2.11 Herramientas de desarrollo
2.11.1 Estándares de desarrollo
inferences and insights emerge that guide the research in its search for theory and for future lines of enquiry and data collection.
The commonly conveyed objectives that emerged from the interviews included contributing to indigenous knowledge generation and making research
accessible to millions of young people, a highly complex undertaking, as advised by the key informants and by published research such as Gupta and Gupta (2012). The Indian transition to research activeness and intensiveness is being pursued through a mixture of strategies, some of which have similarities with those encountered in the literature from more advanced knowledge economies, while some strategies such as the rapid establishment of large numbers of universities and other higher education institutions, the introduction of
extraordinary funding for research and personal research incentives are novel. In the process of reviewing the data, three main categories of data can be induced, namely (i) responses to research complexity (coded as research actors, research oriented institutions) (ii) fostering research despite adversity (coded as research values and value) and (iii) the challenges of attracting research resources (coded as research resources).
4.9.1 Complexity of research production at universities in India
Analysis of the data in this exploratory review of India’s central universities, technology and management institutes, and higher education governance bodies reveal that these institutions have made explicit their objectives to increase research activeness (a continuous cycle of research production and publication) and for some central universities to build research intensiveness (establishing new fields of enquiry and research in new multi-‐‑disciplinary fields, patenting, and publication in high impact international journals).
The data further reveals that high levels of complexity are present in the research-‐‑based actions and interactions of scientists with each other, and scientists with university management. Such complexity includes the
requirement to increase research performance under conditions where there is high demand for teaching and postgraduate supervision; the challenges of
building multi-‐‑disciplinary and inter-‐‑disciplinary research under human and knowledge capacity constraints; the limited attractiveness of the university sector as a career; and the major change in academic values required in terms of the policy recommendations of the NKC related to research performance and commercialisation of research. While relationships do exist between universities and industry, the university-‐‑industry interface appears to be a confusing
landscape with lack of clarity on the best form of future relationships that will permit innovation from research while maintaining the academic freedom of universities.
Many measures to encourage research activeness are at an early stage of adoption, such as access to e-‐‑journals and electronic educational resources, building postgraduate programmes as foundations for multi-‐‑disciplinary research, and measures to foster a significant increase in the number of
publications in top quartile academic journals and other journals per thousand inhabitants. Yet other measures have not gone beyond the single instance, for example the establishment of the research university as a post-‐‑graduate only institution, enabling a dedicated focus on research productivity. Furthermore, the inference can be drawn that complex challenges such as patenting of novel
discoveries, technology transfer, commercialisation of research and socialisation of knowledge produced in universities will require attention to the formulation and adoption of specific strategies at institutional and system levels, in addition to the pioneering behaviour of scientists.
From a knowledge economy perspective, access to postgraduate study is an important objective, since it is only with large numbers of young people
participating in university-‐‑based research and in the broader national system of innovation, that emerging economies can meet their scientific knowledge needs for economic and societal development.
This discussion of the presence and particular elements of complexity in pursuing university research activeness guides the thesis research to the next stage, as understanding this particular form of complexity requires more in-‐‑ depth study with respect to the behaviour of scientists and university managers, as well as the strategies and values that provide the landscape for university research.
4.9.2 Researchers and scientists become highly functioning beings in circumstances of adversity
The most influential data from this review of Indian higher education was the initiatives taken by university scientists to pursue their own research
programmes, to attract research funding during a period when government was not investing in university-‐‑based research, to create research centres dedicated to a particular social or scientific thematic field. This phenomenon of pushing through adversity for those scientists who chose to build their research brand and make university-‐‑based research a reality raises interest in understanding how scientists pursued their objectives to a point where the objectives set were achieved, either in whole or in part. For example, over several decades, the endeavour of scientists to attract local and international research funding led to real research production in universities, which indirectly influenced the findings and recommendations of the NKC encouraging government financing of
university research, and the decision by government to introduce extraordinary funding for research at several billion Indian rupees. The competition for access to research resources illustrates a high level of interest in research and innovation across disciplinary boundaries.
The insights for theory building and further data collection set out in this section point to the need to explore and discover the dimensions pertaining to why universities provide some exemplar cases for increasing research activeness and breaking the boundaries of existing knowledge. This line of enquiry was pursued
in the in-‐‑depth case studies conducted in South Africa with the aim to better understand the nature of complexity and adversity in the pursuance of university research activeness and the underlying reasons for gaining ground against such complexity and adversity.