Advancing HEIs\u2019 third-mission through dynamic capabilities: the role of leadership and agreement on vision and goals

Audrey Stolze,Klaus Sailer

doi:10.1007/s10961-021-09850-9

Abstract

Higher education institutions (HEIs), once considered among society’s most resilient institutions, are facing challenges due to changes in governments’ and society’s expectations of them. Within the sector, there is a global call for new models and practices, requiring HEIs to develop the management capabilities once reserved for businesses. In this sense, they will pave entrepreneurial pathways and contribute to economic, technological and societal developments in their regions, thus adding a third mission (engaging socio-economic needs and market demands) to the traditional two (education and research) and transforming themselves into more entrepreneurial institutions. Dynamic capabilities enable transformation processes by allowing the dynamic sensing and seizing of opportunities and risks and the promotion of iterative change and reconfiguration. Scholars have called on HEIs to develop such dynamic capabilities in order to transform themselves and better respond to their sector’s challenges. Nevertheless, the understanding of how dynamic capabilities might advance HEIs’ third mission is still an underexplored concept, and in this paper, we propose mechanisms that promise to transform dynamic capabilities into third mission advancement. We have developed numerous theoretically grounded hypotheses and tested them with a partial least squares structural equation model into which we funnelled data collected from key decision-makers at German HEIs. The results suggest that dynamic capabilities do indeed influence third mission advancement; however, this relationship is mediated by the role of leadership and organisational agreement on vision and goals.

Highlights

Even though higher education institutions (HEIs) may be among the most resilient and enduring institutions (Maassen and Stensaker 2011; Audretsch 2014), governments’ and society’s expectations of their contributions have evolved beyond the traditional roles of teaching and research
This study addresses the research question of how can Dynamic capabilities (DCs) be translated into HEIs’ strategic third mission advancements?
For the purpose of this survey, key respondents were defined as academics who were among the key people driving the third mission in their institutions

Summary

Introduction

Even though higher education institutions (HEIs) may be among the most resilient and enduring institutions (Maassen and Stensaker 2011; Audretsch 2014), governments’ and society’s expectations of their contributions have evolved beyond the traditional roles of teaching and research. The new norm in science is the capitalization of knowledge through a spiral model of innovation named Triple Helix, encompassing academia, government and industry in a transformative collaboration (Etzkowitz and Leydesdorff 1998). In this context, HEIs have been given a third mission: to actively contribute to economic, technological and social advancements by producing human, social and entrepreneurial capital (Etzkowitz et al 2000; Guerrero et al 2015). The identification of entrepreneurial pathways for HEIs, which regard necessary strategic choices, are a key research agenda for the phenomenon of entrepreneurial HEIs (Klofsten et al 2019)

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Conclusion