Abdulrahman AI-Youbi Adnan H. M. Zahed William G. Tierney Editors

# Successful Global Collaborations in Higher Education Institutions

Successful Global Collaborations in Higher Education Institutions

Abdulrahman AI-Youbi • Adnan H. M. Zahed • William G. Tierney Editors

# Successful Global Collaborations in Higher Education Institutions

Editors Abdulrahman AI-Youbi King Abdulaziz University (KAU) Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

William G. Tierney Pullias Center for Higher Education University of Southern California Los Angeles, USA

Adnan H. M. Zahed King Abdulaziz University Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

ISBN 978-3-030-25524-4 ISBN 978-3-030-25525-1 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25525-1

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2020. This book is an open access publication.

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# Acknowledgements

The editors would like to express their sincere appreciation and gratitude to all the contributors. It is also a pleasure to acknowledge the outstanding help of Profs. Mahmoud Nadim Nahas and Ahmad Abousree Hegazy during the course of preparing the manuscripts of the book. Many thanks are also due to Dr. Abdullah Al-Bargi and Mr. Michael Taylor for editing and proofreading the chapters of the book.

# Introduction

Universities used to be discrete organizations. Perhaps no more than a dozen universities had global aspirations prior to the twenty-first century. Many universities may have had important implications for the country where they existed, but their roles, governance structures, and organizational structures were relatively clear. Universities taught students from the country where they were situated. Faculty did discrete research that largely focused on national problems (and was funded through national funding). Institutions either were public and supported by the state or they were private and charged student's tuition. The president (or vice chancellor) had a thin staff of administrative assistants who supported the faculty in teaching and conducting research.

Although the modern research university derives from Europe and the USA, universities have existed throughout the world for centuries. Nalanda University in India was a Buddhist center for learning as far back as 427 AD [1]. The University of Ez-Zitouna was established in 737 AD in Qirwan, Tunisia [2]. The Cordoba Mosque was built in Muslim Iberia (Muslim Spain) in 786 AD and later became the greatest university in Europe during the medieval era [3], where Pope Sylvester II studied when he was a bishop [4]. The University of al-Qarawiyyin opened in 859 AD in Fez, Morocco [5], and Al-Azhar University began in Cairo, Egypt, in 970 AD [6]. The University of Bologna came onto the scene in 1088 [7]. Although these early universities had foreign students and faculty, the norm has been that a university serves the needs of the country where it is located. Most of the students and a majority of the faculty were locals.

When a university thought about foreign affairs, the assumption was that they needed to create a "semester abroad" for undergraduate students. By the 1960s, numerous universities had established simple relationships with universities in foreign countries so that students might gain cross-cultural experience. The "semester abroad" was a good advertisement for a university, but the experience was generally for fewer than 10% of the student population, and the costs were negligible.

Faculty also, on occasion, had a sabbatical in a foreign country. The Fulbright Fellowship Program, founded by the US Senator J. William Fulbright in 1946 [8], enabled US faculty to study abroad for a semester or two, and foreign faculty received scholarships to study in the USA. Post-World War II funding programs aimed to provide opportunities for foreign students to study in the USA. However, even these programs were relatively small and circumscribed.

There is no exact point when universities became more invested in international strategies, but the 1980s was a time of significant growth. China recognized that they needed to enhance their system of higher education and began sending thousands of students to the USA and Australia. Many developing countries, including Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Pakistan, and India sent hundreds of thousands of students to the UK and the USA for quality education, especially for Master's and Doctorate degrees, to prepare them to be faculty in the universities they graduated from. The host countries benefitted from the foreign students who added to the diversity of their institutions and also provided a new revenue stream for them.

By the twenty-first century, two factors became evident. First, higher education was a growth industry. Massification became the norm as numerous countries tried to expand and open tertiary institutions. The knowledge economy demanded an educated citizenry, so new universities developed and more students entered higher education. Many countries had global aspirations to be considered among the top tier of world-class institutions. Second, foreign students generated revenue. Students from abroad generally could afford to pay full tuition; therefore, what was once an informal activity took on more importance. Although foreign student enrollment generated revenue in countries such as the USA and Australia, even small countries, such as Taiwan and Malaysia, recognized that reaching beyond their borders was a good idea. Malaysia wanted to be a hub for Islamic higher education. Taiwan and Hong Kong wanted to be a place for students who wanted to experience China without having to live in China.

The need for this book, however, goes beyond the simple assumption that, to be an international institution, a university simply ships a few students abroad for a semester, or that an influx of students is little more than a new revenue stream. International higher education today is a much more complex undertaking—one that is necessary but not well understood. Universities are no longer discrete entities that have defined geographic borders. Social media and the Internet have enabled a professor in Jeddah (Saudi Arabia), for instance, to co-author a paper in real time with a colleague in, say, New York (USA). A class may be located in Jeddah, but the students may be dispersed throughout the globe. The reality of the twenty-first century is that if a university wishes to gain preeminence within its country, then it needs to look outwardly to the world. A successful citizen of a country is a global citizen who has cultural strength from his/her own country and at the same time is a multicultural citizen of the world. The educated individual is able to interact with individuals from multiple countries on multiple levels.

The purpose of this book is to lend depth to the manifold topics pertaining to global collaboration. We move away from a one-sided assumption that successful collaboration is either "this or that" and instead highlight the various challenges that confront a university's leadership team.

Chapter 1, which is entitled "King Abdulaziz University's Approach to International Collaboration," delineates the strategies King Abdulaziz University (KAU) has employed that helps explain their rise in global rankings. It also highlights the reasons KAU has chosen to collaborate with other academic and research institutes.

Chapters 2, "Creating an Organizational Climate for Global Partnerships," and 3, "Global Citizens for the Twenty-First Century," point out the challenges that exist, how to overcome them, and what role these partnerships play in the mission of a university. The environment in which universities currently exist as framed by globalization is considered, and subsequently how an innovative culture might be established and maintained to enable global partnerships to be implemented and to succeed is discussed in Chap. 2. Chapter 3 then explores the role international partnerships play for universities and how they educate, research, and impact a disruptive future. How international work-integrated learning opportunities are developed will make a difference in the ability of universities to develop talented global leadership.

Chapter 4, "International Cooperation in East Asian Higher Education," concludes Part I by looking at successful cooperation within a region, namely that of Asia. It discusses the rise of Asia, where eastern Asia has become the most attractive region for international cooperation in higher education. Along with its neighboring countries, the region has some of the most talented human resources in the world because Asia has excellent global telecommunications and a free international flow of funds. There is also a substantial transnational flow of commerce, communications, and ideas. In fact, most economies of eastern Asia are market-oriented.

Part II's three chapters consider knowledge transfer, broadly stated. Chapter 5, "International Collaboration as a Catalyst for Change" is a case study of Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, a university that brought about change through successful engagement in international collaboration.

Chapter 6, "Making Ideas Work for Society" provides an intense focus on why cooperation is a necessary ingredient for knowledge transfer and explains how to do it. Ideas arise everywhere, but they are more likely to be the result of organized research as happens in universities or other research institutes. The ideas and the new knowledge, however, may easily remain in the confines of the university halls and rooms. Making them work for society is the topic of Chap. 6, with an emphasis on how university cooperation can contribute in this respect.

The final chapter in Part II, Chap. 7 "Student Exchange: The First Step Toward International Collaboration" offers a twenty-first-century perspective on student exchanges. These often represent the first step toward international collaboration, as the graduates of universities need to have the ability to interact with people from other cultures and different backgrounds in order to be successful in the international labor market and to work effectively in multicultural teams.

Part III includes two chapters that consider how to sustain partnerships. One of the challenges of global partnerships is not just setting them up, but also sustaining them.

Chapter 8, "The Tricky Terrain of Global University Partnerships," offers evidence of the challenges that exist and how to address them. It presents a taxonomy that explains the basic types of collaborations and partnerships that exist and describes their elements, what they have in common, and the ways in which they are distinct. It then discusses the ways in which institutions that have entered into global collaborations and partnerships have both benefitted, and been challenged, by these arrangements.

Chapter 9, "Long-Term Sustainability in Global Higher Education Partnerships," takes a long view with regard to partnerships and asks what kinds of structures need to be put in place to sustain innovation and experiments. It identifies four specific threats to long-term sustainability. These are divergent motivations and goals for the partnership, inadequate planning and funding volatility, leadership turnover and a lack of formal and informal leaders from within the partnership, and poor staff morale as the result of an over-reliance on part-time employment. The chapter then proposes the conditions that can improve the prospects of long-term sustainability for colleges and universities interested in stable, mutually beneficial global partnerships. Finally, the chapter considers the ethical issues pertinent to contemporary global partnerships.

