“The Learning of Learned ‘Learning Organizations’?”: How Southern African Universities Use a Professional Competency Framework for Research Management and Administration: Selective Cases

How universities, respected for their position at the apex of learning, employ competency frameworks in order to increase learning impacts is acknowledged by the authors as a researchable problem. The respective natures of universities and professional work, the latter, which is often intensely integral to universities, means that universities have to take on board managerial as well philosophical means of learning. This article explores how staff at six universities employ a Professional Competency Framework for Research Management and Administration (PCF-RMA) to bring about organizational learning. Participants provide qualitative data which are condensed into six narrated cases to show how a PCF-RMA, created through action research, enters into the university systems and translates into individual and organizational systems thinking towards applied outcomes. Using the theoretical lenses of Senge’s five disciplines and core competencies for competitive advantage, we argue that systems thinking is not essentially about the system as an abstracted entity, but about sensitized individuals who actively ‘think through’ using the PCF-RMA to improve their own work and career prospects, while also improving the work of the research support offices for university research purposes. In short, systems and funding impacts. As such, the PCF-RMA, while initially carried through individuals, has a systems opportunity to change not only individuals but also set up a trajectory for generative holistic changes as articulated within organizational learning theories. The study recommends future research to employ a diverse and broadened scope in the domains of theory, context, and methodology. Aside from prompting ongoing research, this study offers an opportunity to demonstrate increased research impact, an area which stakeholders of research, including the funders, increasingly emphasize.