Encyclopedia of Information Science and Technology

Purpose – The paper aims to identify the requisite attributes and organisation to be displayed by a research university in order to engage successfully in collaborative research with industry partners.Design/methodology/approach – The conceptual framework contrasts the traditional public funding model against the requirements of the “triple helix” model of government‐university‐industry research funding. The framework supports the exploration of a case study of a long‐standing and successful joint research partnership, the Dundee‐Kinases Consortium, which links a world‐class life sciences research centre and a group of global pharmaceutical companies.Research limitations/implications – The case study provides a starting point, and additional case examinations will confirm the role of resource competences and organisational capabilities in facilitating performance by way of knowledge generation and transfer between partners.Findings – The design and leadership of the consortium achieves vital performance o...

University‐industry collaboration

A systematic literature review towards a conceptual framework for integrating sustainability performance into business

Purpose – Strategic alliances generally represent inter‐firm cooperative agreements aimed at achieving competitive advantage for the partners. In recent years, there has a dramatic increase in strategic alliances by multinational firms.This paper aims to explore the essence of these alliances and why they have become such a growing area of research in business in recent years.Design/methodology/approach – Discusses strategic alliances between corporations and institutions of higher education. The major underlying motives for creating these alliances and the critical success factors are also discussed. The paper also analyzes the success stories.Findings – Highlights the major advantages for the academic community – research funding and practical learning opportunities for students – and for industry – lower research and development costs and technology transfer opportunities that affect competitiveness. The drawbacks may include the partners’ different working cultures and values. Finds that alliances mus...

An overview of strategic alliances between universities and corporations

Corporate sustainability has become mainstream; reaching into all areas of business management. Yet despite this progress, large-scale social and ecological issues continue to worsen. In this article, we examine how corporate sustainability has been enacted as a concept that supports the dominant beliefs of strategic management rather than challenging them to shift business beyond the unsustainable status quo. Against this backdrop, we consider how hybrid organizations (organizations at the interface between for-profit and nonprofit sectors that address social and ecological issues) are operating at odds with beliefs embedded in strategic management and corporate sustainability literatures. We offer six propositions that define hybrid organizations based on challenges they present to the beliefs embedded in these literatures and position them as new heretics of strategic management and corporate sustainability orthodoxy. We conclude with the implications of this heretical force for theory and suggest dire...

The New Heretics: Hybrid Organizations and the Challenges They Present to Corporate Sustainability

The recent, rapid emergence of the virtual organization has added new dynamics and challenges to the context of relationships between organizational managers and their employees, customers, and other constituents. Computer-Mediated Relationships and Trust: Managerial and Organizational Effects provides an exhaustive collection of leading research on trust within the context of computer-mediated relationships through review of the existent work on trust from multiple scholarly disciplines, and introduces trust in a third dimension. Addressing a complete set of issues and challenges intrinsic to the virtual-organization domain such as managing remote workers, selling products to unseen consumers, technology-mediated relationships with other organizations, and more this book provides libraries with an authoritative reference to the most pressing issues facing organizations as they strive to establish trust in virtual environments.

Computer-Mediated Relationships and Trust: Managerial and Organizational Effects

Quality management (QM) has been the purview of operations management for repetitive processes, where project management (PM) is applied to temporary endeavors to create unique products or services. Any convergence of thought between PM and QM has been focused on using PM to implement a total quality management culture or on assuring the quality of the project outcomes and deliverables. However, for project‐based organizations, where the project is the basic form of organization for its operation, PM is of itself an ongoing, repetitive operation to which at least some of the QM practices could apply. By considering both disciplines in terms of the fundamental principles of customer focus, teamwork and continuous improvement, it can be shown that by instituting a formal project management methodology and instituting basic PM techniques, project‐based organizations are fulfilling the principles of quality.

