Leading a Fundamentally Detuned Choir: University of Tampere, Finland

Home , Tampere University

[Draft chapter – will be published in Goddard, J., Hazelkorn, E., Kempton, L. & Vallance, P. The Civic University: the Policy and Leadership Challenges. Edwar Elgar.]

Markku Sotarauta

Leading a Fundamentally Detuned Choir: University of Tampere, Finland – A Civic University?

1 Introduction A university is an academic ensemble of scholars who are specialised and deeply dedicated to a particular branch of study. Often scholars are passionate about what they do, and are willing to listen only to those people they respect, that is their colleagues and peers, but not necessarily heads of their departments, faculties or research centres. Despite many efforts, university leaders more often than not find it difficult to make academic ensembles sing the same song. If a group of singers perform together, it is indeed a choir. A community of scholars is not necessarily so. Singers agree on what to sing and how, they know their sheets, and a choir leader conducts them. A community of scholars, however, is engaged in a continuous search for knowledge through the process of thesis and antithesis, debates, as well as conflicts and fierce rivalry – without an overarching conductor. Universities indeed are different sorts of ensembles, as scholars may not agree about what is and is not important for a university as a whole. By definition a university is not a well-tuned chorus but a proudly and fundamentally detuned one. Leadership in, and of, this kind of organic entity is a challenge in itself, not to mention navigating the whole spectrum of existing and potential stakeholders. Cohen and March (1974) see universities as ‘organized anarchies’, as the faculty members’ personal ambitions and goals as well as fluid participation in decision- making suggest that universities are managed in decidedly non-hierarchical terms, but still within the structure of a formally organised hierarchy. Goddard (2009) reminds us that universities are managed as they are simply because it is possible to do so. Indeed, managing a hierarchy of deans and heads of discipline-based departments provides universities with a sense of control and certainty, overseeing a matrix of activities ranging from teaching, research and support services to respond to external needs, and thus is not a joyride (Goddard 2009). This chapter examines the leadership challenge by discussing one specific ‘detuned choir of scholars’, namely the University of Tampere (Finland), and by using the concept ‘Civic University’ as a focusing device to do so. It is based on: (a) the survey of academic staff carried out in November and December 2012, (b) a development workshop to explore the survey findings and discuss them with the Rector’s Senior Management Team, and (c) relevant statistics. The workshop was held on the 5th of March 2013, and the two vice-rectors, all nine

deans, and chief of administration attended it. There were 243 respondents in the survey, and the response rate was 24 %. The sample represents well the disciplinary constellation of the entire academic community of University of Tampere (UTA).

2 The University of Tampere and the city it is embedded in UTA was established in Helsinki in 1925 as an institution generally referred to as a Civic College. The College aimed at providing education to those sectors of the population, especially young people in rural areas, who were in need of enhanced higher education but who were easily left out. In 1960, the institution moved to Tampere. Within six years student intake increased fivefold and the specialised college transformed itself to a multi-faculty university (Origins… 2014). The College’s transfer from Helsinki to Tampere was influenced both by propelling forces in the capital and attractive factors in Tampere. The role of the College in Helsinki, among real universities, was not particularly strong, and Tampere had a fierce desire to have its own university. The transfer was finally realised as a result of the active efforts of City of Tampere and other influential local actors. Differently from many other Finnish universities, the establishment and final location of UTA have not been influenced by regional policy but local development activity. UTA has neither been supported by regional policy due to its location in Southern Finland. The city of Tampere sought to offer educational opportunities for young people and simultaneously prevent a brain drain. A few decades later it is possible to conclude that the brain drain has been reversed. UTA recruits students from all over Finland, the majority of them recruited from the Tampere region (46 %) and from the Helsinki region (17 %). In 2013, more than half (50.3 %) of the graduates found their first job after graduation in Tampere and every fourth (25.1 %) left for the Helsinki region whereas, in the early 1980’s the respective figures were 35.5 % (Tampere region) and 25.2 % (Helsinki region) (Source: UTA Statistics). Particularly in the beginning, after the move, the city of Tampere provided strong financial support to the university. In 1966, the name of the College was changed to the University of Tampere, and in 1974 it became a state university like all the other universities in the country (see Rasila 1992; Seppälä 1998; Kaarninen 2000; Kostiainen & Sotarauta 2003). In 2010, the legal status of the Finnish universities changed, and according to the new University Act, they are either public universities under public law or foundation universities under the Foundations Act. UTA belongs to the first category. As it is habitual to point out at UTA, the original mission of the University was endowed with a singularly clear and extensive mission to serve society, and to this day the University of Tampere has retained its strong orientation to society, to public and private services and to professional university education (What makes… 2014). Today, the University of Tampere is the most social science specialised university in Finland. It represents approximately 25 % of social science education in Finland, and more than one third of the master’s degrees awarded by the University are in the social sciences, and another 20 % in humanistic fields, 10 % in business studies and 12 % in education. Also health sciences, representing 5 % of master’s degrees, is social science oriented at UTA, and thus more than 70 % of the master’s degrees are non-

