Operational level performance measurement in university-industry collaboration

Abstract

Even though the third mission and entrepreneurial activities of universities are continuously growing issues within higher education and society as a whole, and even though different measures are currently used to evaluate universities, the entrepreneurial and third mission activities of universities are lacking implemented frameworks and tools for their operational level of performance measurement. Even though the importance of performance measurement of university-industry collaborations is recognized among different societal organizations and universities, there exist challenges related to measurement. In order to understand the performance measurement of the university-industry collaborations, and to support the development of performance measurement of these collaborations, this study explores the current performance measurement practices and challenges of these collaborations from different stakeholder perspectives.

As university-industry collaboration can be considered as a multi-level phenomenon involving different stakeholders with different organizational cultures and with different aims and goals in respect to the collaboration, this study utilizes an empirical qualitative research approach. While focusing on the operational level performance measurement in university-industry collaborations, the data for this dissertation were gathered from different university-industry collaboration projects in Finland.

The results of the study show that, even though both the practice and scientific literature show growing interest in the collaboration activities between universities and other societal organizations, comprehensive performance measurement systems are not actively designed, implemented, and used in contemporary university-industry collaborations. Even though the participating stakeholders share the interest in the performance measurement and evaluation of the societal level outcomes, the contemporary performance measurement practices are mainly related to fulfilling external reporting tasks and to following the aims and goals promised in the funding applications/project preparations.