An integrated view of project and quality management for project‐based organizations

Social entrepreneurship, ventures with a self-sustaining business model and a social impact objective, is a trend gaining momentum and garnering attention for the "citizen sector:" How is the social impact measured? How might it be measured? Based on a multi-disciplinary literature review and an examination of current practice, this research attempts to address these questions. A performance measurement framework is proposed and illustrated by archetypes of common social ventures. Keywords: social entrepreneurship; performance measurement; citizen sector; social value; social value; outcome assessment; balanced scorecard MOTIVATION Performance measurement is of increasing importance, whether in industry, academia, or the public sector, as organizations are held to greater standards of accountability and transparency, especially for financial reporting. Such oversight does not extend to the outcomes of social entrepreneurial ventures, although there are some foundations and nonprofits that provide support to these entrepreneurs based on some evaluation. For example, Ashoka (www.ashoka.org) provides funding to Fellows based on five criteria: the knockout test: a new idea; creativity; entrepreneurial quality; social impact; and ethical fiber. In their annual recognition of the most accomplished social entrepreneurs around the world, the Schwab Foundation (www.schwabfound.org) uses criteria of innovation, sustainability, and direct social impact, in quantifiable results. According to Mulgan (2010), metrics to measure social impact have proliferated over the past several decades, resulting in hundreds of competing methods for calculating social value. Building on these ideas, and others found in the academic literature, this research examines the question of how social value is created and measured. The extant literature on social entrepreneurship is examined, and a multi-disciplinary perspective of performance measurement is presented to establish the conceptual model in the following section. LITERATURE REVIEW The defmition of a social entrepreneur varies. In the most general sense, a social entrepreneur is someone who starts a new organization to accomplish a social mission. What distinguishes a social entrepreneur from other leaders in the citizen sector who start or lead social impact-oriented organizations? Specifically, social entrepreneurs are able to serve this mission with a (largely) self-sustaining business model. They may start with some seed funding, they may operate partially through fund-raising, but social entrepreneurs are able to generate profits in both fmancial and social terms. They are a new model of entrepreneurship: not-for-personalprofit enterprise, and generate value for social ends and wealth to enable reinvestment and the sustainability of the business (Chell, 2007, p.18.) This business model is different from that of a nonprofit in that the entrepreneur takes on risk; for the social entrepreneur that risk is taken at the behest of others, in hopes of having social impact. As Mair and Marti (2006, p. 36) describe it, "social entrepreneurship as a process that catalyzes social change and addresses important social needs in a way that is not dominated by direct fmancial benefits for the entrepreneurs." Prieto (2011, p.77) suggests that disadvantaged communities need social entrepreneurs to generate innovative solutions to complex problems. Mother difference with nonprofits is that "a nonprofit organization is, in essence, an organization that is barred from distributing its net earnings, if any, to individuals who exercise control over it... It should be noted that a nonprofit organization is not barred from earning a profit... It is only the distribution of profits that is prohibited" (Brody, 1996, p. 458). Dees, (1998, p.60) notes the pressures on nonprofits to become sustainable through the introduction of commercial activity and suggests that it is possible to position social enterprises along a spectrum from the purely philanthropic to the purely commercial. …

Entrepreneurship with Social Value: A Conceptual Model for Performance Measurement

Information systems pose social challenges, especially for technical professionals who have been taught to think in terms of logic, structures, and flows. This work focuses on the human impact of information systems, including ethical challenges, social implications, and legal issues.

Social, Ethical and Policy Implications of Information Technology

The accreditation standards of the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB International) ask business schools to describe consistent processes that provide for operational consistency and continuous improvement in support of the schools' stated missions. Such practices are beneficial to all institutions of higher education seeking accreditation or reaffirmation. This article addresses the identification of requisite processes, describes an approach for defining them, and suggests a format for documenting their essential elements. We discuss the value of quality management practices to higher education and present caveats and considerations for successfully implementing this methodology.

Linda L. Brennan

Papers

Computer-Mediated Relationships and Trust: Managerial and Organizational Effects

An integrated view of project and quality management for project‐based organizations

Entrepreneurship with Social Value: A Conceptual Model for Performance Measurement

Social, Ethical and Policy Implications of Information Technology

Addressing the Need for Management Processes for Higher Education Accreditation