Application 2 – Annotated Bibliography

Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management, Vol. 23, No. 1, 2001

Business Process Reengineering and University Organisation: a normative approach from the Spanish case

BELARMINO ADENSO-DÍAZ & ALFONSO FERNÁNDEZ CANTELI, Universidad de Oviedo, Spain

ABSTRACT Many of the traditional forms of business are currently being questioned by what is known as business process reengineering (BPR) in the search for improvements in systems of organisation. Reengineering is being positively received within the business world, and could, in theory, be potentially applied to other �elds, less traditionally related to business techniques, such as university management. This paper analyses how the university systems (focusing on the Spanish case, currently questioned from various social spheres) should be organised from the point of view of this new methodology, proposing a series of measures and changes for improving the system within the philosophy of BPR.

Introduction

The initial organisation of companies, institutions and enterprises generally conditions their evolution and future structure in a decisive way, creating a mental superstructure, at both an individual and collective level that is opposed to change and that impedes, or at least delays, adaptation to new historical situations.

While the current organisation of companies continues to respond to centuries-old models, the majority of the organisational and productive procedures of the different types of enterprises are a consequence of certain practices developed in other times, the aim of which was to respond to the socio-economic conditions present at the time.

An example of these practices and attitudes are bureaucratisation and the division of labour, the use of pyramidal organigrams, departmental systems of functioning, etc. At the beginning of the industrial revolution, i.e. when a need existed to create a large workforce, capable of producing unsophisticated goods for a population that lacked practically everything, this organisational structure was adequate for these goals: it established control over a poorly quali� ed workforce and fomented its specialisation in highly speci� c tasks. It may be said that this structure, which we might de� ne as ‘conventional’, and which is still present in the majority of enterprises, responds to the organisation that revolutionised productive systems at the end of the last century.

ISSN 1360-080X (print)/ISSN 1469–9508 (online)/01/010063-11 Ó 2001 Association for Tertiary Education Management DOI: 10.1080/13600800020047243

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However, this model, which was valid during many years of economic boom and expansion, has recently begun to be questioned, now that the socio-economic conditions and communications environment that were at its origin are by no means any longer in force. For some years now, the saturation of markets is such, and there is such ferocious competition between enterprises that the client—who is in short the one who pays—has gained a privileged position not enjoyed ever before.

A large number of enterprises in diverse sectors (automobile, aeronautics, machinery, watchmaking, textiles, banking, graphic reproductions, computers, press, services, etc.; see, with respect to this, reviews of studies in: Grover & Malhotra, 1997; Hammer & Champy, 1993; IIE, 1994) have had to undertake dramatic structural changes, anticipat- ing change so as not to perish within the new rules of the game. Meanwhile, enterprises that were once models in their respective sectors, paradigms of quality and prestige, have had worse luck due to not having known how to adapt to the changes and, in the best of cases, languish after their lost leadership, have been absorbed, or have simply disappeared.

This problem should logically be present in other settings or institutions such as, for example, the academic world—university and primary and secondary education—and consequently the methods that are being put forward in the business setting as a solution should be equally applicable, at least after their appropriate, speci� c adaptation.

In this article, a re� ection is made on how to apply the new ideas put forward by process reengineering to the public university (particularly the Spanish case). The second section presents a summary of the main ideas that we consider best de� ne what is being called reengineering; the third section presents the need to apply BPR to academia, commenting on the evolution of the Spanish case; the fourth section sets forth the dif� culties that, in the authors’ opinion, would arise as a result of the implantation of these ideas in the Spanish University; the next section expounds the translation of these ideas to university organisation; and the � nal section � nishes with our conclusions.

Principles of Process Reengineering

Process reengineering, according to Davenport and Short (1990), may be de� ned as ‘the complete and radical revision of processes in order to obtain spectacular improvements’. That is to say, it is not a matter of making incremental or limited improvements that partially improve the current situation, but rather what is sought after is to newly redesign what is done, forgetting how things are presently being done.

The following synopsis of the main ideas that ‘theoretical’ reengineering has pro- pounded will be used later to outline how these principles would be translated within the world of university management.

1. The organisation of labour must be carried out within the framework of processes, in contrast with the current situation, conditioned by a structure based on sections and departments. When labour is divided in the way that this has traditionally been done in Taylorist systems, the elaborated product inevitably passes through many hands and departments before being delivered to the client. The direct conclusion that may be derived from this fact is that a heavy, bureaucratic structure is fomented that slows down decision- making. Moreover, there is no single, de� ned person responsible for the � nal, delivered quality, thus giving rise to the well-known, sterile, internal disputes to unload blame.

