Academic engagement - PowerPoint Presentation

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Academic engagement as knowledge co-production, and implications for impact: Evidence from Knowledge Transfer Partnerships

Ainurul Rosli, Muthu de Silva, Federica Rossi, Nick Yip

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Research Fellow

:

Nabhassorn

Baines

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Funding grants and Database2

British Academy of Management Birkbeck

ERDF

British Academy/

Leverhulme

Trust Slide3

Case study of Knowledge Transfer Partnerships (KTPs)Project funding scheme launched in 2003 by UK governmentProjects involve tri-partnerships: a university (academic partner), an external stakeholder (business partner – firms, charities, public or mixed public-private bodies) and a recent graduate (associate) working together to deliver a project of strategic value

KTPs embody ‘double hurdle’ knowledge co-production processes (Starkey & Madan 2001) as they “simultaneously deliver practitioner relevance and scholarly excellence” (Pettigrew 2001)

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Knowledge Transfer Partnerships (KTPs)Slide4

MotivationDebate on the impact of academic engagement with business and community stakeholdersImpact assessment increasingly drives

university fundinge.g. in the UK: HEIF funding, REF ‘impact case studies’ Move away from a reductive view of academic engagement only as knowledge transfer to also include knowledge co-production

Aim is to better understand what drives

knowledge co-production and how impact

occurs4Slide5

Academic engagement as knowledge co-productionBegins from conceptualisation and design

, and continues throughout completion, translation and dissemination of outcomes (Cherney et al. 2015; Farr 2016)Requires ‘deep’ interactions (McCabe et al. 2016): extensive commitment, mutual trust (Molas-

Gallart et al. 2000), regular and interactive communication (Cherney

2013) and substantial resource contributions (Osborne & Strokosch

2013) from all stakeholders

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Academic engagement as knowledge co-productionStakeholders are active participants in a process of bilateral

knowledge construction, negotiation and integrationOften inducing changes in individual and organizational knowledge and behaviours (British Academy, 2008; Benneworth & Joengbloed, 2010; Olmos-

Peñuela et al., 2014)E.g. critical and conceptual thinking to promote self-reflection on issues such as businesses models, strategies, management of innovation / human resources, organizational structures and governance, power and gender relationships, institutional design, policy development, (

Jaaniste

2009)6Slide7

55 interviews conducted over 12-months in 2013-201432 academic advisors, 12 associates, 6 business advisors, 4 university KTP managers, 1 regional KTP manager) from 16 different universities and 5 different business partnersPurposeful sampling: I

ndividuals who had experience with KTPs, either as academic advisor, business advisor, associate or KTPs manager in university or at regional level, and Only academic advisors who had experience with two or more KTPs7

Our methodologySlide8

What are the drivers of knowledge co-production?Theoretical gap Team

composition has been identified as a main factor that determines value creation by entrepreneurial teams. While homogeneity has been identified as bringing about cohesiveness (Schneider et al. 1997), which is essential for collaboration success, it has also been argued that diversity improves creativity and innovativeness (Sethi

et al. 2002) which are essential for entrepreneurship (Yu 2002).

How to co-produce value in a team with diverse members?

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9Entrepreneurial teams literature: providing a conceptual background

Looked at entrepreneurial teams literature to explore how knowledge is co-produced

through dynamic interactions between diverse stakeholders

Both processes involve

networks of actors

who interact to achieve

a common objective (

Vargo

and Lusch

2016, Harper 2008).

This common objective is to

co-create value to all

the parties involved through

corporation, co-learning and co-production

(

Shalley

and Perry-Smith 2008; McColl-Kennedy et al 2012). Slide10

Entrepreneurial teams literature: providing a conceptual backgroundThe process involves, in both cases, the identification of an opportunity to co-create value, and the

integration of complementary knowledge bases, skill sets, resources in order to achieve that objective (Ng,

Nudurupati

and Williams 2011; de Silva et al. 2014).

Value co-production occurs in

highly dynamic and demanding contexts resembling the

risks associated with the entrepreneurship process (Miles et al. 2005; Srivastava and Sharma 2011).

