University and Knowledge Society

University and Knowledge Society Central University of Venezuela, Caracas

Miguel Ángel Briceño, Dr.Phil. [email protected]

Abstract

The relation between the university and its environment has been gaining more and more

importance with time. The discussion about the measures to be taken in order to achieve an

active participation in dialogs and concrete actions for the transformation of this relation, in

turn, has become the basis for the reformulation of university policies in the whole world.

This paper is aimed at examining the different current trends that are showing in the world

regarding the relation among the university, the productive sector, the Government and the

local communities, in order to propose new action strategies in the framework of

Venezuelan universities.

The change in the mission of the university

The Mexican analyst Arturo Guillaumín Tostado1 calls our attention to the fact that the

cultural mission of the university is being gradually substituted by the rationality of

"excellence", which is based on competitiveness and on the mercantile ideology of global

capitalism. According to the author, a vision that has been gaining ground day by day is one

in which the university has transformed into an enterprise that produces and

commercializes knowledge and services to meet the requirements of those sectors capable

of paying for them. For instance, they would be offering intensive use of information

technology, incorporating "virtuality" to the learning process, opening-up more toward the

environment (specially toward the modern productive sectors and the international field),

offering short degree courses and flexible curricula adjustable to the emerging markets,

emphasizing on technological development, providing services as a new way of funding,

adopting the concepts "excellence" and "competitiveness" from the business world.

Within this framework, he proposes the creation of original organizations endowed with

new qualities and the capacity to establish a permanent dialog with their complex

environment, free form the vices, fragmentation, bureaucracies and heavy structures of

current universities. They should be organizations where teaching for the labor market and

specialized technical training can be substituted by an integral and open education that

contributes to self-training of the individual and to civic education. Besides, this reform

should go beyond the democratization of the university education; it must change our

capacity to organize knowledge, this is, to think.

To this effect, interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity must be the new foundations of

university work. In sum, we would need a carefully conceived organizational environment

1 Arturo Guillaumín Tostado. Complejidad, transdisciplina y redes: hacia la construcción colectiva de una

nueva universidad. E-mail: [email protected].. [http://www.unam.mx/ceiich/educacion/guillaumin.htm]

mailto:[email protected]



http://www.unam.mx/ceiich/educacion/guillaumin.htm

in our universities, designed for the production and distribution of new goods and services

within a framework of hyper-competition and change.

Entrepreneurs in the academy and scholars in the enterprise

The tie between business and academia —defined as the effort to increase the individual

and institutional gains, as well as prestige, through the development and commercialization

of ideas and products resulting from research activities— is being studied nowadays

according to the five basic forms in which this relation is showing:

(1) a wide-range relation established by the science (which is attained through significant

research with extremely consolidated projects),

(2) one established in order to receive additional income outside of the university, mainly

by means of consultancy (knowledge transfer for personal gain),

(3) a relation aimed at asking the industry for funds (capitalizing on the university-industry

relationship in order to have more funding sources for research),

(4) one seeking the basis needed to patent research results, and

(5) one established to create companies based on research results.

In a study carried out by Louis et. al.2, it was found that many US scientists still believe that

the search for the truth is incompatible with any interest in capitalizing on ideas, but there is

no evidence to suggest that a new type of "entrepreneurial scholar" has emerged in the

majority of the universities. These authors support the argument that an entrepreneurial

behavior has spontaneously evolved within the scientific community and is not

incompatible with scholarship. Their data also suggest that most of the academic groups at

the analyzed universities do not develop norms or show any stable behavioral patterns that

foster any form of relation towards entrepreneurship.

However, the emerging structures resulting from this new situation, although their form is

yet far from clear, are posing major challenges for S&T policy makers at government and

institutional levels as well as for R&D managers. In the face of this situation, Turpin et. al.3

ask themselves: What are the implications that this reorganization in the scientific and

business field bring to research and development management? Do new structures imply

new types of management strategies?

These authors created a typology, in which the traditional knowledge production that

occurs within a mainly cognitive disciplinary framework would be the knowledge

2 Karen Seashore Louis; David Blumenthal; Michael E. Gluck; Michael A. Soto. Entrepreneurs in academe:

an exploration of behaviors among life scientists. Administrative Science Quarterly, March 1989 v34 n1 p110

(22). Expanded Academic ASAP Int'l Ed.

[http://web7.infotrac.galegroup.com/itw/infomark/992/997/55565360w3/purl=rc1_EIM_0_A7217498&dyn=1

3!xrn_36_0_A7217498?sw_aep=consejow]

3 Tim Turpin; Sam Garrett-Jones; Nicole Rankin. Bricoleurs and boundary riders: managing basic research

and innovation knowledge networks R & D Management, Julio 1996 v26 n3 p267(16). Expanded Academic

ASAP Int'l Ed.