2. Workers should carry out multifunctional work. This is a direct consequence of the rupture

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with the Taylorist system of division of labour. In this way, better use of the resources of the enterprise is achieved and the potential of the workers is fomented, allowing them to acquire a more global vision of the goals of the � rm, beyond particular goals conditioned by their function. The training and attitude of the worker are key factors in order to achieve these goals of � exibility.

3. The pressure (and cost) of exhaustive control of the workers’ activities should be relaxed, by means of granting these the capacity of decision-making. In general, the establishment of traditional controls over the activity of the staff of a company turns out to be more expensive than the harm that this lack of control may occasion (impeding a worker from taking home a company pencil will surely cost more than the pencil itself). On the other hand, staff that are conscious of the importance of their activity may make, in a more effective way, more favourable decisions for the company. In this way, increased agility with respect to the client is achieved.

4. Organigrams must be �atter, with those in charge not acting as ‘bosses’ but as ‘trainers’. Once responsibility has been passed onto the workers, controls are reduced, and so there begin to be too many bosses and thus too many levels in the organigrams. However, people will be needed to help resolve the problems that arise and to contribute to the staff training.

5. Staff promotion is to be based on abilities and not on work carried out successfully in the past. A well done job may be reason for a prize, but should not mean promotion, since it does not mean a guarantee of continuity in the quality of future work. Thus, the abilities and attitudes of staff (and precisely not those with respect to servile loyalty) will be the determining factors for promotion. The promotion of appropriate staff, within this framework, is a key factor in the success of the enterprise.

6. The company management must actively demonstrate that it is interested in the change. A great number of failures reported in the application of reengineering have been caused by the lack of support demonstrated by the company management at its highest level. It may be deduced that total involvement of those who have real power to change things is absolutely necessary if the goal is effectively for things to change.

7. Technology plays a fundamental role in organisational change. The use of the new information technologies, always in conjunction with an organisational change, is the key to the redesigned process.

Reengineering in the Academic World and the Spanish University System

In order to carry out any kind of redesigning work, a series of prior steps such as the following have to be taken:

· being convinced of the need for change and creating the will to carry this out; · the designation of a person responsible for this change and the organisation of the

team to carry it out; and · understanding of the current process and its limitations.

With respect to the � rst point, it is worth asking whether the need for a reengineering action is patent in public universities. That is to say, whether society considers it necessary to carry out a radical change for the university’s adaptation to new market conditions.

It is evident that reengineering as a method of action is having a great repercussion in the analysis of pro� tability and innovation in a wide variety of enterprises. This

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technique may therefore be considered an effective way of opening up new prospects in enterprises and of achieving improvements in performance, costs, quality, service and speed.

With regard universities, they have generally maintained a structure already in force in the last century. Their fundamental tool in the transmission of knowledge is still the lecture (whose antecedents go back to the classical Greece of Aristotle), while the boom in the number of students that pass through the lecture halls and, consequently, in the number of lecturers, has given rise to disproportionate growth that affects the quality of teaching and demands the undertaking of reorganisational measures that propitiate and guarantee the ef� cient use of the signi� cant amount of public resources that are invested in this institution.

The starting point here, with all the necessary nuances, is that the public university, the same as its competitors the private universities, may and should be considered an enterprise, and as such should be judged according to its results. It is worth asking the question whether these centres are transmitting to society (i.e. those who are � nancing them) all the teaching and research capacity that they potentially contain. It would not be easy to discern whether the responsibility is exclusively due to certain political and industrial structures that do not respond to what the university itself demands. In any case, the clear need for a profound structural reform can be seen in the sense proposed by reengineering.

Another question is whether this need is felt by society (the majority of which is unaware of the internal organisation of these institutions) and by the personnel them- selves of the university. In the Spanish case, since the transition to democracy in the 1970s, the political sphere has attempted to introduce apparently profound changes in order to tackle structural ills. In 1983, the � rst Socialist government of the new democracy promulgated as one of its � rst laws the so-called ‘Ley de Reforma Universitaria’ (LRU) (Law of University Reform), currently in force, which radically reorganised the structure of public universities, making them democratic: the election of responsible posts became via direct election by lecturers and students, teaching was ceded to the departments (mathematics, electronics, etc.) that provide services to different schools, undoing the ties of personnel (as occurred in the old system) to a particular centre, and granted more authority to each university to appoint tenured faculty members (previously these had been appointed centrally at a national level).

