University Services for regional Development : Ideas on Stakeholder Based Quality Management in a Region

Background Regional Development is a permanent activity of change including long range visions and goals. This work includes both continuous and breakthrough change. Quality management practises are used for organisational improvement and could be seen as one way of supporting effective change management. Provided we can view a region as an organisation we could also view it as a process. Dealing with the region as a system of processes might make it possible to use quality management practices to support more effective regional development. Based on an analysis of the presentation of the current state and the visionary state it should be possible to analyse proposed change strategies from a process perspective. Purpose The general purpose of the study is to see how universities could contribute to regional development. Specific research questions in this study are: For a region how can the present state, the visionary state and the chosen change strategies, be described with Quality Management values and methodologies with focus on the process view How do the regional university mission, vision and goals align with defined regional objectives? Methodology A literature survey for how Quality Management has been used for regional development is carried out to create a structure for the data collection. The region of Gotland is chosen as an example for a region. The reason for this is that Gotland is a small region consisting of an island providing clear boundaries. There is only one university, which makes it easier to study the links between university and region. Available regional visions are studied as well as main presentation of regional performance with focus on the region of Gotland. The main organizational stakeholders are identified and studied. Data is gathered from web sites and from interviews. The categorisation of information is based on a process perspective using process based system models adapted to the initial literature survey. The current change process is also portrayed. In order to see how the local university performance and plans align with the regional plans the Gotland University web-site is studied for relevant documents. Main results Regional performance can seemingly be described using process based system models. The stakeholder approach can in a meaningful way be used to describe main regional requirements