University Support to Regional Development : Process Based Stakeholder Management in Gotland

Universities could be seen to have many customers such as students, future employers, the state, parents etc. Universities normally have two main missions, which are education and research. In Sweden there is an additional requirement of societal co-operation both in education and research. Universities are traditionally not very customer focused, but rather organizations that define what is being done based on an internal focus. One question is to what extent stakeholders and their change needs have been identified and also how these needs are being addressed and used as input. This could be studied applying a process view where the main processes are defined by the university mission. This could be studied from a regional context looking at regional needs and relating them to university support. Gotland is the smallest region in Sweden and it hosts the smallest university. This forms a good base for a study on how the university supports and could support regional development. Regional performance is viewed from a process perspective. Results show that customer focus has not been a core value. Consequently it is not well defined what constitutes quality, neither by the studied university nor by the Swedish authorities. This means that customer and stakeholder needs have not been looked into systematically. It also seems that regional Sustainable Development is not getting the attentions it should. Applying customer focus on the regional level indicates several new interesting opportunities for both universities and the region. A condition for these opportunities to be realised is that there is a thorough discussion of what quality and Sustainable Development mean for universities