Subsequently, ‘The Spanish University’ group, the same as with holdings created to minimise risks, was broken up by successive governments into universities with indepen- dent structures, in an attempt to facilitate reorganisation, though with dubious success (the number of public universities in the country doubled in 10 years).

In spite of all this, a series of premises concur in Spanish universities that could favour the application of the techniques of reengineering. First of all, the university is an enterprise with relatively low returns, which carries out a minimum monitoring of the results of its actions and of control of its personnel. No-one talks of ‘pressure at work’ (the proof of which is that no cases are known, at least to the authors, of penalisations for poor performance in the Spanish case). Its organisational structure is made up of potentially highly capable personnel, with the possibility of almost generalised multifunc- tionality. Its possibilities of using high level technological means are likewise great. However, as shall be commented on later, some of the condiments important for reengineering are possibly missing, such as the need for management to demonstrate its interest in the process of change, which propitiates the motivation of personnel to favourably involve themselves in this.

Business Process Reengineering 67

Problems of Implantation in the University Environment

There are many experiences published in relation to the reorganisation of certain internal university services in European and American centres, such as purchasing, administrative services, cafeterias, libraries, etc. The following are some of the experi- ences within this line of action known to the authors:

· In 1994 in the Medicine Faculty of the University of Stanford, a team called the Deans’ Reengineering Task Force was created, whose mission it was to study ‘how to � ght against out-of-control costs, against the frustration of lecturers and administrative staff and against the incapacity of things happening’ (Andreopoulos, 1994). For example, one of the problems tackled by this team was the time cost that all the red tape surrounding research projects (budgets, bibliographical descriptions, patents, etc.) represents for researchers. In order to achieve a better use of resources, IT was used to build a large, interactive database that is of aid in these tasks.

· The University of Illinois in Spring� eld set up a reengineering project in the catering service, installing a computerised system that allows better control of inventories and a better design of menus (Kuhacharoen, 1997).

· In the autumn of 1995, the University of Chicago began actions to redesign internal services (maintenance, purchasing, projects), which gave rise to � atter organigrams and to the creation of a responsibility post (the so-called Client Services Manager), who acts as interlocutor with users of the services. The project � nished in 1997 at a cost of 1.5 million dollars (Stahl, 1997).

· In 1993, the University of Pennsylvania commenced a programme for the reengineer- ing of the purchasing service. Some of the measures adopted consisted in selecting a few suppliers and negotiating special prices with these. As an example, of the 7 million dollars spent annually on airline tickets, 20% was able to be saved by hiring all of these services through one, single travel agency. This project received the support of an external consultancy in order to be carried out (Anonymous, 1996).

· Over the last few years, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has been setting up a reengineering project among the aims of which is the simpli� cation of administrative processes.

· The State University of New York had to set up a reengineering project in response to a legislative agreement of the State of New York that called for a reduction in the size of this centre (Dolan & Maldonado, 1996).

· In 1993, the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium) constituted a team of experts with the mission of improving the ef� ciency of six bureaucratic projects in existence at the university.

As can be seen, it is perhaps in these secondary services, those which seem to affect the direct activity of lecturers to a lesser degree, where an initial redesigning process could be attempted. Similar experiences have been registered in the sanitary sector, in which reengineering plans are usually started up (when they are not simply restricted to plans) by departments such as catering or laundry (Giunipero, 1995), in which the medical services are not affected; i.e. it is applied to processes which are less involved in the power interests of these institutions.

A fundamental aspect in the application of reengineering is to analyse what the foreseeable reactions will be. On the one hand, the natural resistance to any kind of change has to be taken into account, and particularly to a change that offers few guarantees of success, more so even in an institution that has repeatedly experienced

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deception in its expectations with respect to the reforms that it has undergone in recent years. On the other hand, the situation of guaranteed stability of the tenured, state functionary personnel of the university leads to a logical reticence or laziness with regards to taking on a presumed improvement, since neither are posts in danger nor is the survival of the enterprise in play (independently of the degree of competence or incompetence demonstrated in the development of the activities per se of this community). It is foreseeable that in this case the resistance that would have to be faced in the case of the Spanish University may be resumed as follows.