science by nature. The University of Tampere hosts approximately 16,000 degree students and 8,500 non-degree students with around 2,000 staff members. For several years, the University of Tampere has been the most selective of the Finnish universities. For example, in 2014 UTA received 17,784 applications accepting only 1,300 (acceptance rate was 7.3 %). Tampere is the second largest city-region in Finland. It consists of nine independent municipalities. Its population is 387,000 (the city of Tampere itself has a population of 220,400) (Statistics Finland). Tampere is a city accustomed to continuous change throughout its history. First, it developed from a small village into Finland’s leading industrial town (19th century). When traditional industry (textile and engineering industries) fell into crisis (from 70’s to 90’s), Tampere once more had to recreate itself and has since risen to a position as one of the top knowledge cities in Finland, and also beyond (Kostiainen & Sotarauta 2003). Today, it is quite generally acknowledged that Tampere is among the leading Finnish ‘knowledge cities’, as it is the second R&D–centre in the country with a share of 14.5 % of national R&D spending which in absolute terms was € 1,040 million in 2011 (Statistics Finland). Both of the universities in Tampere (UTA and the Tampere University of Technology) have been able to contribute to and exploit the spatially blind innovation policy and local innovation policies. According to Benneworth’s (2007) analysis, Tampere has undergone several regional innovative journeys with a high degree of success. Tampere’s assets have been: (a) long-term coevolution with global and national developments, in which (b) good local adaptive capacity has been the core. For its part, the adaptive capacity has consciously been improved by (c) proactive local economic (and also later innovation) development policy. All these factors have greatly benefitted from (d) a good geographical location in Finland (junction of railways in Southern Finland). Additionally, (e) universities have had a central position in local efforts to boost development both as targets of policy and core assets of it. Eventually, (f) all these factors combined have contributed to Tampere’s reputation that is according to national surveys the best among the Finnish cities. In sum, for some time the Tampere city-region has been among the fastest growing city-regions in Finland. And it has a very favourable image based on increase of jobs, central location and good connections, and the cultural amenities of the city. The economic recessions of the early 2000s have challenged Tampere’s industries again, but so far the city has been able to cope with continuous change (see Björklund 1993; Jutikkala 1979; Kostiainen & Sotarauta 2003; Benneworth 2007; Martínez-Vela & Viljamaa 2003; Martínez-Vela 2007 Kostiainen 2002; Kautonen 2006; Haapala 1986; Parkinson et al 2012).

3 The institutional mission of the University of Tampere and internal management Finland has throughout its independence (since 1917) placed high emphasis on education, and even though the higher education system has undergone many reforms, the value of the Finnish universities has never been questioned (Cai & Kivistö 2011). In public debate, initiated formally for example by the Research and Innovation Council of Finland as well as media (Uudistuva Suomi… 2014), several issues concerning universities have constantly been raised but they are related to the international position of the Finnish universities (ranking frenzy), the

