Universities and Regional Engagement

The study of universities' role in regional engagement has traditionally been focusing on exceptional cases. This book presents a reconceptualization which embraces its underlying complexity and proposes a roadmap for a renewed research agenda. Starting from the grassroots level of universities' "everyday" engagements, the book delves into the manifold ways in which university knowledge agents build connections with regional partners.
Through 11 empirical chapters, the authors not only chart the diversity among case institutions, engagement mechanisms, and regional contexts but also use that diversity to advance a novel conceptual framework, centered on the process of mundaneness, for unpacking university-regions' everyday activities, taking into account the dynamic, complex, and co-evolving interplay between (a) key social agents and institutions, (b) the contexts in which they are embedded, as well as (c) the historical trajectories and strategic ambitions underpinning context-specific social arrangements and interactions that are mediated by temporal and spatial dimensions.
Drawing on evolutionary economic geography, innovation studies, management and organization studies, and historical perspectives, the volume advances a new mode of understanding university-regional engagement as a form of extendable temporary coupling, which also helps to address perennial policy and managerial questions alike of what to do with universities that do not serve local labour market needs and/or are located in regions suffering from brain drain. The book illustrates such dynamics from diverse national contexts and three continents: Brazil, Caribbean, China, Italy, Norway, and Poland.
This book will be valuable reading for advanced students, researchers, and policymakers working in economic geography, regional development, innovation, and higher education management.
The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

Tatiana Iakovleva is Professor of Entrepreneurship at the Business School, University of Stavanger, Norway. Elisa Thomas is Associate Professor at Nord University and Adjunct Associate Professor at the University of Stavanger, Norway. Laila Nordstrand Berg is Associate Professor at Western Norway University of Applied Sciences, Norway. Rómulo Pinheiro is Professor of Public Policy and Administration at the University of Agder, Norway. Paul Benneworth was Professor of Innovation and Regional Development at Western Norway University of Applied Sciences, Norway.

1. Universities' Mundaneness and Regional Engagement: Setting the Stage 2. Unpacking Mundaneness: A Novel Conceptual Framework for Universities and Regional Engagement 3. Changes and Continuities in the Development of Rural Teacher Education in the Fjords of Western Norway 4. University Dynamic Capabilities to Boost Innovation Ecosystems: The Case of a University Alliance in Brazil 5. Exploring the Role of the University in the Creation of Knowledge Networks in the Aso Valley, a Rural Area in Marche Region (Italy) 6. The Third Mission: Enhancing Academic Engagement with Industry 7. Student Entrepreneurship Programmes in Higher Education Institutions: Multi-scalar Embeddedness and Heterogeneous Regional Responses 8. Student Incubators in China: The Cases in Shanghai and Wuhan 9. Aligning University Roles and Strategic Orientations: When Local Mandates and Global Aspirations Meet 10. Emergent Strategies and Tensions Between Decoupled University Structures and Management Initiatives: A Case Study of a Strategy Process 11. Towards The Strategic Cooperation Of "Two Worlds": University-Local Government Relationships in Warsaw 12. Keeping Talents in the Region?: Educational Internships and Their Impact on Regional Development 13. Activist Leadership in the Caribbean: The Case of the University of the West Indies 14. Universities and Regions: New Insights and Emerging Developments