The South African higher education landscape has changed significantly. PHEIs (private higher education institutions) play a more important role although they are not yet fully acknowledged as higher education “universities”. This may be a strategic incentive for service quality excellence. It seems if the market responds well to PHEIs, because they complement the higher educational need and cater for unique niche markets. The article reports on the level and importance of service quality in three cases of South African PHEIs with the focus on primary service quality dimensions. The purpose of the study was to explore the strategic importance of service quality at PHEIs per se, its general service quality status and their endeavours to manage (measure and improve) service quality. The investigation followed a mixed method approach and applied interviews, observation and questionnaire surveys (using the SERVQUAL instrument). Case research has consistently been of the most powerful research methods in operations and quality management, particularly in contributing to the paucity of literature and the development of new theory and/or new hypotheses. Besides the paucity of literature, the results indicate that service quality at the PHEIs is a high strategic priority and may be a higher priority than service quality at public universities (a hypothesis for further investigation).
AUTHORSRigard J Steenkamp ARTICLE INFORigard J Steenkamp (2017). INTRODUCTIONThe business-like university is not associated with public institutions, although the third mission (to generate a third stream of income) of public higher education institutions (HEIs) is steadily becoming entrepreneurial. The entrepreneurial university (both public and private institutions) can be defined as a natural incubator that attempts to provide a beneficial environment in which the university community (students and academia) can explore and evaluate ideas that could be transformed into social and economic entrepreneurial initiatives, partnerships and benefits. Entrepreneurial universities are therefore open for engagement and therefore involved in partnerships, networks and other relationships to generate an umbrella for interaction, collaboration and co-operation with industry and government. Becoming an entrepreneurial university has been identified as not only necessary but also the solution for both economic and contemporary higher educational challenges. nant factors determining what a university should do and how it should be organised. Although conventional traditions must be retained and carefully treasured, the implication is that universities will not remain the same since natural evolution and formal changes to university structures are transforming internal cultures, social relations and functional integration in new ways not yet foreseen.Although complex, the phenomenon confronts the third mission of the university. Loi and Chiara Di Guardo (2015) refer to the third mission of universities in their investigation of the espoused values as "an invisible revolution". They note different orientation patterns such as the need for coherence, exploitation, readiness to participate in external change and to satisfy external needs, and the old school focusing on entrepreneurial activities as a source of funding. It shows a complex phenomenon for the institutionalization of the third mission with respect to a simple binary public-private opposition.In challenging the imposed order of things, Beckman and Cooper (2013) present a strong argument in terms of global neoliberalism and managerialism in HE in England. Van Niekerk (2016, p. 39-41) addressed this "market-corporate ethos" by using the works of Barnett and the recent work by Barnett (2015) specifically addresses the re-thinking of the university with a warning against the entrepreneurial movement defined by the era of its marketisation. Their concerns are the transformation of the student into a customer, and the false dichotomy of managerialism and collegiality.On the other side of the spectrum, several universities are beyond the debate in terms of justifying the natural evolution and development of entrepreneurial universities as much more than an idea of our time. Entrepreneurial university scorecards are introduced and progress can also be observed in terms of growing student employability and the global graduate attributes of the so-called entrepreneurial-and ...
The strategic importance of service excellence for service industries places the focus on service quality leadership, service quality management systems, service quality dimensions and the measurement of service quality. Many businesses such as private higher education institutions (PHEIs) regard service quality excellence as the single most important and distinct competence for survival and sustainability. The paucity of literature on the topic does not reflect the substantial growth of PHEIs in South Africa, and this paper explores service quality in this context. This exploratory study focuses on service quality (general insights), the need for service quality management and measurement at PHEIs, and the practical value of the SERVQUAL methodologies. The research approach is exploratory in the sense that it involves a literature review and an empirical application of the SERVQUAL instrument at a PHEI. The results (with internal validity) indicate the following three factors: the increasing strategic importance of service quality at PHEIs; good service quality levels at the PHEI studied; and why and how SERVQUAL (and SERVPERF) can benefitt PHEIs.
University-industry-innovation networks (UIINs) are made up of entrepreneurial higher education institutions, industry and government. Universities such as Scotland’s Strathclyde University, which was the entrepreneurial university of 2013 in the UK, organise themselves as co-productive institutions by means of technology transfer offices (TTOs), innovation centres and a variation of offices for knowledge transfer and university-business-co-operation (UBC). Such a network is referred to as the triple helix approach/concept/model of co-operation between industry, universities and government, with the aim of building an enterprising state in which these partners co-innovate in order to solve global economic challenges. The global economy faces multiple challenges represented by indicators such as the World Health Organisation’s (WHO’s) spiralling health-care needs, unemployment, un-sustainable changes to the environment and rapidly emerging digital business models. Most universities promote academic engagement with industry for various reasons (e.g. to generate a third stream of income). The effective management of triple helix takes UBC to the next level in terms of a formal prominent mission for the university. This article broadly describes the triple helix concept and analyses several international cases. The three main objectives of this article are to: 1) explore triple helix and the related concepts such as UBC and TTO; 2) determine the leading stakeholders of the triple helix model; 3) conduct a content analysis of triple helix case studies (45) in four groups, namely (1) national innovation strategies, (2) entrepreneurial universities, (3) entrepre-neurship education, and (4) new initiatives, frameworks and technologies.
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