size of the universities (too small, mergers called for and implemented), their collaboration with the firms and other actors (civic engagement), and study times (it takes too long to graduate) but not on their value as core of societal development. In spite of some recent cuts in public expenditure, the funding of the Finnish universities has been relatively stable. Of course, there is an on-going discussion about how universities benefit society and the economy but it is more focused on how to strengthen their role in economic development and innovation systems instead of questioning the value of universities as such. The Finnish University Act (558/2009) states that ‘the mission of the universities is to promote free research and academic and artistic education, to provide higher education based on research, and to educate students to serve their country and humanity. In carrying out their mission, the universities must promote lifelong learning, interact with the surrounding society and promote the impact of research findings and artistic activities on society’. Consequently, the Government expects universities to systematically build their civic role. As there are no concrete incentives in the funding system to support this objective, the government’s influence is not particularly strong in these respects. However, the Finnish universities have a long tradition in intensive grass-roots level collaboration with both public and private organisations. The new developments (most notably the funding system) push universities rather towards academic excellence than civic engagement. In 2009-2010, the University of Tampere formulated a new strategy that was labelled ‘Let’s shape the future: Change in the University of Tampere 2010 – 2015’ (Tehdään tulevaisuus 2010). The main objective was to make the university more manageable and streamlined, and thus to provide the faculty with more research time instead of administrative tasks. The main rationale of the reforms was to provide the staff with improved opportunities for research and international co-operation, and involve external stakeholders in decision-making representing private, public and the third sector organisations. As outlined in the strategy, the university streamlined its administrative structure in the following ways: • Closure and regrouping - All the academic departments (38) and faculties (6) were closed, and regrouped into nine schools (that do not have departments). • New service unit - The faculty and department specific administrative services were moved to ‘UTA university services’ that serves all the schools. Simultaneously, UTA university services has been able to cut its personnel expenditure by 10 %, and thus, financial resources have been shifted from administration to research and teaching • From disciplines to programmes – The entire University moved from discipline-based education to degree programme-based education, and consequently repositioned small disciplines in a wider educational structure. • From elected to appointed leadership - Full-time appointed deans and concise boards instead of elected deans and large faculty councils were established to lead the schools. • From internal boards to mixed boards - The Boards of the University and its schools have representatives from all personnel categories and students but in addition to that there are also one to three external members on the boards. On the University board, there are five external and six (including two students) internal members. • From separate extension studies centre to school specific services - the University of Tampere Centre for Extension studies was closed as well as the separate unit

responsible for Open University activities. All the projects, training programmes and other activities of these fairly independent units were integrated into the newly established schools. The main rationale was to see educational outreach activities as an elemental part of research and degree programmes, and hence bring them under the direct supervision of the Deans instead of separate directors. All this was believed to bring civic activities closer to academic research and teaching. The nine new schools are: • BioMediTech (joint institute with the Tampere University of Technology in the field of biosciences) • School of Communication, Media and Theatre • School of Education • School of Health Sciences • School of Information Sciences • School of Language, Translation and Literary Studies • School of Management • School of Medicine • School of Social Sciences and Humanities The social sciences oriented profile of UTA is reflected in its research activity that focuses on, broadly speaking, society, health and well-being. These are approached from the perspective of numerous research areas. More specifically, the identified research strengths are information, information technology and knowledge; cities, the environment and the regions; journalism and media; change of society; and the health of the population. In its strategy, the University of Tampere does not label civic engagement as ‘the third mission’ but something that is the main mission and is deeply integrated in all its research and teaching activities. According to the strategy formulation (Tehdään tulevaisuus 2010), UTA participates openly and actively in societal debates. The strategy also states that it carries out its research and educational tasks in collaboration with the state of Finland, municipalities, firms and civic groups.

4 The university and the outside world

4.1 Civic by history but strategic efforts trail behind

In its vision and mission statement, UTA has articulated its intent to be of service to society but, to some extent, even though the strategy approach is explicated, engagement activities still tend to depend fairly largely on activities of individuals; only every third survey respondent felt that he/she has been actively encouraged and supported by the University (Table 1). The most important sources of encouragement are colleagues (68 %), personal values and motivations (65 %), and the department or other academic unit (53.5 %). In the Civic University Workshop, it was concluded that, in spite of the fact that civic thinking is deeply embedded into the core values of the University and explicated in the strategy, UTA struggles to translate this into organised and systematic action.

TABLE 1. The experiences of encouragement and support received from the University, the share of respondents agreeing with the statement (%) (n=195) (source: the UTA survey)

I felt actively encouraged and supported by my institution to build and 34.4% maintain collaborative relationships

I did not feel particularly encouraged or incentivised to develop 34.9% collaborative relationships, but there is support available if I need it

I felt encouraged to develop collaborative relationships, but there was 17.4% not enough support to help build/maintain them

