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- Broström, Anders, Docent, 1978-, et al.
(författare)
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Concluding Discussion : The Past, Present, and Future of Technical Universities
- 2020. - 1
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Ingår i: Technical Universities. - Cham : Springer Nature. ; , s. 227-242
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Bokkapitel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Higher education institutions identified as ‘technical universities’ enjoy considerable status in many countries. Yet studies of boundary negotiations from a range of settings suggest that opportunities to transform into a broader, research-based university often takes precedence over the alternative vision of remaining or moving towards becoming a focused technical university. In this chapter, we discuss alternative explanations for the lacklustre appeal of the latter type of institutional template, and outline a roadmap for how the historical legacy of the technical university may be cultivated.
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| 3. |
- Broström, Anders, Docent, 1978-, et al.
(författare)
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Negotiating meritocracy and gender equality across organisational spaces : the case of a tenure track system
- 2024
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Ingår i: Higher Education. - : Springer Nature. - 0018-1560 .- 1573-174X.
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In this article, we study how meritocratic systems and gender equality concerns are negotiated across different organisational spaces in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). Based on a case study of the organising of a tenure track system in a Swedish university, we suggest that the intersection of meritocratic processes and gender equality work can be analysed as a set of negotiated orders in these spaces. This fragmentation may imply problems for advancing gender equality agendas in relation to established notions of meritocracy but may also imply opportunities for change as existing organisational spaces can be reconstructed or new ones created. Our notions of fragmentation and negotiated orders thereby suggest that the current situation is both stable and legitimate and that re-negotiations need to involve reconstructions of the various spaces and not only interventions into them.
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| 5. |
- Broström, Anders, Docent, 1978-, et al.
(författare)
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Service development accounts for an even smaller share of European R&D investments than we may think
- 2021
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Ingår i: Journal of Technology Transfer. - : Springer Nature. - 0892-9912 .- 1573-7047. ; , s. 1256-1267
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- n academic research on private R&D investments, sectoral differences are generally analyzed on the basis of firms’ classification according to systems such as the American NAICS and the European NACE industry classification systems. The same classification principles are applied in many countries and regions when aggregating R&D statistics to the level of industries, for example by the EU’s statistical office Eurostat. We report evidence suggesting that the share of R&D associated with development of service-oriented products or with service activities is systematically lower than the share of R&D conducted by service sector firms. Results from a survey run in Sweden shows that the revenue streams in a significant share of R&D-performing service sector firms (as classified according to NACE) are dominated by sales of physical products (e.g. factoryless goods producers). An even larger share report that a majority of their R&D is directed towards development of physical products rather than service products (e.g. consultancy companies acting as external R&D departments for their clients in manufacturing industries). These findings imply that the share of R&D investments focusing on service-oriented activities is even lower than traditional statistics suggest.
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| 6. |
- Broström, Anders, Docent, 1978-, et al.
(författare)
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The Knowledge Economy, Innovation and the New Challenges to Universities
- 2021
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Ingår i: Innovation: Organisation and Management. - : Informa UK Limited. - 1447-9338 .- 2204-0226. ; 23:2, s. 145-162
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Forskningsöversikt (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Universities face new challenges in the knowledge economy, due to two underlying transformations. One is that universities have increasingly developed from bodies of professorial self-governance bodies towards a status as ‘complete’ organisational actors, able to develop and deploy organisation-level strategies. A second is that by becoming key players in the knowledge economy and responding to stakeholder expectations, universities also have taken on new missions in addition to teaching and research. We propose that a series of new challenges arise from interrelations between universities’ internal organisational dynamics and changes in their external relationships. Moreover, we outline the contributions to this special issue, each of which address a specific question through their respective conceptual discussion and/or in-depth examination of these challenges. We conclude with recommendations for future research on the roles of universities in the knowledge economy and for innovation. Specifically, we propose that future research should simultaneously tackle vital issues about governance of universities and their activities, while also further developing extant empirical work on the microfoundations of academic knowledge production and career dynamics.
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| 7. |
- Dzhengiz, Tulin, et al.
(författare)
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Configurations of sustainability-oriented textile partnerships
- 2023
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Ingår i: Business Strategy and the Environment. - : Wiley. - 0964-4733 .- 1099-0836. ; 32:7, s. 4392-4412
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Firms configure their sustainability-oriented partnerships differently depending on the sustainability issue, partnership types, and mechanisms (product, process, policy, and awareness raising) and target change at various levels (firm, industry, supply chain, and society). We study how sustainability-oriented partnerships in the textile industry are configured by analyzing 444 partnerships using a mixed-method approach. Textile firms partner to tackle environmental issues such as circularity, waste, and sustainable materials, utilizing product and process mechanisms and create firm-level change. In contrast, these firms address social issues such as education and job development, labor and working conditions, poverty, and inequality through cross-sector partnerships that target change beyond firm boundaries. We discuss these findings critically by drawing on and contributing to two literature areas: sustainability-oriented partnerships that study partnership configurations and the sustainability in textiles. Our findings highlight the importance of issue and context specificity when partnering for sustainability.