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KTP team diversity KTP teams are inherently diverse:

Goal diversity – Cognitive diversity - expertise, experiences, and perspectives (Stewart 2006)

Network diversity - set of contacts outside the team (Reaganset

al. 2004)

Resource diversity – ownership to resources

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13What are the drivers of knowledge co-production?Slide14

Impact is difficult to capture due to complexity inIdentifying the intangible changes in individual and organizational knowledge and behaviours generated by the process of academic engagement (Benneworth

& Joengbloed, 2010; Olmos-Peñuela et al. 2014)Attributing processes of cause and effect (Klautzer et al. 2011)

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How does knowledge co-production generate impact?Slide15

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Impact is achieved through sustained knowledge co-producing interactions, within and outside the KTPThe benefits of the KTP ‘ripple out’ organically: the identity of the stakeholders who benefit from the KTP, how they benefit from it, cannot be established in advance

.The impact of KTPs is inter-temporal, unfolding and persisting over a long period of time16

How does knowledge co-production generate impact?Slide17

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Process of engagementKnowledge transfer

Knowledge co-production

Knowledge governance process

Uni-lateral transmission

Bi-lateral/multi-lateral construction, validation, adaptationNature of knowledgeMainly codified, embedded in artefacts or documents, although some tacit knowledge may be needed for effective transfer

Tacit knowledge is crucial for co-production, although the co-produced knowledge can become partly codified

Means to achieve impact

Diffusion of codified knowledge outputsContinuous co-production of knowledge through interaction processes involving individuals, distributed networks and collective entities

Who is impacted and how

Benefits, and the stakeholders who receive them, are clearly identifiable in advance

Benefits, and the identity of the stakeholders who receive them, depend on a ‘ripple out’ process that cannot be anticipated

Time frame for impact to occur

Short term: most benefits are accrued by the formal end of the transfer process

Intertemporal

: benefits continue to emerge as long as knowledge co-producing interactions occurSlide18

Implications for impact assessmentThe broader economic and societal impact of knowledge co-production is best captured by asking

key stakeholders to narratively reconstruct the productive interactions (Molas-gallart & Tang, 2011; Spaapen & van Drooge, 2011) which they entered in as a consequence of academic engagement

leading to a mapping of the actors involved,

their roles, interactions (Meagher et al., 2008) and

changes produced, directly and indirectlyIndicators may be used to support the

description but should not be the ultimate objective of the process18Slide19

Implications for impact research agendaAdopting a qualitative narrative-based approach to describing impact opens up new research questions

(Rossi & Rosli, 2016)Impact depends on sustained knowledge co-producing interactions, but what drives these interactions? What factors (individual,

organisational, environmental) support the development of productive interactions that generate impact?

What conditions favour

interactions with stakeholders beyond those directly involved in the initial academic engagement?What type of co-produced knowledge

is more suitable for further reuse in different contexts, which underpin the ‘ripple effect’ processes?19Slide20

Implications for impact research agendaImpacted stakeholders and benefits cannot be predicted, but can we identify some some general patterns?

Considering different contexts (different economic sectors and fields of science, different types of academic engagement activities…)What types of stakeholders are most frequently impacted? What types of benefits occur most frequently?

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Implications for impact research agendaImpact unfold and persist over time, but what drives this persistence?

How does impact unfold over time, through several stages?What makes impact longer lasting? For example: role of ‘boundary spanners’ who operate in complex and heterogeneous situations (Nicholson & Orr 2016) in supporting

impactBetter understanding might allow academics and universities to put in place practices and systems that support greater impact

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Implications for impact research agendaNext steps:Statistical analysis of database of 76 KTPs, to explore

What factors (individual, organisational, environmental) support the development of productive interactions that generate impact?What factors favour the emergence of interactions with stakeholders beyond those directly involved in the initial academic engagement?Text mining of database of 400 KTP case studies, to explore

What types of stakeholders are most frequently impacted and what types of benefits most frequently occur in different contexts (different economic sectors and fields of science, different types of academic engagement activities…)?

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ReferencesRosli, A., Rossi, F. & N. Yip,

Academic engagement as knowledge co-production and the implications for impact: evidence from Knowledge Transfer Partnerships, in progressYip, N., de Silva, M., Rosli, A. & F. Rossi, An entrepreneurial approach to value co-creation in service networks, in progress

Acknowledgement: BA-Leverhulme small grant on “Knowledge co-creation between universities and small and medium

-sized enterprises: drivers and impact”

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