Inter-organizational Relationships and Systemic Competitiveness

   CONTENTS  

Studies to potentiate centers of innovation

The Research Group on Inter-organizational Relationships and Systemic Competitiveness is concerned with analyses that will contribute to the growth and development of companies and organizational arrays of different sizes. The projects of the group, chaired by Professor Peter Bent Hansen, attribute special value to the triple bottom line, which stimulates corporations to act in a sustainable manner from economic, social, and environmental perspectives.

One of the researchers’ aims is to contribute to sustainability to transcend the level of professorial discourse applied in actual practice at the universities in southern Brazil. One study based on a master’s dissertation sought to identify the level of commitment to comply with the triple bottom line requirements of four private higher education institutions (HEIs) in Rio Grande do Sul state (PUCRS, Unisinos, UCS, and Feevale). The academic production resulted in a set of indicators for the selfevaluation of the investigation and perhaps other HEIs.

Three projects conducted by the group correspond to the line of research devoted to inter-organizational relationships. One project using interviews seeks to understand what the competitive benefits and advantages that companies established at technology parks perceive. What attracts companies? Does such a location exhibit differential factors? Does the market competitiveness of such companies increase?

In that same line, another project aims to establish how (and whether) knowledge is shared by centers for technological innovation (NITs). The underlying purpose of this project is to understand whether business executives create or make resource profits, such as meetings, workshops, partnerships, and other modalities of interaction with the other players, researchers, and the academic milieu within a technology park.

Focused on the management of such NITs, the third project asks how technology parks could be assessed. The research goal is to develop objective indices to measure the social, technological, and economic effects of such environments at the local level and to establish whether the results reflect the integration of companies, universities, and the government (triple helix). This study may serve as a guide for newcomers to such parks.