I do research on the relationships between universities and local governments by asking the research question (how) can universities contribute to the design (and implementation) of public policies at local level? With the help of a single case study (Warsaw – Poland) I want to provide evidence of the role of university stakeholders in the process of design and implementation of the current Warsaw Development Strategy (adopted in 2018) and contrast this with their role in the historical process of designing the previous strategy (adopted in 2005). The data for the study are drawn from semi-structured interviews with key actors involved in the process of design and implementation of both documents. In addition, the data collection combines secondary sources in the form of policy documents and reports of both City of Warsaw and HEIs in Warsaw.
I am not sure how to describe the method used for this purpose. It is a qualitative case study, but what about the perspective of investigating the phenomenon in two time-perspectives? It is not the longitudinal case study, because I’m not interviewing the same people many times (some of them took part in both processes and there the were asked about both processes).
Anna, for your convenience, I added the file. Best regards, Imre
Anna, perhaps this is a comparative case study as the policy designs are differentiated. The longitudinal characteristic of the design rests with the relying the approach undertaken by one institution over time. This offers a unique opportunity to address policy shifts over time. The work of Yin (Case Study Method) should help in framing this work. As to theory, please do check out some work I did with others in years past: Pradeep Chandra Kathi, Terry L. Cooper and Jack W. Meek (2007) “The Role of the University as a Mediating Institution in Neighborhood Council-City Agency Collaboration.” Journal of Public Administration Education. Vol. 13, No. 2, 2007, pp. 353-370.
http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/40212736?uid=3739256&uid=2&uid=4&sid=21104305559643
This could be through those recommendations made by university academics, on the one hand, and on the other hand, through those research capabilities that universities have, such as methods of statistics, questionnaire, and others.
It seems to me a rather incomplete effort. Research should include not only data aggregation and theorizing, but also justification, validation, and consolidation of the raw theories into reliable theories. In the end, the study shall include not only one method, but a purposeful and useful combination of multiple methods.
Thank to all of you for your effort and your answers.
Jack, this is a very interesting idea about the comparative case study. I was considering it before, however I had doubts whether the comparison of two policy desigin (but within the same institution) does fulfill the definition of comparative case study. So thank you again for your suggestion.
I have one more question about the longitudinal approach, because I'm not sure whether I understand you correctly. "The longitudinal characteristic of the design rests with the relying the approach undertaken by one institution over time." I did interviews with different key actors of the city government being repsonsible of the policy desing in 2005 and 2018. Only few of them are the same people, most of them were active only within one of the process. However it is still the same institution - local government of Warsaw and at the other side - academics representing various universities (mostly Univeristy of Warsaw). Is that "enough" in your opinion for using the term of "longitudinal approach"?
I will have a look once at the work of Yin. Thank you as well for your paper - so far I haven't read it, but the title and the abstract sound very promising.
Imre, could you please explain more briefly what you mean by "incomplete effort". Does it refer to my study design? Within the case study I combine different methods of data collection and analytical techniques (interviews and desk research of secondary sources).
Anwar, thank you for your answer.
Anna, sorry to use my own vocabulary ... I hope it will not hinder understanding my remarks. The latest approach to research organization and research design development is thinking of research cycles (no matter if PhD research or project-based team research is concerned). A research cycle has two parts. The first part (exploratory part) aggregates evidences for theorizing and concludes with a raw theory. The second part (confirmatory part) justifies, validates, and consolidates this raw theory into a tested theory, which manifests as the outcome of the research. I summarized this in one of my ICED papers. Now, coming back to your question concerning incompleteness. In the available discussion I could not get information about the second, confirmatory, part of your research cycle. How will your raw theory (whatever way it is generated) be validated (tested, contrasted, etc.)? I hope it helps a bit. Wishing you a successful new year. Kind regards, Imre
Good points all. The key is to be theory driven (or at least driven by research questions), this will help in constructing the design. Once you have the research questions, the next step is to examine related research and emergent theory. From there, methods can be derived.
Anna, as Jack wrote, you may consider a pool of methods. With a view to this, I have read your question so as: "How to describe the approach described below?" B.R. Imre
I don't get the question here, the most important thing Why? is missing, why you want to investigate this system, did you find a problem that the system is not working well, then define what is "well", do you have a model or benchmark against which you are making your judgement? The role of a systems designer is to alleviate negative elements/pain points (multidisciplinary perspective) and to promote the good elements/ phenomena in a system. But the negative and positive can only be defined when you state the purpose and why you are doing this, otherwise we might make mistakes of labelling victims as gainers and gainers as victims of a system. Who is at the centre of your systemic modelling, whose side you are taking and seeing the system from their perspective? I find there is a lot of problems in the process/method and all the steps that are described here are mostly basic constituent of an ethnographic research done without any concrete goal in mind, at least there should be a current scenario where universities are not contributing anything to compare with a future scenario where universities are contributing everything. How the later is better than the previous, who gets benefitted from the later, the industries, climate, society etc...... and who will be the victims or losers if the later is not achieved and on what parameters are you basing your judgements on?
Than you again for your answers.
Imre, thank for the explanation. I think it was not your own vocabulary, but my lack of vocabulary :) But within your explanation it's clear now. I think I need to consider your suggestions and think more carefully about the validation of the theory. Could you please provide me with more details about the ICED paper you mentioned (the title?)
Himanshu Singh, thank you for your answer and many interesting points mentioned. Regarding your remark that the most important thing (why) is missing. Why I want to investigate the system? The answer is: to know if and how the universities contribute to the process of policy design and policy implementation. I do not want to asess the policy itself (its content), but the way the policy is created. The aim is not to judge how far they are form the benchmark (it does not exist, because it is very context dependent and one solution does not fits all), but how the two procesess (in the case of Warsaw - in 2005 and 2018) differ from each other. The larger context of my research /another reason for doing this research are the increasing expectations addressed to universities to become regional agents of change and to be actively involved in policy design of their city/region etc. In policy documents of European Union as well as in public debates more and more attention is paid to the third mission of universities in addition to the traditional missions of teaching and research. Within the European Union Cohesion Policy Framework of smart specialisation (Foray, David & Hall 2009, Foray 2015) the engagement of universities in designing and implementation processes of regional innovation strategies has been embedded in policy agendas and made compulsory. The engagement of universities in the process of designing the city’s strategies (local level) does not follow the same path (as at the regional level) – those documents are not required by Polish law and thus the decision about collaboration between universities and local government is more autonomous, voluntary and not driven by any external factors. What is more, the HEIs in Poland seems to be still institutions quite isolated from both the needs of society and the needs of policy.
And this is for me an interesting starting point for the research.
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