Details

Case

NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCES AND TECHNOLOGY (NUST): DEFINING FUTURES

Syed Zahoor Hassan

INDUSTRY : Education

AREA : HRM/OB

ORGANIZATION : National University of Science & Technology (NUST)

LENGTH : 14

LUMS No : 05-781-2018-1

PUBLICATION YEAR : 2018

KEYWORDS:

Higher education, leadership development, stakeholder management, not-for-profit, strategic management, triple (quadruple) helix, entrepreneurial university, engaged university, communities of practices

DESCRIPTION:

This case describes the journey of a premier university of Pakistan, National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST) as it has evolved over a period of quarter of a century into an institution spanning seven fields (Engineering, IT, Medicine and Applied Biosciences, Basic Sciences, Social Sciences & Humanities, and Art, Design and Architecture) with over 100 undergraduate and graduate programs, almost 15,000 students and over 1100 faculty members.This case describes the various mechanisms and initiatives that NUST has set up for engagement with the community, industry and government. It offers an opportunity to understand the factors that need to be addressed, and the concepts that can be leveraged, to set up meaningful and effective university-community-industry linkages. The issues that the students have to address in this case are the challenges associated with setting up an institutional mechanism for sustaining stakeholder engagement. A number of demonstration projects had also been initiated in the energy sustainability area but it was not clear as to how these projects could be leveraged to promote the cause of sustainability in the country. NUST had set up key performance indicators for various groups that were engaged with the stakeholders and related initiatives, but had yet to devise a meaningful way to ascertain how much measureable progress was being made towards achieving its vision and mission.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES:

The case can be taught in programs for academic leadership development. It can also be used to illustrate the challenges associated with sustaining initiatives in not-for-profit higher education institutions in a course on strategic management of social enterprises. Some specific learning objectives that can be achieved through this case include: 1. To develop an understanding of the various dimensions and corresponding issues related to a university's engagement with its key external stakeholders' community, industry and government. 2. To gain knowledge of various mechanisms that can be used to sustain engagements with various external stakeholders. 3. To highlight the need for creating proper organisational structures within universities to undertake the engagement related initiatives. 4. To understand the various theoretical frameworks - triple (quadruple) helix, entrepreneurial university, engaged university and communities of practices - that can be leveraged by a university to devise its own engagement strategy, given its overall purpose, mission and the context in which it exists and operates. 5. To understand the challenges associated with transitioning from having organisational mechanisms for promoting engagement with stakeholders to a state where belief and actions related to this engagement become part of a university's DNA moving from `'doing for' to a 'doing with' stage with respect to stakeholders. 6. To learn about various ways in which a university may become a role model of sustainable practices as an organisation. The issue of developing a sustainability driven mindset among the future generations can also be a discussion in the context of the demonstration projects that had been set up at NUST, like the water recycling and solar energy initiatives.

SUBJECTS COVERED:

Higher Education Management