Understanding the Benefits of Universities’ Societal Engagement in Ethiopia

Abstract

The implementation of universities’ societal engagement calls for tripartite collaboration between academia, industry, and government, and although the ultimate purpose of universities’ societal engagement is viewed as benefiting the community, the collaborating institutional spheres may also generate reciprocal benefits from jointly implemented societal engagement projects (SEPs). However, little is known about the reciprocal benefits of universities’ societal engagement to the university, industry, and government spheres. Therefore, the purpose of the present study is to explore the reciprocal benefits that the university, industry, and government can generate from jointly implemented societal engagement activities. The research follows an exploratory sequential mixed methods design, combining qualitative and quantitative stages. The qualitative stage was used to understand the types and dimensions of universities’ societal engagement, the pertinent benefits of universities’ societal engagement to the university, industry, and government institutional spheres, the factors that contribute to the reciprocal benefits of universities’ societal engagement, and the mechanisms that help universities enhance the sustainability of their societal engagement activities. The subsequent quantitative stage used to test five hypotheses that were developed based on the findings of the qualitative stage, using larger groups of participants.

Qualitative data were collected through key informant interviews and document analysis. Fourteen informants selected through purposeful sampling were considered. The quantitative data, meanwhile, were collected from 123 faculty members (mean age 50.04 years, SD = 9.85; work experience = 16.64, SD = 5.7; 82 male, 41 female) who implemented SEPs during or within one year before the data collection period. The survey participants were selected randomly from five public universities in Ethiopia, and the questionnaire was prepared based on the views of the key informant interview during the qualitative stage of the research. The questionnaire was administered online. The qualitative data were analyzed using a combination of inductive and deductive techniques, while the quantitative data were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics, mainly Pearson correlation coefficients, regressions, and chi-square tests. The qualitative and quantitative stages were both guided using a conceptual framework developed from the stakeholder theory, triple helix, and boundary spanning approaches.

Based on the organizational structure, knowledge and technology transfer, community services, and consultancy services are the key types of universities’ societal engagement. These types are further classified based on sources of funds as internally and externally funded SEPs. The university itself and the collaborating actors (the firm and government) generate a combination of economic and non- economic benefits from the university’s SEPs. Nonetheless, there appear to be inter- and intra-institutional differences with regard to reciprocal benefits. Societal engagement researchers (SERs) believed that their SEPs offered greater benefits to the university than to the industry and government institutional spheres. There are also differences within institutional spheres. More specifically, the SERs believed that their SEPs rendered greater non-economic than economic benefits. Furthermore, a combination of factors related to people (SERs and leaders), the organization of the societal engagement units, and the specific types of university societal engagement influenced the reciprocal benefits. Considering the monetary benefits, about 39% of the variance in the amount of money disbursed to the SERs from the SEPs is determined by the source of SEP funds, the type of SEP, the SERs’ disciplinary areas, total grants allocated to SEPs, SERs’ work experience, SERs academic rank and total funds disbursed to industry and government. Altering the amount of money disbursed to industry and government as the dependent variable and the amount of money disbursed to the SERs as the independent variable yields similar results. In both cases, the total grants allocated to SEPs has the largest effect in determining the variance of money disbursed to SERs, industry, and government. The effect of SERs’ work experience, academic discipline, and academic rank reveals mixed results in determining the reciprocal benefits that SERs and industry and government generated from SEPs.

SERs perceived that factors related to SERs, the autonomy and alignment of societal engagement units, the type of SEP, and institutional leaders influenced the reciprocal benefits of SEPs to a moderate extent. The perceptions of SERs who belonged to different academic disciplines, had different work experience, and held different academic ranks appeared to be similar across the factors related to SERs, institutional leadership, arrangement of societal engagement units, and the nature of the SEPs. However, SERs who belong to different academic disciplines exhibit differences in their perception toward the factors related to nature of SEPs, societal engagement units, and institutional leadership. Furthermore, creating long-lasting partnerships, maintaining task rigor, and developing clear exit strategies are important for enhancing the sustainability of universities´ societal engagement. The mean responses of SERs toward these mechanisms appear to be somewhat similar for all the strategies except the development of a clear exit strategy, in which the responses of the SERs based on their academic rank and academic discipline exhibited substantial differences.

In conclusion, although the ultimate targets of universities’ societal engagement are believed to benefit the community, the collaborating organizations—university, industry, and governments—draw reciprocal benefits unique to their organizational nature and characteristics. The reciprocal benefits that the three spheres generate from SEPs, beyond the differences in the spheres themselves, are related to the nature of the societal engagement activities (such as type of societal engagement, sources of funds, and amount of funds), SERs (academic rank, work experience, and disciplinary area), and type of universities’ societal engagement. The sustainability of universities’ societal engagement appeared to be low among public universities in Ethiopia; thus, institutional-level efforts focusing on information processing and task rigor, the development of long-lasting partnerships, and clear exit strategies are important for enhancing the sustainability of universities’ societal engagement. Finally, the implication of the study for future research, and policies and practices of higher education in Ethiopia are discussed.