We surely have not covered every aspect of global collaborations and partnerships in our book. What we have done is set the stage for further investigations. The world may not be flat, as Thomas Friedman has suggested, but we are certain that it is smaller. Our interrelatedness behooves us to help universities think through the hurdles we face with regard to global collaboration and then to put in place the ingredients that lead to long-term success.

> Abdulrahman AI-Youbi Adnan H. M. Zahed William G. Tierney

#### References

# Contents

#### Part I Implementation of Global Partnerships

# Editors and Contributors

#### About the Editors

Prof. Abdulrahman AI-Youbi has been the President of King Abdulaziz University (KAU) since 2016 and a Professor of Chemistry at KAU since 2000. He earned a Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from Essex University, UK, in 1986. He has also been the President of the International Advisory Board (IAB) of KAU since 2015. Throughout his career, Prof. AI-Youbi has been an active researcher in his specialization, a passionate teacher and an academic administrator. He has participated in many research projects and has published more than 150 papers in ranked scientific journals. He has also supervised many graduate students. He has held a variety of Academic Administrative positions at KAU including Chairman of the Chemistry Department, Vice Dean of the Faculty of Science (1992–1999), Dean of the Faculty of Science (1999–2002), Vice President (2002–2009), and Vice President for Academic Affairs (2009–2016). In 2015–2016, he was Acting President of both KAU and Jeddah University. As President of KAU, Prof. AI-Youbi has devoted his position to strengthening excellence in academics and research with a dedication to developing an innovative culture. Through President AI-Youbi's leadership, KAU has remained the top university, not only in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, but also in the Arab World. His current focus is on expanding KAU's lead by continuing to build on its long-standing strengths in education, research, entrepreneurship and community service to the people of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

President AI-Youbi has participated in more than eighty committees, boards, teams, and working groups at the university level as well as at the Ministry of Education level. In particular, he has participated in the committees that have established new universities in the Kingdom, namely Taiba University, Jazan University, Tabuk University, and the Northern Border University. He has also attended many scientific conferences in the Kingdom and abroad.

Prof. Adnan H. M. Zahed has worked as Consultant to the President of King Abdulaziz University (KAU) since 2016 and the Secretary-General of the International Advisory Board (IAB) of KAU since 2010. He was the KAU Vice President for Graduate Studies and Scientific Research (2009–2016), and worked before that as Dean of Graduate Studies (2007–2009), and before that he was Vice Dean in the Faculty of Engineering (1997–2007). Adnan H. M. Zahed has been a full professor in the Chemical Engineering Department at KAU since 1996. He has also worked in industry as General Supervisor (Consultant) in Saudi Badrah Company (Jeddah, KSA, 1995–1996), Deputy General Manager at Savola Food Company in Jeddah (1993–1995), and Deputy CEO of Tasali Company (Jeddah). He holds a B.Sc. in Chemical Engineering from King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, KSA (1976), and a M.S. and Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of California (Davis), USA (1982). He has published six books and more than 60 papers in international conferences and refereed journals, in addition to more than 75 technical reports written for the bodies who funded his projects. He has also been a co-author of several University Guides such as the Graduate Studies Guide, Applicable Theses Guide, Thesis Writing Guide, Graduate Studies Procedure Guide, Faculty of Engineering Prospectus, and Annual Report of Research Activities in the Faculty of Engineering. Adnan H. M. Zahed was included in Marquis Who's Who in the World 2006. He has participated in more than 80 committees at departmental, faculty, and university levels at KAU. In addition, he has participated in four academic accreditation meetings in the USA, and in more than 25 local and international conferences, symposia, and forums. Adnan H. M. Zahed has visited a number of American universities as a delegate of the Saudi Ministry of Education.

Prof. William G. Tierney is co-director of the Pullias Center for Higher Education, University Professor and Wilbur-Kieffer Professor of Higher Education at the University of Southern California (USC). He founded and has directed the Pullias Center for 24 years overseeing faculty, staff, postdoctoral scholars, and graduate students. He also has served as Associate Dean for Research and Faculty Affairs at the Rossier College of Education at USC. Among other duties, he has served as an academic dean at a Native American community college, a Peace Corps volunteer in Morocco, a Fulbright Scholar in Central America and Australia, and a Scholar-in-Residence in Malaysia. He recently completed a year's sabbatical as a Fulbright Scholar in India. His recent books include: Rethinking Education and Poverty, The Impact of Culture on Organizational Decision-making, Trust and the Public Good: Examining the Cultural Conditions of Academic Work, and Understanding the Rise of For-profit Colleges and Universities. He has received the Distinguished Research Award from the Association for the Study of Higher Education (ASHE) and from Division J of the American Educational Research Association (AERA). He is a former president of ASHE, is a Fellow and former president of AERA, and is an elected member of the National Academy of Education, a disciplinary society of 200 individuals recognized for their outstanding scholarship and contributions to education. He earned a Master's degree from Harvard University and a Ph.D. from Stanford University. Professor Tierney is a member of the KAU IAB.

#### About the Contributors

Prof. James Soto Antony serves on the faculty of the Graduate School of Education at Harvard University. He also serves as Faculty Director of Harvard's Higher Education Program, one of the world's leading graduate programs preparing students to become leaders in colleges and universities. Additionally, he serves as Co-Director of the Management Development Program, a flagship program within the Harvard Institutes for Higher Education portfolio that provides higher education leaders with the tools and insight to think more strategically, balance competing demands, and engage in more forward-thinking leadership.

Professor Antony's research and teaching focus on the preparation of forward-thinking leaders in college and university settings. He has published extensively on issues of higher education leadership and management. He lectures and serves as a leadership development advisor at colleges and universities throughout the USA and abroad.

From 1995 to 2012, he held faculty and leadership roles at the University of Washington, including: Professor in Educational Leadership and Policy and Adjunct Professor in Sociology; Associate Vice-Provost and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs in The Graduate School; and Associate Dean for Academic Programs in the College of Education. While at Washington he also was Director for two graduate degree programs (the Graduate Program in Higher Education, and the Intercollegiate Athletic Leadership Program) and founding Executive Director of the Center for Leadership in Athletics.

From 2012 to 2015, he was an Associate Provost for Yale University, where he worked on issues ranging from faculty development and diversity to undergraduate leadership development within Yale College. During this time, he also held a courtesy faculty appointment as Professor Adjunct in the Yale School of Management and served one year as a Visiting Adjunct Professor at Teachers College, Columbia University.

A past Fellow of the American Council on Education and a current Fellow of the Institute of Higher Education at the University of Georgia, he sits on numerous national and international advisory and editorial boards and is a reviewer for several scholarly journals and associations. He earned his baccalaureate degree in Psychology and his master's degree and Ph.D. in Higher Education and Organizational Change, all from UCLA.

Prof. Abdullah Atalar received his B.S. degree from Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey, in 1974 and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from Stanford University, Stanford, CA, in 1976 and 1978, respectively, all in Electrical Engineering. From 1978 to 1980, he was first a Postdoctoral Fellow and later an Engineering Research Associate at Stanford University. For about one year, he worked in Hewlett Packard Labs, Palo Alto. From 1980 to 1986, he was on the faculty of the Middle East Technical University as an Assistant Professor. In 1983, on leave from the University, he worked for Ernst Leitz Wetzlar (now Leica) in Wetzlar, Germany. In 1986, he joined the Bilkent University as the chairman of the Electrical and Electronics Engineering Department and served in the founding of the Department where he is currently a Professor. In 1995, he was a Visiting Professor at Stanford University. From 1996 to 2010, he was the Provost of Bilkent University. He is presently the Rector of the same university. Between 2004 and 2011, he served as a member of the Science Board of TUBI-TAK. His current research interests include microwave electronics and micromachined sensors. He was awarded the Science Award of the Turkish Scientific Research Council (TUBITAK) in 1994. He has been a member of the Turkish Academy of Sciences since 1997 and a Fellow of IEEE since 2007. Professor Atalar is a member of the KAU IAB.

Prof. Dr. Feridun Hamdullahpur has served as the President and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Waterloo since 2010. Dr. Hamdullahpur earned an M.Sc. (1979) in Mechanical Engineering from the Technical University of Istanbul and a Ph.D. (1985) in Chemical Engineering from the Technical University of Nova Scotia (TUNS). He was appointed Assistant Professor (1985) at TUNS at the Center for Energy Studies, Associate Professor in TUNS's Department of Mechanical Engineering (1990) and later full Professor of Mechanical Engineering (1995). Dr. Hamdullahpur is currently a Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering at the University of Waterloo, while he serves concurrently as President

Throughout his career, Dr. Hamdullahpur has been an active researcher in thermo-fluids and energy engineering, a passionate teacher and an academic administrator. He has authored hundreds of scientific and academic publications and supervised over 50 graduate students. He was named a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering in 2014.