The Governing Presidential Team

Any reform, based on the implantation of more and more widely ranging responsibili- ties—a fundamental principle of the effective application of reengineering—has a great chance of coming up against the rejection of those in charge of an organisational system like the present one that confers a great share of power and social relevance at no risk. What company director who does not feel that their future is at risk, and may be re-elected independently of management ef� ciency criteria, would feel tempted to introduce a system that may do away with the possibility of their permanence in the post? It may serve as proof of this that in the surveys on teaching quality that the universities normally carry out, these usually focus on the possible direct links with the teaching lecturer, without including questions in which the organisational responsibility or lack of means due to poor presidential management, may be made evident.

Teaching Staff

Here we might cite the inertia with respect to avoiding any change that may also mean a loss in badly understood privileges such as academic freedom until unknown limits. Whatever external suggestion relative to teaching more adequately, or to better adapting the focus of this towards certain social needs, would be accepted with dif� culty. Neither would calls for assuming new responsibilities and involvement in redesigning be well received, as occurs in any enterprise in which a new work methodology is implanted.

Administrative and Service Personnel

Alongside similar factors to those mentioned above for teaching staff (such as distrust when faced with a new process of unknown prospects), other highly complex ingredients appear such as the (at least apparent) possible loss of chances of promotion.

Unions

Any proposal that promotes responsibility, an increase in productivity and personal initiative will possibly be fought by the unions. To this is added the interest in maintaining a Taylorian structure and one of objectively unnecessary posts, based on the unions opposition to the loss of jobs. This argument would surely be erroneous, since with the new structure, jobs with a higher level of responsibility should be created, which suppose the development of tasks that demand greater involvement in the results of the institution.

Faced with this panorama, it might be thought that there is little chance of applying reengineering to the Spanish University. It does not seem that such radical initiatives

Business Process Reengineering 69

may emerge with force from within the institution and, therefore, only a political decision could decide the matter.

The Application of Reengineering to the University

Independently of the real dif� culties that the application of reengineering in Spanish (and other) universities means, we are next going to analyse how the seven fundamental points presented above as the basis of process reengineering would translate into speci� c measures.

First, one of the basic principles of reengineering, and to which it owes its name, is organisation by means of processes. In our case, everything relative to the students’ education and their resulting obtaining of employment in the labour market, or the obtaining of a research product and its publication, patent or technical project, is considered as a ‘process’. From this viewpoint, at least as far as teaching is concerned, we could say that the Spanish case with the Law of University Reform of 1983 abolished all possible organisation by means of processes. The transfer of the organisation of the teaching staff from the faculties or schools (the place where the � nal, differentiated product ‘is manufactured’, i.e. the trained student) to the departments (on occasions even many kilometres physically distant from the ‘production centre’) impedes the existence of real responsibility for the quality of the product that each centre generates. The consequence is immediate and evident: the possible lack of quality in the obtained product is diluted among a large number of lecturers from different departments or even Areas of Knowledge, with no relation with one another, without the centres in actual practice being able to redirect this unsatisfactory situation. Experience demonstrates that appeals to departments with respect to problems of quality are most scarce, and on the rare occasions that they occur, these turn out to be ineffective.

The LRU perhaps intended with this measure to abolish the existence of certain ‘private paradises’, hermetic redoubts of hidden inef� ciency, privileges or even tyrannies, that seemed to exist in certain centres and which gave rise to absurd situations, such as teaching staff and researchers in similar disciplines, working on similar themes, having no relation with one another, simply due to the fact of belonging to different faculties or schools. The subsequent effects were of two kinds: one positive, on achieving a certain homogeneity in the quality of lecturers in the different centres and a relative improve- ment in the research product, as a consequence of the promotion of teaching staff through the department; and another negative, in the sense mentioned above of the lack of personal responsibility in the teaching product obtained and the abolition of a reasonable hierarchy, which has led on occasions to the resulting inhibition and lack of motivation in teaching within the departmental framework, on the part of lecturers with greater experience. To this has to be added the decrease in interdisciplinary studies in the Areas of Knowledge, as a result of the obligatory grouping together of themes.