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| 8. |
- Fagrell, Per, 1969-
(författare)
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Change and inertia in the development of Swedish engineering education : The industrial stakeholder perspective
- 2020
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis investigates higher education development in Sweden from an external stakeholder perspective, with a particular focus on engineering education. Industry has long been a major external stakeholder in the development of profession-oriented higher education, not least in the context of engineering education. Representatives of industry and other employers have continuously called for developments in the curriculum to prepare students for an evolving profession. Scholars of higher education have gone so far as to depict employers as the definitive stakeholder in higher education today. However, it has also been claimed that engineering education and its institutions are, and always have been, rather unresponsive to external calls for changes. These partly contrasting views call for a study of the role of industry vis-à-vis the different strategies that higher education institutions can draw upon to respond to external calls for change. Thus, the following overarching research question is posed: What kind of role does an external stakeholder such as industry have in the development of engineering education?The conceptual framework for the thesis is based on literature on organisational continuity and change, response strategies to external calls for change, university–business collaboration, and curriculum development and quality. The main theoretical concept presented in the thesis, however, is stakeholder theory and stakeholder analysis. A model for stakeholder analysis is chosen and presented in which the assessment of the attributes power, legitimacy and urgency form the basis for the analysis of the stakeholders’ salience.Empirically, the thesis is based on three studies, which have yielded four appended papers. The studies represent different situations in which external stakeholders have had the possibility of impacting higher education. All three studies have an interpretative and qualitative methodological approach, with semi-structured interviews as the main source for data collection, combined in the second study with historical document studies. In order to frame these studies in their historical context, an overview of the development of engineering education in Sweden is presented as a background. In this overview, the development of relationships between industry and engineering education institutions are depicted with reference to a series of milestone events.The results show that, from a historical perspective, industry has indeed been an influential stakeholder to engineering education. It is argued that while industry still is an important stakeholder, higher education institutions today have to attend to the interests of a broader range of stakeholders, including students, government and others. Claims in the international literature that employers are the definitive stakeholder in higher education does not seem to fit well with the Swedish context, as analysed in this thesis. This may be partly understood as a consequence of a shift away from national-level decision-making regarding higher education development, leaving previous structures for active stakeholder influence less potent.Important decisions about engineering education have in Sweden moved from a national and centralised level to an international level, exemplified by the Bologna Process and the global quality assurance and enhancement scheme called the CDIO[1] Initiative, and at the same time to a local level due to an ambitious autonomy scheme for higher education institutions in Sweden. This can be seen as a divergent trend compared to an international setting, specifically in Anglophone countries where the Washington Accord acts as the basis for curriculum development. This accreditation agreement is heavily influenced by the accreditation scheme for engineering education in the United States, the ABET criteria, in whose formulation employer representatives have a major impact. It may be questioned whether industry representatives have fully recognised this shift in the decision-making process in the engineering curriculum in Sweden. With regard to earlier claims that engineering education and its institutions are unresponsive to external calls for change, the thesis concludes that higher education institutions respond and act, but not always in the way external stakeholders expect or want. External stakeholders have to persist in their eternal quest for progress and development in engineering education, but they may have to adjust and divert their attention to both an international and local context at the same time.[1] CDIO: Conceive-Design-Implement-Operate
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| 9. |
- Geschwind, Lars, 1970-, et al.
(författare)
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Technical Universities : A Historical Perspective
- 2020
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Ingår i: Technical Universities. - Cham : Springer. ; , s. 15-26
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Bokkapitel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This chapter provides an overview of the historical development of technical institutes and universities from their foundation in the late eighteenth century to the present time. Our account, which is focused on European experiences, shows that technical universities are characterized by their historical relations to the industrial revolution, and since that time their strong linkages to industry (from initially local to increasingly global). The chapter also highlights some persistent tensions and dilemmas related in part to this historical legacy, including the introduction of and relation to research, the balance between theory and application, and the ‘congestion’ in engineering programmes. Development over the last decades revolves around the profiles and scientific scope of technical universities. Over time, new areas have been introduced, mirroring their technical development and in some countries—as a consequence of external drivers and strategic agendas—eye-catching reorganisations and new initiatives have increased the portfolio way beyond the classical engineering subjects.
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| 10. |
- Geschwind, Lars, 1970-, et al.
(författare)
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To be or not to be a technical university : organisational categories as reference points in higher education
- 2021
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Ingår i: Higher Education. - : Springer Nature. - 0018-1560 .- 1573-174X.
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Classifications of higher education institutions into categories that are more or less clearly differentiated through prestige and status are legion in the world of higher education. The notion of parallel categories with comparable statuses, such as those of different types of universities, is however much less well understood. This paper investigates how universities navigate between such alternative categories. We examine boundary work and institutional change involving Swedish higher education institutions with significant activity in engineering sciences in order to analyse how actors relate to ideas regarding the category ‘technical university’ as an ideal potentially distinct from that of the broad, comprehensive university. Analysis of two cases in the second half of the twentieth century shows that for engineering faculty, a focused technical university was an attractive alternative to the institutional model of the broad university. In contrast, analysis of two twenty-first-century cases suggests that aspirations to be recognised as a technical university were largely driven by adaption to external stakeholders’ interests. We discuss these findings in light of the emergence of the global hegemonic category ‘research university’. We also suggest that the organisational identity of a HEI may be tied to ideas about an organisational category through imprinting and path dependency. Moreover, we propose that changes over time in how categories are perceived may serve as an impetus to organisational change.
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