As President of the University of Waterloo, Dr. Hamdullahpur has devoted his tenure to fostering excellence in academics and research, with a dedication to developing an innovative culture committed to experiential education. Through President Hamdullahpur's stewardship, the University of Waterloo has remained Canada's most innovative university for 26 consecutive years.

His current focus at the University of Waterloo is expanding its lead in innovation, building on Waterloo's long-standing and emerging strengths in co-operative education, research, entrepreneurship, and equity.

In 2015, President Hamdullahpur was appointed the Chair of the new Leadership Council for Digital Infrastructure, an ambitious initiative to build a world-leading digital infrastructure ecosystem for Canada.

The President continues to serve in many roles on committees and boards. He has been Chair of the Waterloo Global Science Initiative since 2016, an active member of the Sorbonne Université Strategic Orientation Committee since 2014 and a member of the King Abdulaziz University International Advisory Board since 2017.

In acknowledgment of President Hamdullahpur's leadership in education and innovation, he was awarded the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal in January 2013. President Hamdullahpur is a member of the KAU IAB.

Michael Lanford is an Assistant Professor of Higher Education at the University of North Georgia. He employs qualitative research methods and a multidisciplinary theoretical perspective to study institutional innovation, globalization, educational equity, and the impact of educational policy on student development. Over the past three years, his research has appeared in the American Educational Research Journal, Higher Education, Higher Education: Handbook of Theory and Research, and Policy Reviews in Higher Education, among other publications. Currently, he has articles in press with Educational Forum, the Journal of Research on Technology in Education, and Qualitative Inquiry. Additionally, Michael has forthcoming entries on institutional culture for the Encyclopedia of International Higher Education Systems and Institutions and life history for the Sage Encyclopedia of Social Research Methods. He has received funding to present his research in Canada, Hong Kong, Mexico, Taiwan, the UK, and the USA.

Tara Nicola is a doctoral student at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Her research focuses on issues concerning access, choice, and equity in higher education. She is especially interested in evaluating policies related to the college admission process.

Prior to studying at Harvard, Tara was a Research Associate at the National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC). She worked in various capacities on projects ranging from the impact of school counselors on students' college-going behaviors and the prevalence of state-mandated individualized learning plans to best practices in supporting the transition of international students to postsecondary education. Her work has been featured in Education Week, Inside Higher Ed, and The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Tara holds an M.Sc. in Higher Education with Distinction from the University of Oxford and an B.A. in English from Johns Hopkins University.

Prof. Gerard A. Postiglione is Honorary Professor and Coordinator of the Consortium for Research on Higher Education. He is a Fellow of the American Educational Research Association for his contribution to research. He has published 16 books and over 150 articles and chapters. He is the editor of the journal Chinese Education and Society and a four-book series about education in China. He received the Humanities and Social Science Prestigious Fellow Award from the Hong Kong Research Grants Council and a Lifetime Contribution Award from the Comparative and International Education Society for studies in higher education. His autobiography was published in Leaders in the Sociology of Education (2017), followed by a special collection of his work in 2018. He has done policy research for the Asian Development Bank, the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development, the United Nations Development Programme, the World Bank, and other international agencies. He was a senior consultant for the Ford Foundation for one year and advised the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching in the academic profession. His contribution to policy reports was received by China's National Reform and Development Commission, State Education Commission and Ministry of Education. He directed the Wah Ching Centre of Research on Education in China for 10 years. In the media, he has appeared on CNN and China's CCTV, has written for The New York Times and The Washington Post, and has been quoted in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and other publications such as Science, Bloomberg BusinessWeek, and Shanghai Education. He has also written for Hong Kong's English and Chinese language press. He has also briefed the office of the US Secretary of Education and is a member of the National Committee on US–China Relations.

Prof. Jozef Ritzen a Dutch national, trained as a physics engineer (Delft University of Technology) and an economist (Erasmus University Rotterdam, Ph.D., cum laude) and has held professorial appointments with Nijmegen University and Erasmus University in The Netherlands, the University of California-Berkeley and the Robert M. LaFollette Institute of Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the USA.

He was Minister of Education, Culture, and Science of The Netherlands from 1989 to 1998, one of the longest serving Ministers of Education in the world. During his term, he enacted a series of major reforms throughout the Dutch education system. Subsequently, he served as Vice President of the World Bank's Human Development Network and as President of Maastricht University.

He has written or co-authored fourteen books and many articles (often co-authored) in the fields of education, economics, public finance, and development economics. His latest book is: A Second Change for Europe (Springer, 2017).

He has also made significant contributions to agencies such as the World Bank, UNESCO, and OECD, especially in the field of education, economic growth, and social cohesion.

He is now honorary professor of Maastricht University and UNU/Merit, a member of the International Advisory Boards of the University of Siegen (Germany), the Charles University in Prague (Czech Republic) and King Abdulaziz University (Jeddah, Saudi Arabia), adviser to several ministers of education, Chair and Founder of Empower European Universities, and Initiator of the Vibrant Europe Forum which wants to contribute to European Policy Development. Professor Ritzen is a member of the KAU IAB.

Prof. Guaning Su was the second president of Nanyang Technological University (NTU) Singapore from 2003 to 2011 and is a tenured professor of electrical and electronic engineering. He holds a B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering (1971), a M.S.E.E. (1972) from the California Institute of Technology, a M.S. (Statistics) (1982), and a Ph.D. (Electrical Engineering) (1983) from Stanford University as well as an Honorary Doctor of Science (2015) from the University of Alberta. He joined the newly formed research and development arm of the Ministry of Defence Singapore in 1972 and headed the Defence Science Organisation (DSO, later to become DSO National Laboratories) from 1986 to 1997. He was Deputy Secretary (Technology) at the Ministry of Defence, Singapore from 1998 to 2001 and Founding Chief Executive, Defence Science and Technology Agency (DSTA) from 2000 to 2002. He joined Nanyang Technological University in 2002 as president-designate and was inaugurated as the second president in 2003.

Professor Su's presidency coincided with major changes of university governance in Singapore. Seizing those opportunities, he built three new schools, doubled the enrollment, multiplied competitive research funding sevenfold and transformed NTU from a narrowly focused teaching university into a technology and innovation powerhouse. World rankings rose to 12th in the world in 2018. He is currently Chairman of the International Advisory Board (IAB) of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University and a member of the IAB of King Abdulaziz University, Saudi Arabia.

Professor Su was conferred the National Science and Technology Medal and the Meritorious Service Medal by Singapore, Knighthood of the Legion of Honour by France, and the Friendship Award by China. He is a Life Fellow of IEEE and Fellow of the Singapore Academy of Engineering. Professor Su is a member of the KAU IAB.

Part I Implementation of Global Partnerships

# 1 King Abdulaziz University's Approach to International Collaboration

Abdulrahman Al-Youbi and Adnan H. M. Zahed

#### 1 Introduction

This section first explains the differences between the terms "cooperation," "collaboration," and "partnership," which are used interchangeably in the literature. It then highlights the reasons King Abdulaziz University (KAU) that has chosen to collaborate with other academic and research institutes.

#### 1.1 Definition of Cooperation, Collaboration, and Partnership

Cooperative work is accomplished by dividing a task among participants where each is responsible for a portion of it [1]. Cooperation is achieved if all participants do their assigned parts and send them back to the work coordinator. Cooperative bodies have specific and joint rights and responsibilities. Each cooperative body has an equal share of the risk as well as the reward. The concept of "international cooperation" describes cooperative activities between two or more countries. The policies of the participating partners are negotiated to bring agreements more in line with each side's preferences. Once policies become more compatible, the act of cooperation is completed [2, 3].

The term "collaboration" is the action of working together with others to produce or create something, and in the context of academic bodies, it is used mostly on the level of research. In other words, it is the mutual engagement of participants in a coordinated effort to solve a problem together [4]. However, the collaboration also involves cooperation, in which the responsibilities of each partner may not be shared equally.

Partnership is a co-term used in cooperation as well as collaboration to indicate that two or more partners are cooperating to conduct the task. Partnerships may be between researchers in the same laboratory or academic department, between researchers from different departments in the same institution, or even between researchers in different institutions or different countries. The latter case may be sometimes complicated due to cultural differences.

The three terms are used interchangeably, although they represent different ways of contributing to a group. Cooperation can be achieved if all participants do their assigned parts separately and bring their results to the table, while the collaboration implies direct interaction among the partners to reach the desired result. This interaction often involves negotiations, discussions, and consideration of different perspectives. In other words, cooperation focuses on working together to create an end product, while participants in collaboration share in the process of knowledge creation [5]. Therefore, the collaboration is appropriate for complex projects involving multiple teams or agencies, while the cooperation is suitable for projects in which each participant is responsible for performing a certain segment of the complete task. In both cases, partnership also frequently occurs.