I did not feel encouraged or supported 11.3%

I felt discouraged from pursing collaborative relationships 2.1%

Even though the university is not encouraging and supporting ‘academic choirs and individual singers’ to build and maintain collaborative relationships, a fairly large number of the academic staff collaborates with external partners, as, in the survey, 36 % of the respondents reported extensive collaboration with the external partners, and 35 % moderate collaboration. Only 6 % of the respondents reported that they have not had any collaboration with external partners. At the same time, the amount of time the academic staff is spending on collaborative projects has been steadily increasing during the past three years. Nearly half (47 %) of the survey respondents reported increasing collaboration with external partners while only 13 % had experienced a decrease of collaborative projects. Additionally, in 2014 UTA was working to introduce a systematic ‘stakeholder portfolio’ to deepen its collaboration with selected partners in solving societal problems and responding to the needs of its main partners via strategic dialogue. The University of Tampere, and the universities in Finland more broadly, are engaged in an on-going discussion with the main stakeholders at many levels. The survey showed that more often than not the main partners are found in the public sector (if other universities are excluded), and the most common activity is supporting public policy development (Table 2 and Figure 1). This is also reflected in the fact that approximately 60 % of the graduates of the University find their first job in the public sector (UTA Statistics). As a social sciences and health profiled university with the strongest public administration education and research in Finland, public policy oriented partnerships are natural for UTA. Strategic discussions with the main stakeholders are more geared towards supporting the partners instead of the University, and hence they do not directly and formally contribute to the definition of the University’s mission and strategies; indirectly, in the long run, they undoubtedly shape the thinking at the University both from bottom-up and top-down. Introduction of external members in the University and School boards have undoubtedly changed the situation to some extent. With an increasing number of external partnerships, and with some of the schools being able to translate their services into systematic action, it might be possible to conclude that the University of Tampere is hovering somewhere between ‘emerging’ and ‘evolving’ stages, coming to a sense of purpose and active engagement as part of the Civic University model presented in Chapter 1 of the Book.

TABLE 2. The main groups of collaboration, and their geographical nature, % of all responses (source: the UTA survey) (n=195)

Local/Regional National International

Private company - less than 250 employees 15.9 15.4 8.2

Private company - more than 250 employees 8.2 12.3 13.3

Other university 15.4 62.1 65.1

Other educational institution 13.3 22.6 11.8

Research institute (public) 6.2 34.9 20.5

Research institute (private) 2.6 7.7 5.1

Government/public sector 15.9 37.9 12.3

Charity 2.1 4.6 3.6

Other non-profit 1.5 11.3 6.7

Policy institute/'think tank' 2.1 8.7 5.1

Suppor9ng#local#or#na9onal#public#sector#policy#development#

Consultancy#services#

Outreach#work#aimed#at#increasing#public#understanding#of#science#(e.g.#sharing## research#ﬁndings#in#public#arenas)#

Joint#research#with#non#academic#partners#

Par9cipa9ng#in#non#academic#groups#or#networks#

Delivering#professional#training/CPD#

Joint#publica9ons#with#non#academic#partners#

Arranging#internships#or#placements#for#students#

Outreach#work#aimed#at#increasing#par9cipa9on#of#young#people#in#higher# educa9on#

Other##

Suppor9ng#local#cultural#organisa9ons#with#their#programmes#(e.g.#museums,# galleries,#theatres,#museums#etc.)#

A#new#business#startup#or#spin#out#(your#own#or#suppor9ng#colleagues#or# students)#

0,00#%# 5,00#%# 10,00#%#15,00#%#20,00#%#25,00#%#30,00#%#35,00#%#40,00#%#45,00#%#50,00#%#

FIGURE 1. The main collaborative activities (n=170)

At all events, there are conscious attempts to create links between teaching, research and engagement activities; some formal mechanisms exist and new ones are designed. However, there are only limited investments in external projects at the university level, as the support is mainly linked to advancement of academic research. Specific groups and/or other academic