[http://web7.infotrac.galegroup.com/itw/infomark/992/997/55565360w3/purl=rc1_EIM_0_A18634971&dyn=

5!xrn_6_0_A18634971?sw_aep=consejow

http://web7.infotrac.galegroup.com/itw/infomark/992/997/55565360w3/purl=rc1_EIM_0_A7217498&dyn=13!xrn_36_0_A7217498?sw_aep=consejow




production "Mode 1". With the emergence of "Mode 2", knowledge is produced in broader

transdisciplinary social and economic contexts, comprising a different set of cognitive and

social practices. "Mode 2" is a combination of traditional disciplinary science and

technology that complements but does not substitute "Mode 1", although "Mode 2" may

eventually incorporate "Mode 1".

An important finding of that study would be that the communication and use of "Mode 2"

research results is very contextual, comprising techniques, instrumentation and tacit

knowledge, apart from scientific literature. "Mode 2" research can be characterized as:

transdisciplinary and institutionalized in a more heterogeneous and flexible socially

distributed system;

carried out in a framework of application constituted by a set of intellectual and social

demands that is more diverse than that of many applied sciences, which in turn may

give rise to genuine basic research;

heterarchical (encompassing powerful "outsiders") and transient, emphasizing social

and informal networks;

including a wider, more temporary and heterogeneous set of practitioners, taking part at

solving a well-defined problem within an specific and localized framework;

more socially accountable and reflexive, considering marketability, cost effectiveness,

social acceptability, for instance, in the definition of research problems; and

its results are shared with those who have taken part in that activity, and are

subsequently diffused mainly as the original practitioners move to other frameworks of

the problem.

With this "Mode 2" research operating in networked structures that comprise industry and

research institutions, science has become reinstitutionalized and in the process the role of

scientists has changed. "Bricoleurs" have a defined repertoire of scientific or industrial

expertise that can be transformed into a wide variety of potential applications. They are

constantly on the lookout for new applications for their expertise.

Contrary to the bricoleurs, there are those named by the author as "boundary riders". These

are more worried about protecting their knowledge of, and investment in, a particular

science based technology or industry. They also look outwards, but only in order to detect

any potential threat to their investment or to identify foreign scientific breakthroughs that

can be adapted to their core technology. Their role is more like a maintenance role.

Experienced boundary riders are required to "beat the boundaries" to place the scientific

breakthroughs within the productive sphere and to keep this capability as an important

resource for collaborative association. Bricoleurs and boundary riders can be located in the

science or in the industry; in other words, they can be entrepreneurs in the academia or

scholars in the enterprise.

According to the results of that study, experienced industrial boundary riders are required

for the relocation of science into the productive sector to defend their organizations, and,

recently, for the defense of their industrial activities. At the same time, scientific boundary

riders are required in the academically generated industrial activities to cover, defend or

enhance a particular technology niche. Contrary, but many times complementary, to the

scientific boundary rider, the scientific bricoleur is looking for new opportunities to

develop new applications in the business world.

Finally, it has been found that, in such network of organizations, the flow of tacit

knowledge —knowledge that cannot be codified and that results from trial, error and

learning, rather than from the systematic application of scientific knowledge— can become

a determinant factor compared to the knowledge that has been previously included in

patents, copyright or in the international scientific literature. In this sense, a potential

consequence of this reorganization of research could be that science (as the pursuit of

knowledge) could become a cultural relic, an activity related to the "elders" but of little

relevance (economic relevance) nowadays. There is, however, a more optimistic point of

view, according to which scientific institutions do have the potential to relocate science

within the emerging local, national and global cultures.

Another important issue is the actual ability of the universities to play this new role, since

there are not enough reasons to believe that in all cases there are a priori scientists with

business abilities. As it is well known, there are not many of those in the universities

nowadays. According to Louis, Blumenthal, Gluck and Soto4, there are four possible

explanations for the concentration of entrepreneurial scholars in specific institutions:

(1) Self-selection may generate value and general behavior consensus (individuals feel

attracted to these institutions because they are considered to be tolerant of

entrepreneurship);

(2) Behavioral socialization may operate within a work group (individuals are affected by

their nearest colleagues' behavior, which they tend to copy);

(3) Organizational culture may affect (a broader set of institutional policies, procedures and

values that reinforces attitudes and behavior concerning entrepreneurship);

(4) Strategic management may be a factor (some universities use this type of hiring

procedures in order to be in the vanguard of academic behavior changing patterns and

to potentially profit from increased institutional prestige and income).