It is to be mentioned here that the opposite of cooperation or collaboration is "competition." A small amount of competition is effective in encouraging different organizations to seek a better position, but excessive levels of competition have negative consequences. Many institutions cooperate in research and collaborate in the research and joint degrees, but still see each other as "competitors" as they try to attract the best students and staff and to get higher rankings.

#### 1.2 King Abdulaziz University's Choice to Pursue Collaboration

King Abdulaziz University (KAU) realized early on the importance of international university cooperation and collaboration to expedite its way toward becoming a world-class university. As a result, it has established joint

A. Al-Youbi A. H. M. Zahed (&)

King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia e-mail<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
international cooperation agreements and service contracts with many of the world's distinguished universities and educational institutions. It has also established the Distinctive Scientists Program to create collaboration programs between KAU researchers and well-known researchers from all over the globe. These steps, along with other accomplishments, have accelerated the achievement of KAU's objective to increase its ranking and become a world-class university.

#### 2 International Collaboration

International cooperation and collaboration are modes of working together to attain the best results in the development of solutions to international problems. Modern life has brought luxury to human beings, but at the same time, it has created many massive problems such as global warming, an extreme need for energy, excessive demand for water, crowded cities, the rapid aging of people, and a high occurrence of natural disasters. These huge problems necessitate collaboration between universities and industry worldwide to bridge the gap between knowledge and innovation.

A comprehensive paper by Ankrah and Al-Tabbaa [6] on universities–industry collaboration (UIC) for the period from 1990–2014 studied the different organizational forms of UIC, motivations at universities and in industry for UIC, the process of forming UICs, activities undertaken in UICs, the factors facilitating or impeding UICs, and the benefits from UICs for both the universities and the industry. The paper explains that collaboration between universities and industry is increasingly perceived as a vehicle to enhancing innovation through knowledge exchange. This is evident from the significant increase in studies that investigate the topic from different perspectives.

The academia–industry collaboration in science and technology-based innovation has resulted in role sharing between universities and companies resulting in global problem solving with an emphasis on human resources development.

International cooperation and collaboration are carried out between partners working traditionally together in the same field or collaboratively in various fields in order to find an optimized solution or to introduce a non-traditional or creative solution for an international problem. The climate problem, growing energy consumption, high rates of fatal car accidents, global peace, and fighting terrorism and crime are the most famous examples of widespread global problems. To find the best scientific and applicable solutions to such problems requires the strengthening of cooperation/ collaboration between universities, research institutions, civil societies, and industrial sectors. At times, international policies have a key role to play in developing appropriate solutions and preparing them for implementation.

The following section, Sect. 3, deals with how international collaboration is implemented by higher education institutions, while Sect. 4 explains the importance of international collaboration for universities.

#### 3 International Collaboration and Cooperation Among Universities

International university collaboration is a part of the much wider arena of international collaboration. The topic of international university collaboration has been prominent in recent times and has become a significant and important university activity [7]. In recent years, universities have managed to include international cooperation and collaboration as integral elements of their missions and functions although it is a laborious process. This cooperation and collaboration are forms of working together to attain the best results in learning, training, and research.

University cooperation has recently been successfully incorporated into the institutional structure of an increasing number of universities. Most universities currently have an office or administration in charge of international university cooperation, with a definite strategy and an action plan to carry out a series of international activities. In recent years, rising expectations have been generated with regard to the need to adopt new perspectives in international university cooperation. University authorities have to overcome budgetary constraints and other impediments in order to pursue the necessary efforts to enhance the incorporation of international cooperation in their institutions.

For a long time, education and scientific research have been focused on a lot in international cooperation/ collaboration. Therefore, universities and research institutions are called upon to promote cooperation in order to develop knowledge, which will benefit all humankind [7]. Recently, introducing international collaboration as one of the university strategic objectives has opened new paths for the exchange of academic expertise, saving effort and money and achieving qualitative leaps in strengthening systems management and development.

Technical international cooperation is another form of international university cooperation. It includes activities whose primary aim is to increase the level of knowledge, technology, practical know-how or productive attitudes of the population, that is to say, to increase their reserve of human intellectual capital or their ability to use their current resources with greater efficiency [8]. The basic aim of technical cooperation is to support the ability of people and organizations in creating, adapting, strengthening, and sustaining their capacity to set their own objectives. Its aims are that institutions with a more advanced level of development in certain areas would contribute to the solution of specific problems of less developed institutions through the transference and interchange of scientific and technological capacity and human and material resources.

Technical cooperation is often associated with actions intended to strengthen individual and organizational capacity by offering a wide range of technical opportunities to its beneficiaries. Technical cooperation can be strengthened via improving the following cooperative channels:

#### 4 The Importance of International Collaboration for Universities

International partnerships between universities are beneficial to all, including staff and students. Forming links with other universities has become highly necessary and is easily managed. Universities across the world are seeking to form global partnerships and foster relationships with other institutions. This helps student recruitment in two main ways: For domestic students, it offers the opportunity to travel internationally via student exchange programs, and vice versa for students at partnered universities. It also enables universities to better understand the culture of other nations [9]. Additionally, international collaboration programs help by providing students with the ability to study, work, and travel worldwide.

Partnerships with highly ranked international universities provide greater opportunities for cultural exchange and the development of academic systems, which in turn will positively reflect on the development of various academic and research university sectors. Developing the abilities and skills of human resources from student to professor is the most significant factor in the strategic development process. For these benefits, universities all over the world seek to create international partnerships with similar universities and academic institutions. Academic exchange programs, including international visits, enable students and staff members on both sides to learn about each other's culture. Such programs also promote intercultural skills in a globalized world, help people to work effectively in a new environment, open new channels for academic cooperation, and help people to make new friendships. This has a direct effect on university development processes and the quality of academic and research programs.

Significantly, it is known that one in five of the world's scientific papers is co-authored internationally. As a result of the expansion of communication methods, academics and researchers are finding it easier to collaborate with their foreign counterparts, and the exchange of academic ideas has become much simpler to organize.

The ability to scrutinize, debate, and share experience is essential for academic and scientific accomplishment. International collaborations help to facilitate this. In terms of teaching, benefits include curriculum development and degrees formed in collaboration with partner institutions. However, developing successful relationships takes a long time and requires understanding the culture and goals of each other's institutions in order to ensure compatibility in terms of ethics and standards. Therefore, the most important aspect of a partnership's endurance is an alliance of ideas and goals. This means selecting carefully institutions to partner with and confirming at every stage that all members of the partnership are on the same page [9].

#### 5 International Collaboration in Higher Education in Saudi Arabia

International cooperation in higher education in Saudi Arabia is a part of the strategic goal of the Ministry of Education (MOE). It aims to develop, improve, enhance, and raise the level of higher education in the country through cooperation with distinguished international higher education and research institutions. This is achieved via signing agreements and alliances and by building international partnerships in academic and research areas [10]. The MOE has established the "General Administration for International Cooperation" within its administrative structure. The unit was established because of the Ministry's belief in the importance of international cooperation mechanisms in education and their strong effects on fostering globalization, massification, and marketization of higher education.

The objective of the General Administration of International Cooperation is to ensure effective mutually beneficial coordination with universities and academic research agencies outside the kingdom. It has an important role in building bridges of knowledge between Saudi universities and

#### Fig. 1 Administration of international agreements at KAU

internationally prestigious and distinguished higher educational institutions. It seeks to promote knowledge and cultural exchange through the expansion of scholarships. It coordinates training programs, seminars, conferences, and international exhibitions, and it raises the level of performance and development of international cooperation in various fields of knowledge. The administration is eager to contribute to, highlight and reinforce Saudi Arabia's general development in the field of higher education. The MOE and the Saudi universities have signed a number of memorandums of cooperation and service contracts with ministries and prestigious universities around the globe.

#### 6 International Collaboration at King Abdulaziz University

This section discusses the international collaborations at King Abdulaziz University (KAU).

#### 6.1 KAU Administration of International Agreements

At KAU, there is an "Administration of International Agreements" that organizes, follows up, and develops international agreements between KAU and international universities and research centers. The aim is to accelerate scientific progress and expedite technology transfer from the world's most prestigious universities and scientific institutes to KAU. The administration prepares a fully automated management system of international agreements and service contracts and ensures that adequate budgetary provisions are in place for effective task design and implementation. It also edits a final statistical analysis report detailing the achievements of the various agreements.