Second, the multifunctionality of workers (in this case, university teachers) that is propounded by reengineering does not seem to be easily assumed. A world as specialised as that of science cannot easily tend towards the production of generalists, due to the dif� culty of making profound studies in aspects of research, and even in those of teaching, but also due to the dif� culty of the academic returns on university lecturers. Nonetheless, a greater interrelation among the subject matters imparted should be demandable, so that the professional vision transmitted to students is more global and practical, the product of a sought after co-ordination, thus avoiding particular visions conditioned by lecturers whose knowledge is stagnated.

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The new study plans in the Spanish case propose a greater � exibility in the elaboration of the student’s personal curriculum, which means that lecturers have in-depth knowl- edge of different themes related to their area so as to be able to thus offer these as independent subjects. This tendency corresponds to the system followed in the universi- ties of other countries, in which instead of offering ‘all-weather’ subjects, with a wide content range, themes of greater specialisation are treated via independent subjects. Recent experience in Spain in this direction has frequently been a failure, due to a disproportionate increase in subject matters, resulting in excessive fragmentation and the interests of the respective Areas of Knowledge to maintain their speci� c weighting in degree courses. The result has been spectacular academic failure, which has still not been arrested.

On the other hand, from the viewpoint of production, the high level of fails produced in Spanish universities is alarming, above all when compared with that of other more scienti� cally and technically advanced countries. Any enterprise that invests substantial amounts of money in the transformation of certain raw materials and that, over a period of years, obtained similar levels of rejection, roundabout 50% at times, would have to consider an immediate reform. But whilst the university considers itself to be an institution in which the main goal is simply to overcome certain tests (on occasions, useless from a social and practical viewpoint) in order to obtain a degree, instead of an institution whose mission is to offer the future professional a useful and useable training, it will be dif� cult to be able to improve many of the factors that affect the quality perceived in this service.

Third, there are many cases of enterprises cited in the technical literature in which attention is drawn to the economic bene� ts resulting from a relaxation in control over the performance of workers, as these perceive that they are being allotted a greater decision capacity with the resulting increase in personal motivation. Accordingly, it should be expected that motivation in the university should be at a maximum, since it is dif� cult to imagine greater autonomy of work and working hours (Denning, 1997, quotes Humboldt when in the last century he stated that ‘the guiding principles of the universities are research and teaching, and for the teachers solitude and freedom’). This situation could be accept in the case of carrying out a follow-up of product quality, or at least, if this activity were regulated by the market. When this is not so, the current situation could give rise to aberrations and abuses, if the only real control exerted in the universities is basically the physical presence of the lecturer in class. Control of the subject matter imparted may be considered exceptional, which is not strange under the protection of the freedom of lectureship guaranteed in the Spanish case by the National Constitution of 1978 itself.

Fourth, as stated above, the structure of the current Spanish public university, with regards to teaching, is not exactly pyramidal but practically � at. The LRU left a legal vacuum such that, at least directly and based on law, there is no hierarchical power that obliges any lecturer, even a recently incorporated assistant, to impart a particular subject matter, with a particular content and in a particular way. Academic categories (professor, tenured lecturer, associate lecturer, assistant), at the end of the day, de� ne simple priorities in the choice of subjects to be imparted and, in certain cases, participation in certain boards or commissions. The organs of power are of the collegiate type, with the added fact that election of responsible posts, due to the public character of the centres, is carried out by those being administrated, with the evident collateral effects that this entails.

Fifth, the selection and promotion procedure has been, and still is, one of the most

Business Process Reengineering 71

polemical of those regulated by the LRU. In fact, the section relative to the selection of the teaching staff has been the subject of reiterated attempts at modi� cation, and international scienti� c journals (Anonymous, 1998) have even echoed in their editorials the aberrations that the system has given rise to.

The current selection criterion followed by Spanish universities consists primarily in evaluating the quantity and quality of work carried out in the past (fundamentally years of service and research, given the dif� culty of judging teaching quality). Reengineering propounds teamwork, giving priority to abilities, the capacity to manage teams and, in short, the capacity to satisfactorily resolve new situations. Curiously enough, these are precisely the contrary criteria to those used for the selection of management posts in the university (the president, the directors and deans of centres and departments), where the procedure employed is a plebiscite with fortuitous pre-selection of voters (workers and ‘semi-elaborated products’), which adds more noise (and control) to the system. This procedure is exclusive to the education sector, and is unknown in other public sectors, of equally vital importance to society, as is the case of the sanitary system.

