beere et al., 2011), the university would enhance its normative and cognitive institutions. According to Votruba (2010),

If higher education is going to produce outstanding public engagement, every element of the institution must be aligned to support that outcome. To what extent are campus leadership, faculty incentives and rewards, planning and budgeting, annual evaluations, awards and recognitions, and public policy aligned to support the scholarship of engagement? Absent such alignment, involvement will more likely be based on individual faculty commitment rather than institutional commitment.

(p. xiv.)

Conceptually, the above suggestions also echo, to some degree, Clark’s (1998a) pathways—

minimum conditions—for organisational transformation by means of entrepreneurial action, namely: a strengthened steering core, an expanded development periphery, a diversified funding base, a stimulated academic heartland and an integrated academic culture. The discussion in Chapter 6 shows that although MUK recognises the TM as a core function, some of the interviewed leaders expressed a lack of adequate knowledge of the TM. In addition, the interview data reveal that the leadership of the university does not provide sufficient support for the TM. Hence, in this case, the need for a “strengthened steering core” means that the leadership of the university (particularly the chancellor, vice chancellor, principals of colleges, deans of schools and heads of departments) should be knowledgeable about and openly—in words and actions—support the TM. The literature—

for example, Ca (2009)—shows that faculty members tend to lack basic knowledge and skills about the intellectual property rights and commercialisation of invention and that the development of the TM requires the presence of strong management capacities that offer strategic guidance and resources. Thus, for MUK to enhance its TM, it must strengthen its management capacity by, for instance, creating capacity-building programmes for its academic and non-academic managers. The term “expanded developmental periphery”

denotes an array of administrative offices and boundary-spanning academic units that reach across the boundaries of a university to take the university to the external communities and bring the external communities to the university (Clark, 1998a). In this regard, there is a need for the university to strengthen its existing TM-oriented units and to create more units.

Although funding is required to implement the TM, some TM activities (e.g., consultancy, contract research, continuing education and the commercialisation of research results) can generate funding for a university and, thus, enable it to diversify its funding base. Hence, the institutionalisation of the TM and the diversification of the funding sources are intertwined; further institutionalisation of the TM as well as the exploitation of the existing opportunities would enable the university to generate extra funds and, thus, diversify its funding base,⁹⁸ which would, in turn, enable the university to support and further develop the TM. However, to further develop the TM and exploit the commercial benefits associated therewith, the university should provide budgets to sustain and strengthen its existing TM-related units and activities, support the involvement of the academic staff and students in TM-related activities and develop facilities for interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary work.

The term “stimulated academic heartland,” as used here, denotes the input, support and commitment of the academic staff, which, as discussions in Chapters 2 and 6 show, are essential for the institutionalisation of the TM. Therefore, much as strong steering cores help to guarantee the necessary leadership and budgetary support for the TM, their ideas and programmes cannot, for example, become fully integrated into the curriculum without the support and commitment of the academic departments and staff. According to Leslie (1996), “Change in colleges and universities comes when it happens in the trenches;

what faculty and students do is what the institution becomes. It does not happen because a committee or a president asserts a new idea” (p. 110). Thus, to further institutionalise the TM, the university should, among other things, align its staff recruitment, evaluation and promotion practices with the TM and create programmes to enhance the involvement and commitment of the academic staff regarding the TM.

The concept “integrated academic culture” is utilised here to denote the need for MUK to develop a culture of outreach and engagement (including mission, values and beliefs) that permeates all aspects of the university—its policies, practices, academic units, administrative offices, academic programmes, staff, students and so forth. However, the development of such a culture cannot happen suddenly; it takes time and requires the existence of a strong and supportive steering core, multiple funding sources and sustainable funding, a stimulated academic heartland and an extended developmental periphery (Clark, 2004)—aspects that are not yet fully developed at MUK. Thus, the idea here is that once these organisational features—not just one—have been developed, they will become

“embedded in networks” (Zucker, 1991) and help the University to develop a set of beliefs and practices that are supportive of the TM.

Although the above-mentioned suggestions cannot guarantee the deeper institution- alisation of the TM,⁹⁹ they have the potential to support current and future TM-related

98 The interview data, however, reveal that the income-generating TM activities are not yet fully developed and that the university does not generate adequate funding from this source.

99 “Structural elements (e.g., more resources, new programmes and policies) alone are insufficient to alter the day-to-day behaviors of individuals, particularly those working in loosely coupled organizations like

activities and structures; boost the involvement of the staff, the students and the external communities in the TM; and facilitate the development of a university culture that sup- ports and values the TM. Saxl et al. (1989), for example, observe, “Many implementation activities [for instance, a routine budget for the TM] are, in effect, preconditions for insti- tutionalization” (pp. 6–20).