When we established NCACE in late 2020, a key part of our mission was to create an enhanced understanding of the impacts that arise from universities and the arts working together. One of the first pieces of work we undertook was to develop what we believe was the country’s first substantial survey with the arts and cultural sectors about their collaborations with universities. The survey was developed and designed by the NCACE team and that design process was further supported by Arts Professional magazine where it was hosted in Spring 2021. The quantitative and qualitative data from the survey has previously formed the basis of two key NCACE reports and it continues to help us to understand more the kinds of relationships and impacts that collaborations between the two sectors appear to have.
As is well-documented, the art and cultural industries generate important economic benefits. They also have much broader and diverse impacts on society. Through collaborations with universities, they contribute to research and knowledge exchange activities that produce valuable outcomes for numerous societal stakeholders. As the survey indicates, universities engage with the arts and cultural industries through collaborations around teaching, research, public engagement as well as by sharing cultural infrastructures such as space, museums, galleries and theatres. Historically however, there have been relatively few attempts to think systematically about the processes through which such collaborations generate impact. The evidence on the impact of collaborations between universities and the arts and cultural industries is mostly anecdotal, building on small scale, descriptive analyses of individual cases. Research is quite fragmented, published across a wide array of journals and grey literature sources (blogs, reports, etc.) and undertaken from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. Though to be fair, that could arguably be said about collaboration with virtually every other sector of the economy too.
Our most recent study, utilising the survey data, examines how universities and arts and culture organisations (ACOs) produce societal impact by investigating the relationship between the characteristics of university-ACO collaborations and the type of societal actors that most benefit from them. The results of this work form the basis of a paper just published in a Special Issue of Technovation on ‘The art and fiction of the societal impact of research’. We pose the research question: “Does the nature of the university-ACO collaboration influence the breadth of impact of the collaboration, and the ACO’s intention to collaborate again in the future?” Through our empirical analysis, we identify three ways in which collaborations can create value:
Transactional collaborations generate value from the transfer of resources. “Transferred resource value” is the benefit derived by a partner from the receipt of a resource from the other partner. Typically, the benefit created by the collaboration accrues to one or the other partner (the one who receives the resources). Some qualitative statements provided by survey respondents highlight that transactional collaborations, where the ACO is very clear about the resources they require from the other partner, lead to benefits solely for themselves. There is also an association of transactional collaborations with lower intention to collaborate in the future.
Integrative collaborations generate value from the process of working together. “Interaction value” consists of the intangible assets that derive from the processes of partners working together - for example, reputation, trust, relational capital, learning, knowledge, joint problem solving, communication, coordination, transparency, accountability, and conflict resolution. Typically, these benefits accrue to both partners in the collaboration. Interactive processes encourage value creation, since working collectively between partners (for example through the coordination of activities), offers more advantages than working individually. During the interactions between partners, opportunities arise for two parties to co-create and share the unfolding value. Some statements provided by survey respondents describe examples of the mutual benefits accrued by the partners.
Transformative collaborations generate value by achieving synergies between the partners. “Synergistic value” arises from the underlying premise of all collaborations that combining partners’ resources enables them to accomplish more together than they could have separately. This signifies simultaneous shared value creation for parties. Typically, these synergies will spill out of the collaboration and generate external impacts such as social or environmental value. We also found that this type of collaboration is akin to science-based co-creation: combining different assets, knowledge, resources and networks of two parties is vital for generating dual values and impacts not limited to only both partners, but also towards society. This involves partners jointly defining goals, interacting and integrating their complementary assets. Some qualitative statements provided by survey respondents describe examples of the external benefits generated through highly engaged transformative collaborations.
There are some policy implications for organisations taking part in university-ACO collaborations. Universities and ACOs are under pressure from funders and policymakers to produce outputs, and yet in spite of its importance, there is often relatively little emphasis on relationship building. As well as focusing on collaboration outputs and reports, due attention should be given to providing support and resources to facilitate integrative and transformational collaborations, especially to very small ACOs, that often have limited resources. In addition, universities and ACOs should recognise, and indeed be strategic about the fact that collaborations generate capacity and accelerate the potential for further collaboration. As we have often suggested, models of good practice, including shared governance between the partners should be considered, in order to promote and support active engagement, foster trust, and create the best possibilities for value creation and indeed also for repeated collaboration. Shared governance sounds complex but it can often be as fundamental as ensuring shared planning, project management, good and regular communications as well as having strategies in place to jointly support challenges, risks and unforeseen obstacles.
To read the full article, please visit: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.technovation.2024.103158
Previous NCACE reports focussed on the survey include:
The role of place in collaborations between HEIs and the arts and culture sectors
Collaboration with Higher Education Institutions: Findings from NCACE survey with Arts Professional.
Image credit: Rene Bohmer, Unsplash