From a business perspective, this system of management will never be able to guarantee that the decisions adopted are of the most interest to society or to the institution itself, but rather that there is a certain risk of the system trying to perpetuate the bene� t of those administrated, since these know that inappropriate decisions are never going to affect the economic viability nor the future of the enterprise. Obviously, this type of election of management posts neither guarantees that those elected are the most apt for occupying these posts, to the extent that personal qualities that facilitate election may have nothing to do with management ef� ciency. This system contrasts with the system in force in other countries, such as the United States, where management posts in the universities are of the professional kind.

Sixth, the support of those with political responsibilities is a key factor for promoting a change in the university. Without the incentive of pressure from public powers, it seems dif� cult for structures that are generally veritable mastodons, as is the case of our universities, to internally and spontaneously generate changes. In fact, there are very few Spanish university centres that have set up programmes as elemental as Quality Improvement, in contrast with what has occurred in the majority of enterprises.

Seventh, if any one institution has to lead technological advances, this must be the university, as a generator of future technological innovations in enterprise. The universi- ties of the whole world have served to create the critical mass that popularised access to the Internet, have been pioneers in the use of personal computers and, in short, are going to be and must be in the vanguard of implantation of the new technologies. In the case of the activities of teaching and research, the new tendencies are to be found in the use of telematics (Nasseh, 1996). Over the next few years, the use of non-printed teaching material will surely become generalised, along with access to virtual libraries, the use of large, online databases and of tools for selecting information in a world that � nds itself inundated by this. Tsichritzis (1999) considers that with the new technologies (Internet allowing virtual classrooms and up-to-date material for seminar discussion, computer simulation substituting labs, etc.), professors will be needed only to the extent that they produce content in their area, and therefore their number can be greatly reduced (‘they need to be talented both as specialists and as lecturers in order to compete globally’).

It does not hence seem logical that precisely this institution closes the door to regenerating itself via a reengineering process, accepted and adopted by an ever growing number of enterprises with a desire to innovate and whose intention it is to survive.

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Conclusions

The present article has analysed, on the one hand, the objective need for a reform in the ‘productive’ structure of the university, focusing on the Spanish case, and on the other, the elements that hamper the viability of introducing this reform. Considering the successful results achieved with the techniques of process reengineering in the renovation of enterprises, it seems that this is an adequate technique for achieving this goal, provided that the university is considered an enterprise with its own particular characteristics, but in which the ‘productive’ goals are perfectly identi� able. Once the priority of a university organisation based on ‘processes’ instead of the consideration of ‘departments’ as the unit of activity is accepted, the possibility of action may begin to be de� ned.

In accordance with the aforementioned analysis, a series of measures to adopt has been proposed, derived from the idea of process reengineering.

· It is necessary to cede greater control to the centres (faculties and schools) over the quality of the subject matter imparted within their ambits by the different depart- ments, creating a stable relationship of teaching staff with the centre, impelling a greater degree of co-ordination among the areas that impart the disciplines and de� ning the responsibility for the quality of the services lent as a function of the obtaining of the degree more clearly, as well as assigning a greater degree of real power of decision to the centre, in order to ful� l these goals.

· Demands should be made on the teaching staff with regards to their contribution capacity so as to be able to offer a wider range of up-to-date themes, moving from an excessively generalist vision of the subject matters imparted to � exible study plans with useful and practical contents, avoiding the inconveniences that have been observed in the implantation of the current study plans and the concept of establishing barriers to obtaining the degree as the overall goal of university studies.

· The administrative structure of the Spanish University should be modi� ed with respect to the system of management by professionalising its management posts and granting these the freedom of decision-making with respect to those that they administrate. As mentioned above, alternatives such as those adopted in the United States may be of interest, naming for these management posts professional in the latter stage of their teaching career, with no new prospects in this � eld, but of course, who come from other universities

· Those who are politically responsible should promote a new style of university, incentivating, even economically, a greater competivity and desire for innovation in the universities, justi� ed by the latter’s � nancing with public funding, which will lead to increased ef� ciency in the employment of the assets invested.

· Investment in technological development and its transfer to enterprise from the university is a precondition for the competivity of local and national industry, the area of information technology being particularly relevant in this respect.

Correspondence: Belarmino Adenso-D ṍ az, ETS Ingenieros Industriales, Universidad de Oviedo, Campus de Viesques 33204-Gijón, Spain. Tel.: 98 5182108; Fax: 98 5182150; E-mail: [email protected]

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