The structure of the administration is illustrated in Fig. 1. It consists of five units under the management of a general supervisor who reports directly to the KAU President. However, to ensure administrative effectiveness, the University Vice Presidents monitor and supervise the five units according to their fields of responsibility. The Research Agreements Unit is under the supervision of the Vice President for Graduate Studies and Scientific Research, while the Educational Agreements Unit is under the supervision of the Vice President for Academic Affairs. The Creative and Innovative Agreements Unit is under the supervision of the Vice President for Business and Knowledge Creativity, while the Administrative and Training Agreements Unit is under the supervision of both the Vice President and the Vice President for Development. And finally, the Academic Accreditation and Classification Agreements Unit is under the supervision of the Vice President for Development.

#### 6.2 Agreements with Leading Universities

King Abdulaziz University has made joint international cooperation agreements and service contracts with many of the world's top universities and educational institutions. There are currently more than 77 operational service contracts and several other agreements and memorandums of understanding between KAU and universities, scientific institutions, and specialized companies in many countries such as the USA, Canada, and Argentina in the Americas; the UK, France, Spain, Germany, Finland, Switzerland, Austria, the Netherlands, Belgium and Turkey in Europe; China, South Korea, Japan, Singapore and Malaysia in Asia; and Australia and New Zealand in the South Pacific. These agreements and service contracts specialize in the implementation of joint research projects and patents; the exchange of students, staff, faculty members, and scientific expertise; the establishment of joint graduate programs; curriculum development; the development of distance education; training programs for medical, engineering, and maritime studies graduate students; and training for faculty members.

#### 6.3 International Students Program

The international graduate students program started some years ago and is successfully attracting students from different countries. KAU grants scholarships to talented international students to pursue their studies in its various university graduate programs. KAU admits top international students in its graduate programs. Currently, KAU has 193 graduate programs in all of its specializations, divided into Ph.D. (43), Master's degree (143), and Higher Diploma (7). Recently, the number of new entrants has increased significantly, and this growth has necessitated strengthening and invigorating all aspects of higher educational academic research at KAU. This has helped to ensure that when KAU graduates enter the employment market, their competencies and qualifications are sought after and welcomed by international employers. KAU has become a recognized venue for "elite higher education." It has a reputation for academic excellence and is considered to represent quality higher education. These factors enable KAU to have the privilege of receiving high levels of funding and to recruit the most academically talented international students.

#### 6.4 Distinguished Scientist Program

The 9th Development Plan of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia states that it will concentrate on scientific research and attract scientists of high caliber to work in universities and research centers. The 2005–2030 Plan of Higher Education in Saudi Arabia (AAFAQ Plan) states that universities should attract the best scientists, while the KAU Strategic Plan states that it will be transformed into a Research University. The International Advisory Board (IAB) of KAU suggested in its second meeting (July 2011) that KAU should attract internationally distinguished scientists to enhance its research quality. Accordingly, in June 2011, KAU started an ambitious program to employ distinguished scientists. Colleges, Research Groups, and Centers search for distinguished scientists whose specialization fits the research areas and send their selection to a KAU committee which starts writing to the selected distinguished scientists inviting them to visit KAU and meet with the local scientists to discuss possible types of collaboration. At the end of the visit, a decision is taken as to whether to go ahead with the collaboration or not. Many distinguished scientists have preferred to work part-time, while a few have moved to KAU.

The duties of the distinguished scientists can be summarized as follows: to write research proposals with KAU researchers to the KAU Deanship of Scientific Research and to the King Abdulaziz City of Science and Technology (KACST), especially for the National Strategic Research Program; to collaborate with and guide the local academic staff to conduct the research; to co-supervise graduate students; to examine graduate students theses; to give seminars, lectures, and short courses; to co-author books; to participate in establishing business incubators; to participate in the councils of the centers of research excellence; to help KAU graduates to get admission in graduate programs at universities abroad; and to help KAU academic staff get acceptance for Sabbatical years in their home universities.

The outcome of the program may be summarized in the following points: Numerous research proposals have been submitted to the KAU Deanship of Scientific Research by distinguished scientists in collaboration with more than 150 KAU academic staff; numerous research proposals have been submitted to King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST); various scientific books have been published; four international scientific journals have been launched: Bulletin of Mathematical Sciences (published by Springer), The Journal of Microscopy and Ultrastructure (published by Elsevier), Genomic Medicine (published by Nature Partner Journals, NPJ), and Climate and Atmospheric Science (published by Nature Partner Journals, NPJ).

#### 6.5 International Advisory Board (IAB)

King Abdulaziz University (KAU) has undertaken genuine transformational steps to establish partnerships and cooperative programs with international educational and industrial institutions in order to enhance and improve its academic and educational profile and status. To achieve a substantive leap forward in quality in levels of performance in educational, academic research, and community services, in 2010, KAU established an International Advisory Board (IAB). It is benefiting from the experience of international pioneers in the industry and higher education who have made significant contributions to the development of higher education worldwide. The aim of the IAB has been to provide KAU with diverse input and guidance from the international community in order to support its quest for academic and educational excellence and ultimately, its international recognition. To ensure that KAU receives a diversity of ideas and views, the IAB represents a variety of disciplines and an extensive range of backgrounds.

The main objectives of the IAB are: to participate in re-formulating KAU's strategic plans; to achieve its goals in the educational process, scientific research, and community service; to enable the university to surpass and accomplish distinction in knowledge accumulation, science, and technology; to enhance the university's status and international profile, especially in the fields of research and innovation; to contribute to the formation of strategic alliances between KAU and different sectors in the Saudi community, as well as international institutions; to establish and activate partnerships with international universities and research centers; and to provide consultancy to KAU as well as to other Saudi institutions wishing to take advantage of the expertise, experience, and qualifications of IAB members [11].

#### 6.6 Research Groups

KAU initiated the idea of forming research groups to enhance cooperation between researchers from different specializations. Each group consists of up to 15 researchers and academics (of all ranks including fresh academics and graduate students) under the leadership of one prominent scientist. The group must include one collaborating scientist from an international university. Each research group has a main broad specialization that is different from the specializations of other groups. The research proposals submitted by research groups are prioritized in terms of funding over proposals submitted by individuals. To date, twenty-five research groups have been formed covering a wide spectrum of specializations. These are the: Saudi Diabetes Research Group; Oral and Dental Diseases Research Group; Renewable Energy Group; Software Engineering and Distributed Systems Group; Economic and Market Research Group; Nonlinear Analysis and Applied Mathematics Group; Biotechnology Group; Engineering Management and Quality Improvement Group; Information Security Research Group; Advances in Composites, Synthesis and Applications Group; Clinical Nutrition Group; Communication Systems and Networks Group; Plant Biology Group; Laser Applications Group; Diagnostic and Therapeutic Engineering Group; Modeling and Simulation of Complex Systems Group; Bioactive Natural Products Group; Medicinal Plants Group; Lithography in Device Fabrication and Development Group; Metal Oxides Research Group; Carbon Nanostructures Group; Vitamin D Pharmacogenomics Group; Virtual Reality Research Group; Sustainable Green Chemistry Group; and Sleep Disorder Research Group.

In addition to publishing papers in ISI ranked journals, the research groups are committed to working on projects that benefit the local community as well as the national Saudi community.

#### 6.7 KAU–Industry Collaboration

Collaboration between KAU and industry is managed by the Research and Consulting Institute (RACI). RACI is a consultation center which provides its services in research and development on a contractual basis with the utmost flexibility and professionalism to suit both the public as well as the private sectors. RACI is one of the most important investment arms of KAU. It offers a number of services including: contractual research, consultancy, project management, educational services, and training. In addition, RACI manages KAU's scientific chairs and central laboratories.

The objectives of RACI are to have a strong partnership with the society based on KAU's responsibility toward the country and its citizens; to have a modern methodology for providing consultation experiences that meet international standards; and to market KAU human and technical abilities via professional and competitive ways.

The capabilities of RACI include: a strong relationship with effective players in the consulting service industry; access to more than 5000 researchers from various specialties at KAU to perform services offered by RACI such as contractual research, consultations, training, and educational services; more than 50 central laboratories at medicine, engineering, computing, science, and business schools, which can provide different services to both the public and the private sectors; and more than 200 active expert houses that offer consulting services to various sectors in the kingdom. These expert houses cover most of the fields including medicine, engineering, computing, science, economics, and business.

