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3.4.11. Analysis and Conclusion
There can be no doubt that the UOC is a truly successful knowledge venture that has helped thousands of people who otherwise would have had difficulties in achieving a university degree. UOC embodies a knowledge opportunity that gives a second chance to many prospective students. It is a highly adequate instrument to elevate the educational level of society. Having said that, it is not the objective of this research to assess the impact UOC has on society, but rather- to investigate what enables it and its stakeholders to engage in effective knowledge entrepreneurship. This analysis and conclusion reflects UOC’s current condition, while the specific phenomena found to enable knowledge entrepreneurship are further developed in the following chapter Cross-Case Analysis. Also, it is important to state that UOC was during the period of this research still in its first epochal leadership transition, and that “the change process is still underway and most of the consequences are not yet consolidated nor fully implemented” (EUA, 2007). This reality made it obviously difficult to assess the condition and all analysis included herein must be understood as a newly emerging atmosphere culture and practice.
3.4.11.1. UOC the Shy Adolescent Organisation
UOC is the organisation that publishes the least information about itself and its members on the internet. The professors have no personal space to present themselves and their qualities, neither do the individual departments [i]. UOC seems to be following a traditional marketing approach to present only positive public relations copy to the public. This is a logical attempt to control its image by controlling what comes out of the organisation. This has resulted in a climate where UOC’s faculty and researchers feel controlled rather than empowered (UOC faculty 39) by the institution.
But also internally there is not much transparent discourse (see 3.4.5.3). In fact a good indicator for the fain public debating culture is the non existence of information and debate during the transition between the two leadership teams. While there where reports and discussion about the happenings in the external press, internally there was no official statement nor debate until the decision processes was over.
Since the beginning of the new leadership epoch there have been plans to introduce a blogosphere and similarly participative and collaborative innovations. This might be the right remedy to create an open organisational discourse where innovative ideas are allowed to fall on fertile ground. Such a constructive critique is best based through informed discourse; eventually and ideally, transparent decision making become the norm.
3.4.11.2. Still Emerging Organisational (Infra-)Structure
UOC is a new kind of organization and therefore it is facing problems that have a distinctly different character than other universities. Because of the technical nature of the university, it is logical that the IT professionals have some influence in almost all aspects of university life. The same trend applies for the vice-rector of innovation.. The fields of marketing and community outreach are also broadly influential cross-cutting themes; the approval of these two departments is often solicited in order to move an initiative forward. These multi-stakeholder scenarios are found all over the UOC. It is largely the absence of defined procedures for decision criteria combined with an un-clear responsibility distribution schema that has been observed to fosters the necessity for political negotiation processes. In the absence of clear rules, ones relative position in the complex hierarchy determines who is going to have the last word. This condition is a legacy from the foundational institutional design, one which was meant to create an agile institution that could efficiently be led from the top. It was their leadership style and they succeeded in pioneering a new kind of university. It is the new leadership’s challenge to develop a transparent and evolving structure, (policy architecture) and impregnate the organization with the governance practices they represent.
3.4.11.3. Student = Client = King = Lower Academic Standards
The UOC is a client centred organization. It has the obvious objective of giving the student the best service possible. However, as Hijar assessed some 6 years ago, there seems to be a “real “obsession” with the level of satisfaction of the students, that sometimes negatively influences the quality of the education” (Ros Híjar, 2001). This is when the student’s corrupt the idea of ‘best service’ to be understood as a degree that is easy to earn. As one tutor complains, in the first years “students were motivated and hard working, but later, they turned into people who simply wanted to obtain a university title the easiest way possible” (UOC faculty 23). The problem he writes about occurs when the course managers at UOC placed the satisfaction of their students as the principal priority, even loftier than maintaining the academic rigor which made the pursuit of such studies noble in the first place. This means, according to this academic, that students can, and do, complain and ask for failing exams to be marked as passed.. The natural, and unfortunate result of this corrupt calculus is that the program manager pushes the professor to change the mark rather than having to pass the complaint to the next institutional level (ibid).
3.4.11.4. Internet Based Innovation Appropriation
Like at the LSE and the FU, a specialized institution has been mandated to identify and appropriate internet based innovations meant to improve teaching and learning. The team is quite well supplied and has managed to attract substantive funding from third parties. Due to the officially ‘frozen development’ of the virtual campus, and while ‘waiting’ for the new free software campus, the team is in limbo with regards to realizing future opportunities. No concrete procedures or other institutions have been found that would allow the team to receive input from other stakeholders. Instead, the team maintains trust in its environmental awareness and its natural social network. Transparent and inclusive communication channels have been suggested to improve this situation (UOC management 37). Also, the fact that there is no explicit IT strategy makes it more difficult to determine the priorities at hand, as well as whether or not individual innovations are relevant. Here, the historic approach towards lean management and less fortified in-house IT knowledge, has led to a dependence on outside experts. These experts analyze and propose the most adequate state of the art solutions, with UOC’s IT managers working in concert to implement the recommended strategic changes and maintain the system. The new vice-rector for technology has identified and stressed the importance of an IT strategy and the first document is being developed.
Like in the other university, e-research has not been recognized as a defined field. Thus, we witness the opportunities therein to improve research practices whilst positioning the university as an entrepreneurial leader in the emerging field.
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Besides the ‘marketing’ information put as information for potential students.
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