University and regional development

Another key element in the current discussion at the international level is the role of the

university as a mediator for regional development, or as a contributor to the development of

the society. Certainly, there is an argument against this role of the university that warns us

from the danger of underestimating the value of research carried out at the university by

considering it just a source of technology. In the opinion of Professor Florida5, for instance,

university scholars and administrators are each day more and more convinced that research

at the university is moving from basic science to more applied work.

4 Karen Seashore Louis; David Blumenthal; Michael E. Gluck; Michael A. Soto. Already mentioned (see

footnote 2)

5 Richard Florida. The role of the university: leveraging talent, not technology. Mark Issues in Science and

Technology, Summer 1999 v15 i4 p67(7). Expanded Academic ASAP Int'l Ed.





According to the author, universities are naively seen as innovation "artifacts" that produce

new ideas, which can lead to commercial innovations and regional growth. Within this

framework, he argues that if policy makers at the federal, regional and local level really

want universities to play a role in fostering economic growth, they should see the problem

from a different perspective. They would have to stop encouraging activities between the

university and the industry for their own benefit. Instead, they should focus on

strengthening the ability of the university to attract more intelligent people from

everywhere in the world: This would be the real starting point of a knowledge economy. By

attracting these people and by disseminating the knowledge they produce rapidly and

widely, universities would influence more significantly the nation economy, as well as

regional growth. For their part, universities should be vigilant against government policies

and agreements in the industry that could hinder or hold up copyright researchers from

discovering new things. The study concludes that working with the industry for the

commercialization of research creates significant delays in the publication process as well

as reluctance for the sharing of research results. But at the same time, there is the fact that

universities are concerned with their search for industrial funds, which they need in order to

carry out their activities.

This author's argument is based on studies carried out by Michael Fogarty and Amit Sinha,

who suggest that although new knowledge can be generated in many places, only those

regions that can absorb and apply these ideas are the ones that can transform them into

economic wealth. Apart from its role as innovations incubator and commercial technology

transfer body, there is a broader and more important role to be played by the university,

which is, the attraction and generation of talent. Knowledge workers "want to be around

other smart people". Proficient people attract other proficient people, and places with many

proficient people attract enterprises that want to have access to that talent, which creates a

self-reinforcing cycle of growth.

There is also the position of Merced County6 against the negative viewpoint of the

university as energy for the economy; this County is preparing a master plan for the new

community that will develop on the lands around the future University of California. To

this effect, Merced County is closely collaborating with the university, landowners and the

local community in order to address a wide range of issues of common concern. The

University Community Plan will define a vision of the future by incorporating advanced

thoughts on planning for urban development, environmental stewardship, infrastructure

systems and economic development.

According to the organizers, the new campus constitutes a unique opportunity for San

Joaquín Valley. It implies the creation of a new and dynamic university of research for the

21st century, and of a new prosperous and well-designed "University Community", which

will support the campus and the region, and which will serve as a pattern for responsible

growth in San Joaquín Valley. There, we will see parallel action of the university and the

region where it is located.

6 Merced County. California, USA [http://www.merceducp.org/index.html]

http://www.merceducp.org/index.html

University ethical issues

There is another very important aspect in the discussion regarding the new entrepreneurial

role of the university, namely the ethical issues. We are facing a problem when we consider

that the mission and objectives of the university are not necessarily tied to the teaching

practice anymore: "the wide dispersion of responsibility in the university contributes to the

fact that no one considers him/herself specifically responsible"7.

Counelis has found that the lack of empirical data on the ethical behavior of the university

is a serious institutional deficit. Therefore, he proposes a creative institutional research that

can be vigorously oriented towards the achievement of two new objectives of ethical

importance for the university:

to provide solidity to science regarding the internal and external ethical behavior of the

university. By using this information, the university could design appropriate policies

and an intrainstitutional plan aimed at generating information that would serve as a

moral guide.

to provide the casuistry (this is, the knowledge based on cases) for the metaethical

discourse within the university. This discourse would be the basis for the creation of

such axiology-based epistemical principles required for efficient policymaking in the

university and for the provision of ethical principles that could serve as a guide to the

organizational and individual behavior.