#### 6.8 Knowledge and Business Alliance

In addition to the Research and Consulting Institute, KAU and the public and private sectors also collaborate through the Knowledge and Business Alliance (K&B). As the largest and one of the most prominent universities in Saudi Arabia, KAU has a proven record in providing research solutions. KAU has at its disposal about 50 years' worth of "know-how" and organizational knowledge competence, in addition to a magnitude of other resources and assets including: rich expertise and established industry leadership; state-of-the-art research infrastructures; and a stimulating working environment. KAU clients and partners are diverse, ranging from entrepreneurs to developers, from locals to internationals, and from visitors to tenants. However, they have one aspect in common: They are empowered through the synergy of KAU knowledge partners. K&B facilitates the creation of these knowledge networks through its four main divisions:

#### 6.9 Wadi Jeddah (Jeddah Valley) Company

Another channel for collaboration with industry is the Wadi Jeddah Company. It is wholly owned by KAU and represents KAU's investment arm. It operates on a commercial basis in the process of investment and profitability and contributes to the development of the knowledge economy. To achieve its goals, Wadi Jeddah has established five companies so far. These are:

#### 7 Outcomes of Collaboration at King Abdulaziz University

King Abdulaziz University constitutes a rich source of graduates and skilled cadres which can help address the needs of the country and contribute to its development. To achieve its objectives and become one of the top universities in the world, KAU adopts a clear vision, responds accordingly to changing community needs and circumstances, provides a congenial academic environment, and establishes cultural cooperation with international universities. This results in the university having outstanding educational programs, skilled graduates, rich scientific research, and the ability to make effective contributions to society. The need for excellence in international relations is triggered by the diversity of the university's departments and the importance of coordinating collaboration and cooperation with other universities.

The KAU Vision regarding international cooperation is to establish internationally effective partnerships to support the university's vision, while its message is to participate in the development of the university into a leading international, cultural, scientific, and research collaboration.

The achievements of the international agreements held between King Abdulaziz University and world-class universities have resulted in eighty-one agreements in various fields. The total budget of these agreements has amounted to more than US \$120 million. The achievements include: publishing numerous scientific papers in ISI journals and specialized international conferences; registering numerous patents at international organizations; implementing 1400 training, development or technology transfer programs; developing graduate programs; and developing student and professor exchange programs.

#### 8 Conclusion

International university cooperation is a must, especially for university students and professors in the early stages of their careers. International cooperation and collaboration should be an integral element of the university mission and functions. This is achieved by universities when they assume responsibility for cooperating with other world-class institutions. International university collaboration and cooperation can take place in many avenues of university work: education, research, training, culture cooperation, and scholarships.

Research cooperation among individuals is no longer complicated, even though these researchers work at institutions in different countries and have cultural differences. Modern communication methods have facilitated the research projects they conduct. Globally, student exchange is increasing, and the total number of Saudi students studying abroad has also grown rapidly in recent years, largely funded by the Saudi government scholarship programs. International student and staff exchange increases the concerned individuals' capacity for self-reflection, self-reliance, and self-confidence. Such exchanges also help individuals develop more mature and objective perceptions concerning their home and foreign countries, thereby contributing to international tranquility by enhancing multicultural understanding. Such an exchange also crucially promotes creative thinking.

International collaboration and cooperation in higher education is a strategic goal of the Saudi Ministry of Education. In line with this goal, the MOE is actively involved in building bridges of knowledge between Saudi universities and world distinguished educational institutions to promote knowledge and cultural exchange. Each Saudi university, including King Abdulaziz University, has established joint international cooperation agreements and service contracts with many of the world's top-ranking distinguished universities and educational institutions. The international strategic policy of world-class universities is intended to improve education, strengthen both external and internal collaboration, build research partnerships with other world-class universities, and attract highly talented students and professors from around the world. Success in so doing provides a diversity of academic environments and scientific approaches and is a mark of distinction and strength.

Any world-class university endeavors to develop its leading position by providing researchers and students with excellent opportunities for cooperation, collaboration, and exchange with other national and international universities. Successful implementation of this strategy enables the university's researchers and students to participate in international research and research-based teaching to acquire a truly global outlook. Such a strategy can be implemented by means of research projects, student symposia, summer programs, workshops, conferences, and congresses. Scholarship grants and programs, such as the "International Students Program" of KAU promote mutual understanding between individuals and institutions in the global arena. Such mutual and mutually beneficial understanding can be accomplished through the educational and cultural exchange of students, knowledge, and skills and is of crucial significance to mankind's aspirations to live in harmony and peace.

Other cooperative programs provide opportunities for study, lecturing, curricular development, postdoctoral research, advanced joint research grants, visits, and aid in promoting mutual cultural understanding. Such programs also assist in the internationalization of campuses, curricula, and communities. Grant programs facilitate an international educational and cultural exchange for students, teachers, professionals, and scientists. This exchange is accomplished through direct interactions of individuals who are able to live and work together in order to learn from host country inhabitants in a daily sharing of mutually enriching cultural experiences.

King Abdulaziz University realized early on the importance of international university cooperation and collaboration to expedite its way toward becoming a world-class university. The impact of this on KAU has strengthened its scientific research and higher education sector (international students), improved the quality of its academic programs, and facilitated the administrative development and restructuring of KAU through its successive strategic plans. International collaboration has achieved alignment between KAU's vision and objectives and the programs of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Vision 2030. Enhancing the ranking of KAU is an outcome of the development plans and activities based on international collaboration.

And finally, it is worth mentioning that although some other Saudi universities have similar programs of collaboration, none of them have all the programs of KAU. It is no wonder that KAU is ranked as the top Saudi university in the list of world university rankings (Shanghai, Times, and QS). KAU was declared by the Times Higher Education ranking to be the top university in the MENA region for two successive years (2017 and 2018).

Acknowledgements The authors of this chapter would like to thank Prof. Mahmoud Nadim Nahas and Prof. Ahmad Hegazy for collecting the data needed for the manuscript.

#### References

ement, 31(3), 387–408. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scaman.2015.02. 003.

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# 2 Creating an Organizational Climate for Global Partnerships: Challenges and Opportunities

William G. Tierney

#### 1 Introduction

All too often, observers of tertiary education assume that the way the academic world functions today is the way it always has been organized. And yet, colleges and universities always have been in a state of change. If "world-class rankings" had been compiled in the late nineteenth century, no institutions in the USA would have likely made the list. In the most recent Shanghai Jiao Tong Rankings of World Universities, however, American universities held most of the top 20 positions, and over 50 of the top 100 spots [1].

With this constant state of flux in the academic world, the institutions that are most successful are those which are able to manage change and innovation in a world defined by globalization. Those who adhere to a principle of "staying the course" are likely to run aground, due to the rapidly changing conditions of the larger environment. Globalization highlights the necessity for institutions to be outward looking rather than insular. The ecology of global institutions is one where partnerships and alliances are created and maintained as opposed to a "go it alone" strategy where institutions fail or succeed by their own initiative [2].

My purpose here is to outline what the conditions are for an organization to create global partnerships and how to sustain them. As I shall elaborate, an innovative organization is different from a stable one. It requires different skills from its participants, and it functions in a different way than a stable organization. Global partnerships demand an innovative climate—but such an undertaking is not without risks and challenges.

Accordingly, I begin with an overview of how I conceive of an organization's culture, in general, and universities, in particular. I then consider the environment in which universities currently exist as framed by globalization, and subsequently turn to a discussion of how an innovative

W. G. Tierney (&)

culture might be established and maintained to enable global partnerships to be implemented and to succeed.

#### 2 Defining Organizational Culture

Our lack of understanding about the role of organizational culture in improving management and institutional performance inhibits our ability to address the challenges that face higher education and confounds our ability to create and maintain global partnerships. Colleges and universities face increasing complexity and fragmentation [3]. As decisionmaking contexts grow more obscure, costs increase, and resources become more difficult to allocate, leaders in higher education benefit from understanding their institutions as cultural entities. They need to recognize that those with whom they will work on a global partnership will have a culture different from their own. The point is certainly not that one organizational culture is better than another, but instead, that working across cultural boundaries is necessary for any leader involved in global partnerships [4].

As before, these leaders continue to make difficult decisions. These decisions, however, need not engender the degree of conflict that they usually have prompted. Indeed, properly informed by an awareness of culture, tough decisions may contribute to an institution's sense of purpose and identity and will facilitate the ability to create and maintain global partnerships. Moreover, to implement decisions, leaders must have a full, nuanced understanding of the organization's culture. Only then can they articulate decisions in a way that will speak to the needs of various constituencies and marshal their support. Without an understanding of one's own culture, the ability to create connections with another organization's culture becomes that much more difficult [5].

Cultural influences occur at many levels, within the department and the institution, as well as between universities when they work with one another, regardless of

University of Southern California, Los Angeles, USA e-mail<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
whether the companion organization is in the same country or abroad. Because these cultures vary dramatically, a central goal of understanding organizational culture is to minimize the occurrence and consequences of cultural conflict and help foster the development of shared goals. Studying the cultural dynamics of educational institutions and systems equips us to understand and, hopefully, reduce adversarial relationships. Equally important, it will enable us to recognize how those actions and shared goals are most likely to succeed and how they can best be implemented.

