Purpose

Higher education institutions possess a plethora of knowledge at the institutional, departmental and individual levels. Therefore, knowledge management plays a vital role in assisting partnerships to synergise knowledge and strengthen market competitiveness when working collaboratively. The purpose of this study is to identify and critically discuss the role of knowledge management concepts that support development of UK higher education partnerships. This knowledge management research was undertaken with the purpose of exploring components of behavioural constructs in assisting the development of successful partnerships between higher education institutions.

Design/methodology/approach

This research embraces a qualitative methodology and makes use of an expert panel method to gather field data and assess the relevance, robustness and applicability of a conceptual model developed in the context of higher education partnerships. Guided by two research questions, the researchers elicited knowledge from eight experts, academics and practitioners, who had initiated and led partnership development between UK higher education institutions. The experts were invited and selected to attend the panel using the criteria of “Years of Experience in the Higher Education sector”, “Job Positions and Experiences” and the “Partnership Scope and Impact”.

Findings

Depicting in a tree analogy, the conceptual model indicates that effective knowledge management will require higher education executives, managers and practitioners to centre on nurturing “tree roots” presented as behavioural knowledge management constructs and include institutional culture, trust, absorptive capacities and communication channels. The research findings elaborate on previous research and provide a categorisation of partnership outcomes between higher education institutions, explaining that partnership outcomes can be of an “Academic”, “Marketing and Finance” or “Managerial” nature. Importantly, practical use of the model could be implemented using audit methods or benchmarking methods, whereby the categorised elements of the model are used as a criterion of assessment for audit teams.

Originality/value

The conclusion extracted experiential insights to provide guidance as to how higher education executives, managers and practitioners can make use of knowledge management behavioural constructs and activities to assist collaborative undertakings in the higher education sector. This paper provided a new, modified, knowledge management higher education partnership tree, thus giving researchers and academic practitioners a holistic viewpoint of important partnership knowledge management factors.

中文翻译：

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英国高等教育伙伴关系的体验检验：知识管理视角

目的

高等教育机构在机构、部门和个人层面拥有大量知识。因此，知识管理在协助伙伴关系协同工作时协同知识和加强市场竞争力方面发挥着至关重要的作用。本研究的目的是确定并批判性地讨论支持英国高等教育伙伴关系发展的知识管理概念的作用。进行这项知识管理研究的目的是探索行为结构的组成部分，以帮助高等教育机构之间建立成功的伙伴关系。

设计/方法/方法

本研究采用定性方法，并利用专家小组方法来收集实地数据并评估在高等教育伙伴关系背景下开发的概念模型的相关性、稳健性和适用性。在两个研究问题的指导下，研究人员从八位专家、学者和从业者那里获得了知识，他们发起并领导了英国高等教育机构之间的伙伴关系发展。根据“在高等教育领域的经验年数”、“工作职位和经验”以及“合作伙伴关系范围和影响”的标准，邀请并选择专家参加小组讨论。

发现

以树为类比，概念模型表明，有效的知识管理将要求高等教育高管、管理者和从业人员集中培育“树根”，表现为行为知识管理结构，包括制度文化、信任、吸收能力和沟通渠道。研究结果详细阐述了先前的研究，并对高等教育机构之间的合作成果进行了分类，解释了合作成果可以具有“学术”、“营销和金融”或“管理”性质。重要的是，可以使用审计方法或基准方法来实现模型的实际使用，其中模型的分类元素用作审计团队的评估标准。

原创性/价值

结论提取了经验见解，为高等教育高管、管理者和从业者如何利用知识管理行为结构和活动来协助高等教育部门的合作事业提供指导。本文提供了一种新的、经过修改的知识管理高等教育伙伴关系树，从而为研究人员和学术从业人员提供了重要的伙伴关系知识管理因素的整体观点。