These reflections are actually not new. They stem from the beginning of the modern

university in Europe. Although in the philosophical field Kant was mainly interested in

liberating philosophy and reason from the ropes of a dogmatic Church and of the State to

which it was tied, F. W. J. Schelling, in his Vorlesungen über die Methode des

akademischen Studiums (1803) (translated in 1966 as On University Studies), was more

worried about the threat that the growing trend towards specialization represented for

knowledge and about the danger that he saw in the possible transformation of universities

into "industrial training schools"8. Although Schelling knew this was possible, he shared

Kant's conviction regarding the possibility that universities could be "actual scientific

institutions" devoted to the life of ideas to the freest scientific activity, provided that

knowledge unity would be granted through philosophy.

According to Heidegger, if philosophy were to be possible again in the university, higher

education institutions would first have to be completely transformed, so that

"philosophizing were a living act". Moreover, the Kantian-Humboldtian conception of the

7 James Steve Counelis. Toward empirical studies on university ethics: a new role for institutional research.

Journal of Higher Education, Jan-Feb 1993 v64 n1 p74(19). Expanded Academic ASAP Int'l Ed.



8 Alan Milchman; Alan Rosenberg. Martin Heidegger and the university as a site for the transformation of

human existence. The Review of Politics, Wntr 1997 v59 n1 p75(22).Academic ASAP Int'l Ed.







university would no longer work as a model for that renewal. In any case, the Kantian ideal

of university, in which the faculty of philosophizing and its search of "the truth" controlled

the other faculties, had disappeared long before Heidegger had even been born, in the case

that this ideal had actually existed as effective behavior of universities.

The capability of our universities and local requirements

We are now living times of obsolescence of the National State, regarding both its internal

structure and its leadership role in policymaking and in the creation and implementation of

plans and projects aimed at achieving national and local development. In sum, we are living

times of what at the international level has been regarded as bankruptcy times.

But, at the same time, we are living a period of profound changes in the technical structure

of production and in its interactive relationship with the other spheres that constitute the

expression of productive and reproductive social work. Very soon, knowledge industries

will be the ones that will predominate in the economic networks, and those that will chart

the course and take part in any economic and social development plan in the world in the

decades to come.

This situation will result in two main changes: Firstly, there will be a shift of focus in

search of a dynamism that will not and can not be in the hands of the Federal State

anymore. Secondly, and more specifically, there will be a shift in the role of social agents

interacting to achieve development, which will now be the role of universities, since these

are the only ones in our countries nowadays that produce knowledge at the local level

within a national spectrum.

In other words, in order to transform the economic structure, in a competitive manner, we

have to address the problem in a bottom-up way, beginning at the local level. We will have

to transform the local productive economic structure on the basis of knowledge industries,

which will give dynamism the whole system and provide the added value necessary to meet

the social needs. In this process, the universities will be responsible for changing their

function: They would stop being producers of professionals that will enter an obsolete labor

market, and start being trainers of knowledge producers, this is, of the new entrepreneurs of

knowledge industries —those whose raw material is 60% gray matter. In the face of this

situation, we wonder if our universities are capable of assuming this new role in an efficient

and effective way.

References

Alan Milchman; Alan Rosenberg. . Martin Heidegger and the university as a site for the transformation of

human existence. The Review of Politics, Wntr 1997 v59 n1 p75(22).Academic ASAP Int'l Ed.



Arturo Guillaumín Tostado. Complejidad, transdisciplina y redes: hacia la construcción colectiva de una

nueva universidad. E-mail: [email protected].. [http://www.unam.mx/ceiich/educacion/guillaumin.htm]

Merced County. California, USA [http://www.merceducp.org/index.html]



http://www.unam.mx/ceiich/educacion/guillaumin.htm

http://www.merceducp.org/index.html

James Steve Counelis. Toward empirical studies on university ethics: a new role for institutional research.

Journal of Higher Education, Jan-Feb 1993 v64 n1 p74(19). Expanded Academic ASAP Int'l Ed.



Karen Seashore Louis; David Blumenthal; Michael E. Gluck; Michael A. Soto. Entrepreneurs in academe: an

exploration of behaviors among life scientists. Administrative Science Quarterly, March 1989 v34 n1

p110(22). Expanded Academic ASAP Int'l Ed.

[http://web7.infotrac.galegroup.com/itw/infomark/992/997/55565360w3/purl=rc1_EIM_0_A7217498&dyn=1


Richard Florida. The role of the university: leveraging talent, not technology. Mark Issues in Science and

Technology, Summer 1999 v15 i4 p67(7). Expanded Academic ASAP Int'l Ed.



Tim Turpin; Sam Garrett-Jones; Nicole Rankin. Bricoleurs and boundary riders: managing basic research

and innovation knowledge networks. R & D Management, Julio 1996 v26 n3 p267(16). Expanded Academic

ASAP Int'l Ed.











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University and Knowledge Society