ABSTRACT

Universities face new challenges in the knowledge economy, due to two underlying transformations. One is that universities have increasingly developed from bodies of professorial self-governance bodies towards a status as ‘complete’ organisational actors, able to develop and deploy organisation-level strategies. A second is that by becoming key players in the knowledge economy and responding to stakeholder expectations, universities also have taken on new missions in addition to teaching and research. We propose that a series of new challenges arise from interrelations between universities’ internal organisational dynamics and changes in their external relationships. Moreover, we outline the contributions to this special issue, each of which address a specific question through their respective conceptual discussion and/or in-depth examination of these challenges. We conclude with recommendations for future research on the roles of universities in the knowledge economy and for innovation. Specifically, we propose that future research should simultaneously tackle vital issues about governance of universities and their activities, while also further developing extant empirical work on the microfoundations of academic knowledge production and career dynamics.

摘要

由于两个基本的转变，大学在知识经济中面临新的挑战。一是大学已从教授自治组织逐渐发展成为具有“完善的”组织角色，能够制定和部署组织级战略的地位。第二点是，通过成为知识经济中的关键角色并响应利益相关者的期望，大学在教学和研究之外还承担了新的使命。我们认为，大学内部组织动力与外部关系变化之间的相互关系提出了一系列新的挑战。此外，我们概述了对本期特刊的贡献，每一个都通过各自的概念性讨论和/或对这些挑战的深入研究来解决特定问题。最后，我们提出了有关未来大学在知识经济中的作用和创新的建议。具体而言，我们建议未来的研究应同时解决有关大学治理及其活动的重要问题，同时还应进一步发展有关学术知识生产和职业动态的微观基础的现有实证工作。