units generally lead activities, and again, it is possible to conclude that UTA is hovering between ‘emerging’ and ‘evolving’ stages in its willingness to invest. One of the main issues is that there are no nationally accepted indicators to measure the civic engagement, or its benefits and outcomes. On the contrary, the Finnish university funding system is quite largely based on educational and research outputs, and thus universities are not encouraged to push for civic engagement but to focus on academic excellence. At UTA, in addition to their educational and research output, the faculty members are asked to report on various expert tasks that are categorised as follows: consulting, education (for non-academic audiences), elected official positions, expert interviews (media), and memberships in expert groups, decision making bodies, etc. While it is compulsory to report all the research and academic education related activities, reporting expert tasks is on a voluntary basis, as they are not included in the university funding system. In spite of this, most of the faculty members report their expert activities but the data as a whole is incomplete and incoherent. One might conclude that transparency and accountability of civic engagement are somewhere between embryonic and emerging stages. As said above, civic engagement is embedded in many activities at UTA at grassroots level, and partly because of that civic engagement has not emerged in strategic contemplations as a priority topic. During the past few years, however, there have been explicit debates about how to move forward also on this front, and thus also the risks involved in civic engagement have sometimes surfaced. As the new national funding model emphasises research excellence much more explicitly than the previous one, and as internationally acclaimed high-quality research is somewhat unevenly distributed at the University of Tampere, the university leadership has focused on strengthening the research capacity by introducing a new internal funding system, and improving the conditions for research more broadly as well as by emphasising research excellence in the recruitment processes even more than before. The University of Tampere is very explicitly aiming at raising the bar for core outputs of academic excellence. There is no criticism towards the increased emphasis on research among the faculty, but there is a growing awareness that, in many disciplines, it is fairly hard to carry out high-level international research and simultaneously be deeply engaged. All this is leading to a growing understanding of the need to organise civic engagement more systematically than before, and sharpen the division of labour between faculty members as well as academic units. Some of the schools have already been evolving along these lines. The most important measure at the university level is to identify strategic partners with whom the entire university is committed to collaborate in the long-run. However, it is fairly difficult to say anything definitive about the holistic approach at the level of the entire university. In the workshop, in the spirit of critical self-reflection, it was concluded that, in spite of the strategy, civic engagement is still seen as additional, optional and/or confined to specific individual needs. At the same time, it should be acknowledged that UTA does have its own radio station, theatre (attached to Theatre Arts Programme), extensive trainee programmes, a very large number of faculty members serve on public committees and boards of firms, hundreds of applied research projects with a variety of partners, and in many courses a constant stream of

visiting lecturers from the private and public sectors. Additionally, the School of Management hosts the Research and Education Centre Synergos that is an academic service unit with more than 30 academic researchers and educational coordinators working with private and public sector actors. It is a completely market-based service unit that provides its customers with applied research, training programmes (including several eMBAs) and evaluation and development projects. Its annual turnover is approximately €3.0 million. As a whole, it might be possible to say that the University of Tampere has a strong sense of place. The place, city-region of Tampere, is not perhaps seen as a ‘living laboratory’ by the University, but it is recognised in many disciplines that the strong industrial heritage and a city being in a continuous transformation provides academic research and education with plenty of opportunities. UTA collaborates closely, for example, with the city of Tampere and the Tampere University Hospital in many fields and at all levels. However, UTA has not sought to integrate itself within the local area by ensuring that its buildings and infrastructure are utilised by local communities and the environment. This may be due to extensive societal offerings of the local government as well as a moderately long history of public and private service providers of science park and/or technology centre services. Traditionally, universities have not had much space, or a need, to operate in these kinds of issues, as the division of labour between various actors has been quite different from the UK and USA, for example. With the emergence of Aalto University and its new models, on the one hand, and the University Properties of Finland Ltd that manages the entire university infrastructure outside the Helsinki Metropolitan Area, on the other hand, the situation may be changing in these respects too.

4.2 Demola – a new way to connect students to practice, and practice to students

The most interesting of the new collaborative schemes in Tampere is Demola that is a joint effort of UTA, Tampere University of Technology, Tampere University of Applied Sciences, local and regional authorities, and firms. It is one of the four core elements of the so-called ‘New Factory’ of Tampere. All four elements - Demola, Protomo, Suuntaamo and Accelerator - have their own functions and objectives but they all aim at enabling new businesses to emerge through collaborative innovation processes. Demola clearly is a methodologically innovative way to connect various actors and activities together, as it takes a user led approach to designing services and products both with private and public partners and connecting all this to degree programmes of two universities and one polytechnic institute. Demola markets itself to the students as follows:

‘Demola offers university students a great opportunity to add some real-life twist into the conventional path towards a career. It means that you work in a project with a multidisciplinary team to solve real-life cases together with partner companies. And yes, it’s all part of your degree program’ (tampere.demola.net, accessed May 15, 2014).

For companies, it markets as follows:

‘As a Demola partner you can provide the talented student teams real-life problems and new opportunities. Setting up a Demola case doesn’t include any starting fees. Only results matter. If the project results meet the planned objectives, you can license shared rights or purchase all rights back

to your business. This open innovation model is designed and approved together with project partners meeting the needs of the legal policies of global enterprises’ (tampere.demola.net, accessed May 15, 2014).