One assumption of this chapter is that more often than not, more than one choice exists for the decision-maker; one simple answer most often does not exist. No matter how much information we gather, frequently we are able to choose from several viable alternatives. Culture influences the decision. Effective administrators are well aware that they can take a given action in some institutions but not in others. They are less aware of why this is true. Bringing the dimensions and dynamics of culture to consciousness helps leaders assess the reasons for such differences in institutional responsiveness and performance. This will allow them to evaluate likely consequences before, not after, they act. An understanding of the cultural determinants of an organization enables a decision-maker not only to understand their organization, but also those with whom they will enter into a global partnership [6].

It is important to reiterate that an understanding of organizational culture is not a panacea to all administrative problems, or a certainty that global partnerships will always be successful. An understanding of culture, for example, will not automatically increase enrollments, increase research grants, or increase the number of global partnerships that get formed. However, an administrator's correct interpretation of the organization's culture can provide critical insight about which of the many possible avenues to choose from is best when deciding about how to increase enrollment, whether to undertake a particular approach to increasing research output, or how to improve global partnerships. Indeed, the most persuasive case for studying organizational culture is quite simply that we no longer need to tolerate the consequences of our ignorance, nor, for that matter, will a rapidly changing environment permit us to do so. By advocating for a broad perspective, organizational culture encourages practitioners to:

Many administrators intuitively understand that organizational culture is important; their actions sometimes reflect the points mentioned above. A framework for organizational culture provides administrators with the capability to better articulate and address this crucial foundation for improving organizational performance in general, and global partnerships in particular.

When anthropologists conduct fieldwork to better understand the culture of a society or a collective group, they are equipped with disciplinary-specific terms, such as "fictive kinship," that define commonly encountered phenomena. These terms are not only intelligible to other anthropologists, but they are deemed crucial for a thorough description and analysis of a given culture or cultural activity. For an understanding of institutional culture in higher education, it is therefore useful to pinpoint similarly important phenomena and provide a working terminology that can serve as the basis for a conceptual framework. Six such terms define an organization's culture at a university: mission, socialization, information, strategy, leadership, and environment [7]. In what follows, I provide a thumbnail definition of these terms in relation to how to think about global partnerships.

#### 3 Defining Globalization

The rapid development and adoption of technology along with more open economies have created an integrated global economy [8]. The globalization process has brought with it significant changes in all areas of life, including tertiary education.

Tertiary education remains at the center of economic well-being, and its import may have grown due to its importance in a knowledge economy. Education is necessary for growth both through its direct contribution to skills and workforce quality and also because of the ways in which it adds key competencies such as critical thinking, creativity, teamwork and self-learning [9]. These contribute to entrepreneurship, mobility, and the capacity to process information and new ideas.

Governments and institutions need to act quickly since they exist in a competitive environment where all countries and universities interested in staying competitive are also changing [10]. In particular, regional cooperation can add value by reaching a deeper understanding of the forces for change, sharing experiences to build confidence in the ability to adjust and to capture the benefits on offer, and removing impediments to integration. The implication for higher education is that relationships among universities across regions needs to be increased and strengthened [11].

Globalization is a highly complex process that has impacted multiple national and international arenas. At times, when individuals have spoken about globalization, the term has been employed as a synonym for American imperialism as if the term simply refers to the extension throughout the world of American power and culture [12]. Although the rationale for such an assertion is understandable, such an assumption makes it appear that the USA is not influenced by globalization, as if the country is simply on a unidirectional trajectory and globalization is the next logical stage in the country's development. But globalization has impacted American universities just as well. What we need to do, then, is not work from a western perspective about what globalization is or how an institution should respond. Rather, although the forces of globalization may be similar across geographic borders, how a university will respond will largely result from national imperatives and the culture of an institution [13].

Regardless of the challenges that globalization may have created for the world's economies, and indirectly universities, one point is certain: organizations no longer can look entirely inwardly and focus on a local market as if larger forces are not at work [14]. Jobs are outsourced from one country to another. A product that a company made for decades that served a niche market suddenly finds competition from a company that is thousands of miles away. A worker spends his entire lifetime in one job, and then discovers that she is unemployed because of changes in the workplace. And universities find that they cannot rely on revenue streams that once seemed certain. Government subsidies shrink because of a new definition of public goods and educational resources. Clienteles shift because on-line learning enables students to take classes virtually, rather than having to attend class on a campus. Faculty discovers that either the compensation for a traditional academic job no longer provides a salary that enables a comfortable living, or that there are opportunities beyond academic work.

Globalization, however, does not necessarily need to portend that all of the consequences are negative for individuals or organizations. However, as I discuss below, rather than assume that stasis is the norm, the "new normal" that globalization assumes is that change must be a central component of any organization [15]. Educational organizations not only have to incorporate the notion of change into their organizational ethos, they also have to train students on how to adapt to change rather than assuming that a college education provides job security for life.

Global partnerships are an obvious outgrowth of globalization. International arrangements once meant that a university might send some students for a semester abroad. Although undergraduate travel is certainly a mainstay of academic institutions, global partnerships today involve a great deal more activities from not only students, but also faculty, and different units within a university [16]. Indeed, as I suggested above, based on an organization's culture, the environment has shifted for successful organizations that enable and encourage the actors to create global partnerships that will increase the well-being of the university.

Education is a useful example of the breadth of globalization insofar as education's reach transcends one or another category: education not only is transformed by globalization, but as knowledge-producing organizations, schools, colleges, and universities also transform globalization. Discussions often center around globalization's impact on economics, trade, or culture. Education cuts across virtually all of these categories. The result is that education, in general, and higher education, in particular, is undergoing as significant of a change as at any time in the last century, in large part because globalization assumes a knowledge-based economy [17].

The result is that the definition of a country's economy now exceeds simple geographic boundaries. Communication and transportation technologies enable companies to transcend borders in ways unimaginable only a generation ago. The same may be said of tertiary education. Where one takes classes and how one takes them and who teaches these classes—indeed, even what we mean by a "class"—is being unalterably changed in a remarkably quick timeframe.

I have previously written about how the first wave of globalization was simply the movement of students across borders [18]. The number of students in the Asia-Pacific, for example, moving overseas for their university education almost doubled between 1999 and 2006, and has continued apace. There is no reason to think these increases will not continue. The new wave of globalization, however, includes not merely teachers on the move but also programs, degrees, and institutions. And "movement" is not simply geographic travel but also participation enabled by improvements in technology and communication. The underlying ethos is one of the competitions; the World Trade Organization has estimated that the global market for education is well over US \$40 billion dollars. According to a report published by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), there were approximately 207 million students in tertiary education in 2014—a number that has more than doubled since 2000 and continues to increase [19].

The new wave of globalization includes the movement of teachers and whole institutions into overseas markets, joint degree programs offered by institutions in different economies, and distance learning programs, to mention just a few of its characteristics [20]. It has a higher level of commercial motivation: There is not only a shift from student mobility to program and provider mobility, but also a shift in orientation in the relationships between universities from a focus on development and cooperation to what might be defined as competitive commerce. The new wave offers access to skills in delivery, experience in curriculum design, teaching resources, quality assurance systems, and research capacity and an international perspective, all of which can add value for local partners [21]. But it also brings competition and pressure for adjustment. The result is that our universities have to build an innovative culture.

#### 4 Defining Innovation for Global Partnerships

Organizations change for a variety of reasons. New organizations have fewer rules. As organizations age and expand, they gain a history and a way to conduct business. Leaders have different priorities and set the organization in a new direction. Environmental conditions force an organization to react in one way or another.

Stable organizations also are different from innovative organizations. Fast food chains are not particularly innovative. When a customer enters McDonald's, he or she is not looking for an innovative hamburger. Indeed, in large part, the organization has been successful for its stability and its ability to replicate a similar experience across different countries. At the same time, local customs are observed. Similarly, the army is not looking for creative soldiers. The organization succeeds, in part, because the employees follow orders.

Thus, colleges and universities that are going to be innovative are different from organizations that require stability. One of the curiosities of academic organizations is that they frequently have creative individuals, even though the organization may not be innovative. Creativity pertains to inventiveness grounded in field-specific knowledge and expedited by motivation [22]. Indeed, successful academic organizations have fostered individual creativity through the assumption that a walled fortress divorced from the daily troubles and turmoil of society will enable a creative environment. How many poets or creative writers have used the university as a sinecure? Nobel Prize winners are overwhelmingly located at universities where tenure has provided them the time to be creative. Such organizational environments are entirely different from a prison or fast food franchise where no one wants workers to be creative.

