History and Past Activities
|
|
History and Past Activities |
Göran Melin
Swedish Institute for Studies in Education and Research (SISTER), Sweden
Considerations on University Alliances - motives, risks and characteristics
This study explores the phenomenon of creating alliances between universities. Alliances are believed to be a response to a hardened international competitive climate. It is often said that there is an increased competition going on within the R&D sector, and that this phenomenon is occurring throughout the system, from national level to the individual level. The hardened competition is seen as one of many features of a broad set of changes that the whole system is facing.
On university level, the formation of alliances is done with the purpose to strengthen the position and the opportunities for the participating universities. The decision to form an alliance is a very big step for a university. What is required in order to reach success for all parts in the alliance? Can an alliance be enforced from the leadership or must it come from the ‘floor’? Should an alliance be formed with a partner which is similar, thus strengthening the profile which is already at hand, or with someone with a different profile, thus complementing and broadening the profile of the participating universities?
An examination of ten alliances during the recent years is done, and the motives behind as well as the outcomes of them are analysed. In addition, the analysis draw on the experience of having studied a couple of planned alliances in detail. The analysis indicates that there are threats and risks at play side by side of large opportunities. An alliance should be able to increase the interface between the universities on many levels and also create more opportunities for establishing powerful forms of cooperation to compete for international grants, programmes and corporate funding. The empirical findings are synthesized and related to theoretical models described by Gibbons et. al. (1994), Etzkowitz & Leydesdorff (1998, 2000) and Ziman (1994), among others. The phenomenon of university alliances is discussed and some policy implications are given at the end.
Sociology of Science and Technology NETwork - last update: April 2006