Since its establishment there have been around 2000 students participating more that 400 Demola projects. Demola has expanded from Tampere to Oulu (Finland), Vilnius (Lithuania), Budapest (Hungary), Lund (Sweden), Maribor (Slovenia), Riga (Latvia), Guadalajara (Mexico) and the Basque Country. Demola has become an international network that offers even more opportunities for novel combinations. In Tampere, partners in Demola projects range from: (a) corporate giants such as Intel, ABB, YIT, Metso, Konecranes, and Nokian Tyres, (b) to local and national government, (c) to the National Broadcasting Company of Finland (YLE) and other media companies, and (d) to third sector organisations. The projects include, for example, usage of the smart phones in crane maintenance and related services (for KoneCranes), designing a novel format for the Broadcasting Company of Finland (YLE) that would be of interest to people aged 20 to 30, and finding novel ways to use the extensive data, archived in the National Library of Finland, in basic education. In Demola, the core idea is to generate prototypes and demonstrations drawing upon problems and challenges that private firms, but also public sector and third sector organisations, typically present, and multidisciplinary student teams work on to find solutions. Raunio et al. (2013, 26) summarises a typical Demola collaboration scenario as follows: (a) a firm, or other organisation, introduces a problem or initial idea (in short, ‘a challenge’) that is subject to high levels of uncertainty, and outsources it for further development to Demola with the main objective being a prototype or demonstration; (b) a challenge is evaluated and formalised into a project design by Demola; (c) a multidisciplinary student team (usually from more than one university) is assembled to work with a challenge, and a project contract is signed by the organisation posing the challenge and the student team including issues related to intellectual property rights and the timetable; (c) concept development lasts from three to eight months. Demola staff members and the respective organisation support the student team (this phase may include prototype testing conducted with the users); (d) the student team demonstrates the proposed solution or prototype, which is followed by project evaluation and the finalisation of license agreements. Additionally, in the Demola model, the student team owns the institutional property rights possibly generated in the project and they may create a start-up of their own if the organisation that introduced the challenge in the first place does not use its privilege to acquire a license from students. Indeed, at the end of the project, the partner organisation may acquire a license and reward the students according to the criteria agreed earlier (Raunio et al. 2013, 26).

A firm or public Possible organization, financial or other organization compensation Solution

Credits

A challenge Experience

Contacts Demola University of Tampere

Tampere Univ. of Tech Multidisciplinary group of students Tampere Univ. of Applied sciences

Guidance

FIGURE 2. The operative model of Demola

Demola represents a fairly typical Finnish ‘civic engagement model’, as it is based on extensive collaboration between firms, public sector actors and higher education institutions. Other examples include Centre of Expertise Programme (1994-2013), Strategic Centres for Science, Technology and Innovation (2007->) and Innovative Cities -programme (see Sotarauta 2012). Evolution of these kinds of models has led to a situation where many of the Finnish universities have not been strategic in their own engagement efforts, as there is a network of actors around them constructing collaborative models with, and for, the universities. With the establishment of Aalto University, and its active construction of new operational models, and changes in national urban, regional and innovation policies, universities are becoming more strategic in their own engagement efforts and they are also taking the lead in these efforts more often than earlier. In a way, it seems that Finland is gradually moving away from emphasising ‘system building’ and ‘networking’ towards competitive and individual organisation based models that have been used for funding in the UK and USA. Only time will tell if this is a positive trend or not.

5 Tensioned issues and leadership The University of Tampere has carried out a major structural reform to reorganise its degree programmes and increase research quantity and quality. Quite naturally, in the midst of a major reform, some tensions have emerged that take us back to the issue of leading a detuned multi-voice chorus. To some extent, UTA has become more ‘manageable’ and ‘streamlined’, and thus the question of whether the new structure truly enhances freely flowing actions of individual scholars and research groups, or is rather hampering them, has surfaced as expected. This observation leads us to the question ‘how multi-voice detuned choirs are led’, or ‘how to let them be out of sync but continuously searching for harmonious tunes’. This may be one of the most crucial issues in leading the balance between research excellence and civic engagement. Research excellence and civic engagement have co-existed at the University for a

