Performance Measures of Strategic University-Industry Collaborations in Malaysia: Dyadic Multicases Approach

Collaboration without performance measures is likened to a football game without scoreboard. Traditionally, university operated in isolation to the industry and vice versa. University and industry were formed with different agenda and objectives. Fundamentally, university is a non-profit oriented organization while industry is a profit oriented organization. However, industrialization and egalitarian awakening at early 20th century has gradually brought university and industry together. Currently, university and industry are increasingly seeking avenues to collaborate strategically. Nevertheless 50% to 70% of collaborative efforts fail prematurely due to lack of performance measures. In light of that, there is a need to search for a set of holistic performance measures for university-industry collaboration. Therefore, this study is undertaken to determine the performance measures of strategic university-industry collaborations in Malaysia using dyadic multicases approach. The researcher analyzes multiple cases from the perspectives of university and industry within bounded system via qualitative research methodology. Interviews respondents were from university and industry perspectives. From the 68 interviews conducted, university and industry respondents shared their experiences on the needs for performance measures to include trust, commitment, enterprising, communication, complementary, flexibility, commercialization and resources on top of conventional performance measures like agreed objectives, timelines, financial indicators and reporting.
With that, a set of holistic performance measures is established from interviews. Hence, the main contributions of the research findings are: (i) contribution to policy-making for the Ministry of Higher Education in Malaysia; and (ii) contribution to the body of knowledge in investigating the performance measures in satisfactory performance of strategic university-industry collaboration