Autonomy Mediated through University-Business Collaboration

Collaboration between universities and industry is on the agenda in most countries. The old formula of theory production and subsequent application in practice has been replaced by a new formula of interaction between theory and practice. The aim of this paper is to discuss the university-industry (U-I) collaboration in a university autonomy perspective, including the rationale for an increase in the collaboration, a conceptualization of the development, and the impact of the collaboration on university autonomy related especially to academic freedom and financial autonomy. The paper will argue that the rationale for the increase in U-I collaboration is twofold: Firstly, innovation has become the key “productive” and “competitive” factor of a (global) market economy, and as knowledge and managers/experts with high level of competence are key drivers of innovation, universities are the obvious partner for the business community. Secondly, while the concept of formal knowledge has been around for many years, experiential knowledge and its importance for knowledge development is of recent origin. Experiential knowledge is by definition embedded in practice and this fact makes the business community an obvious partner for universities. Thus, there is a mutual, dynamic and beneficial relation between universities and industry. But the collaboration is not a smooth one as the collaborative partners are based on two different rationales. It is found that the I-U collaboration is not a zero-sum game, but a relationship with a synergistic potential and with university autonomy as one important parameter in the collaboration formula.