long period of time without much debate or tensions between them. As the University of Tampere has a long history as a ‘civic university’, civic engagement has been seen as a natural part of its activities, especially at individual and research group levels. If the university leadership does not appreciate the multi-voice and fiercely competitive nature of research excellence, and if it does not recognise and value the built-in energy of academic choirs at UTA, something valuable is lost. It is argued here that the detuned nature of an academic community is the very source of research excellence as well as productive civic engagement. In times of structural reforms, university leadership has been very much occupied with managerial issues, and encouragement and incentives for finding a new balance between research excellence and civic engagement has, to some extent, been lost under a heavy pile of structural issues, especially when the external drivers stress heavily research excellence. Two MIT professors, Richard Lester and Michael Piore crystallised the role of MIT in economic development, and also the danger looming behind the corner, by saying that if MIT began to think like an R&D–department of Microsoft, it would soon have nothing to add to Microsoft’s interpretation of the world. Said differently, Lester and Piore would not like to see MIT turning into an average consulting firm or an R&D–department of a corporate giant like Microsoft. Similarly, the value of UTA is that the University can bring something very different into play from other organisations. Detuned choirs cannot be conducted, but it is exactly the detuned nature of an academic choir that adds value in society in the long run. UTA is not only providing its civic partners with immediate answers to identified questions but more importantly helping them to think differently, providing them with alternative points of views to issues that appear self-evident to many, and thus challenging the prevailing mind-sets. In many universities, including the University of Tampere, it has become habitual to emphasise the power of a shared vision and well-designed strategies in the efforts to find a common tune. This is a tempting prospect, is it not? A group of scholars would agree on what the desired future might look like, and be willingly shepherded in the same direction. In practice, however, it is more likely that academic choirs challenge the very idea of having a shared vision. They might end up criticising the management that drags them from real work to ‘play the strategy games’ that, for many, are a waste of valuable research time. This is a situation at UTA. It does not cause major hassle but continuous lamentation on the corridors of the university. It seems obvious that detuned choirs of scholars are not easily to be led by a traditional planning cycle flowing from analysis to vision making, to planning, to decision- making to evaluation or using simplified management tools. Instead, it might be possible to use the ‘debate power’ of any real community of scholars – let the arguments battle, and visions emerge in a never-ending process. This balanced has been sought for at UTA, and the university leadership has, with varying success, steadily added new tools in its repertoire to engage various academic communities in the debate concerning the future strategies. At UTA, the strategy focuses on structures, and structures have indeed been renewed accordingly, but all this has left the university with a gradually increasing need to find out why the structures were renewed (yes, the financial situation has improved and yes, hierarchy is now more straightforward) – but the question ‘what is our purpose’ is not adequately debated

– what does being a civic university mean? These kinds of questions may never be exhaustively answered except by engaging in a never-ending debate about the nature of the university, which might actually be the way to help academic choirs sing more loudly, if not in a tuned manner. This may comprise the core of leadership in a civic university. Interpretive power may sometimes show the way to institutional power (see Sotarauta 2009). The main tension is the fact that the University of Tampere is a civic university according to its history, internal culture and values, but through its journey it has not systematically developed itself as such. There have not been many strategic efforts to strengthen and exploit the very nature of the University. It may be that ‘the civic nature’ has been taken for granted and development efforts have thus targeted other issues. The concept of civic engagement is not formalized and it is not officially embedded in the strategy. Instead, the focus clearly is on international research excellence.

6 Conclusions At the University of Tampere, the concept of civic engagement is not formalised or officially embedded in the strategy even though its importance is acknowledged and practiced in many ways. New collaboration patterns emerge continuously but, as concluded in the workshop of the Rector’s senior management team, the partnerships are not managed as strategically and holistically as hoped. Simultaneously, the workshop participants were fully aware that the detuned choir of active scholars sits at the very core of every effort to reach wider audiences, and that centrally co-ordinated efforts may sometimes harm the bottom-up processes instead of boosting them. It is argued here that a Civic University, and its web of relationships rely on individual activity and motivation, but as the web easily evolves to being overly complex, leadership processes and fairly streamlined structures are needed to support civic university developments, and all the complex networks it is so dependent on. As the experience of the University of Tampere shows, streamlining structures may benefit the scholarly choirs, one way or another, but it also shows that there is a need to balance managerial and structural efforts with intellectual debate penetrating through and beyond governance systems and structures. A Civic University evolves with its freely flowing choirs, and a combination of streamlined management structures and endless talk may be of use in the efforts to find occasional melody from an academic cacophony. The civic engagement processes need to respect the core values of good scholarship, related scholarly communities and the university itself – detuned cacophony is not bad for civic engagement; instead it may be the core.

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