Innovation requires a different organizational structure. Innovation pertains to the implementation of a creative product or process and its perceived novelty once it has been evaluated by a critical audience [23]. But how does an organization change its processes so it is seen as innovative? What might an innovative organization look like that is different from traditional organizations?

Prior to creating a culture of innovation, an understanding of the impediments that exist in organizations is prudent [24]. Consider traditional organizations and how they function. Regulations and standardization are the norm. Rules explain the dos and don'ts of organizational life. Individuals learn what acceptable behavior is and how to act. Process is important. When one arrives and leaves, how someone dresses, when days may be taken for holidays, and the like are all part of clarifying acceptable behavior. In doing so, an objective is that the processes involved in enabling the organization to function are standardized so that differences do not occur. Starbucks prides itself that the taste of its café latte will be the same whether one buys it in New York, Singapore, or Dubai. Even relatively new organizations, such as Amazon, have rules and regulations that govern behavior and standardize action.

A traditional organization incentivizes activities that produce stability, rather than disruption [25]. Employees get awards for showing up on time or by having a workplace that exemplifies company codes of conduct. Thinking "out of the box" is not typically rewarded. Indeed, managers oversee actions in order to ensure that productivity is maintained at a level that the organization has stipulated. New entrants to an organization learn quickly that reporting requirements assume standardized behavior.

Even universities that reward creative behavior have rules and regulations [26]. Research and scholarship may be creative, but the organization's processes clarify the parameters within which one acts. The vision of the university as a monastery where academics were to be divorced from the daily concerns of society has enabled a rhythm and pace that framed acceptable modes of behavior. The desire to innovate —to scale up one's ideas, or to have the organization function differently from its peers—was eschewed, or at least was never a priority. Until recently, when one looked at the world's great universities, "entrepreneurial" was not a word that came to mind; indeed, an "entrepreneurial university" was not intended as a complement, for the institution in question was presumably conducting business in a manner different from what had been established.

An innovative organization rewards experimentation. Rather than being divorced from society, an innovative university is more likely to think about ways to engage with the larger environment. Such an observation is particularly important with regard to global partnerships. Bringing ideas to market is no longer disdained, but applauded. The implication is that an institution is likely to have services that augment faculty ideas in non-traditional ways rather than standardized ones. Faculty once wrote for one another via scholarly journals. Innovative organizations utilize social media so that professors are able to extend their ideas not only to their confreres but also to the larger society.

Rather than standardizing processes, innovative organizations set stable goals about what they want individuals to do and to produce; they then enable individuals to create the means of production. Rather than acceptable norms of behavior with regard to how one dresses or when one comes and goes from work, an innovative organization is more likely to focus less on micromanagement and pay more attention to goals. Autonomy within an innovative organization suggests that individuals should be encouraged to create patterns of behavior that will empower them to do their work, rather than assuming that the organization is the best determiner of organizational behavior. Difference, rather than similarity, is celebrated.

How an organization spends its time and resources is a useful clue for understanding if innovation is an organizational priority and whether global partnerships are a central part of the culture, or peripheral. Offices devised to regulate behavior may succeed in a traditional organization, but not in an innovative one. Instead, temporal and fiscal resources will be geared toward encouraging experimentation and risk. "Venture capital" is an idea outside of traditional organizations where resources are put toward experiments. By definition, an experiment may fail. An innovative organization will have internal funding mechanisms that support experimentation; in effect, the organization has an internalized form of venture capital that rewards risk [27].

Curiously, tenure was once seen as a structure that facilitated experimentation; over time, however, the concept has been turned on its head. Assistant professors commonly profess to undertaking activities that are less risky in order to publish articles that will enable them to achieve tenure. The socialization process creates a culture that gravitates against experimentation and toward conservative behavior. For the twenty-first century, academics need to revitalize structures and processes so that they reward, rather than penalize, experimentation.

Similarly, the vision of the isolated academic working on research isolated from one's colleagues and peers has to be reconsidered in an innovative environment. Rather than standardized, isolated behavior, the organization seeks distributed problem-solving. Teamwork matters. Innovative organizations encourage multiple perspectives and ideas. Rather than a solo composition, think of the metaphor of an orchestra where different players have different parts to play in order to create a brilliant piece of music. Innovative organizations encourage individual experimentation, but they also frame individual action across actors so that the outcome is unique, rather than similar.

The need for innovation is only likely to increase. Newspapers were once a mainstay of society. Only a generation ago, no one would have predicted their demise. Individuals thought of social media as entirely different from the newspaper and as something used largely by younger people. And yet, countless newspapers have been downsized or closed over the last twenty years. The ability to adapt to new environments is a skill that needs to be fostered. Hence, the assumption that higher education does not need to be innovative in a manner fundamentally different from the past is perilous. Universities need innovation to manage a potentially turbulent future—or more urgently—to avoid irrelevance.

One outgrowth of globalization and the ability of universities to incorporate innovation into their culture are seen by a growing interest in international research cooperation. The research community is being asked to respond to issues that apply across borders such as climate change, for example. Cooperation is valuable as institutions respond to these sorts of issues. Cooperation and cross-border projects have a number of advantages [28]. They include:

My point here is that there are real drivers for international cooperation and global partnerships, far beyond mere reputation setting for newcomer or mid-ranked institutions. A generation ago, only a handful of universities might have looked across geographic borders to establish relationships, but today such activities are increasingly common. These activities are also a great deal more than simply sending students abroad or welcoming students to the host institution primarily to generate a revenue stream. Instead, a broad array of activities is being contemplated largely because globalization has both enabled and required universities to think and act in ways different from the past. What enables universities to act decisively by forging and sustaining global partnerships? I answer this question in the next section.

#### 5 Sustaining an Innovative Environment and Building Stable Global Partnerships

I have argued that globalization requires innovation in universities that historically have traditional cultures framed by a socializing process that inculcates a mission that usually is historicist rather than forward-thinking. The organization's environment is generally local, and the information provided meets the needs of a traditional organization. Strategic plans generally seek to improve incrementally based on a traditional organizational structure. What we need to confront, however, is a new intellectual framework oriented toward change and innovation.

The challenges that academe faces to develop and sustain global partnerships in a competitive environment are numerous. Academic staff, for example, require skills different from those who taught subject matter in a classroom and conducted discrete research. Of consequence, teaching will undergo a sea-change and research will require skills associated with teamwork and cross-cultural collaboration. The result is that the kind of individuals we hire is likely to require a different framework from the past, and our universities will need pedagogical and research training centers aimed at equipping staff with skills required for a globalized universe.

As I noted above, "venture capital" is a normal term in the business world, but foreign to those of us in academic institutions. Academics generally conduct discrete research or find funding from a government agency. Global partnerships may well need venture capital from a funding arm of the university or from the business world. For such funding to occur, the skills researchers need not supplant what world-class researchers currently have, but rather necessitate additional skills of the researcher or within the university. Simply stated, a chemistry professor needs a laboratory to undertake research. In a global environment where universities hope to attract venture capital, in addition to traditional academic materials such as laboratories, universities also require technology transfer offices, units that are able to develop business plans, and offices that establish relationships with business and industry that look to marketing ideas in the natural and social sciences [29].

There is also not one predetermined manner in which universities must move. In the past, a university might have simply figured out which areas of the world they wished to send their students and created arrangements with a few institutions together with faculty exchanges. The current options are more complex. Universities need to choose a model of internationalization [30]. Program and provider mobility comes into play. An array of choices exists that decision-makers actively need to consider and accept or reject. "Brick and mortar" campuses in another country remain an option, but virtual campuses are also a possibility. Dual enrollment options exist such that one campus might offer a discrete number of courses and another institution across the world will offer the other. Some universities will see dual degrees as beneficial to their students and others might think it decreases the brand. The result is that quality assurance is no longer a "one size fits all" model but must be adapted to the mission that the institution has chosen for itself.

One conundrum of globalization is that over the last generation there has been a mania about international rankings [31]. Ministries want their institutions to be represented on league tables. The risk, of course, is that all universities then need to adhere to the same sorts of activities. Precisely at a time when a university's culture ought to choose an identity that sets itself apart from other universities, there is a pressure to conform. Over time, however, rather than a move toward isomorphism, universities are likely to establish unique global partnerships that enable innovative relationships to occur based on the unique cultures of the institutions. Organizational cultures gravitate against isomorphism as if one institution's identity is akin to another. Rather, a university needs to come to grips with its own identity, make its uniqueness clear to internal and external audiences, and then develop relationships with global partners based on those differing identities.

Markets respond to diversity and unique ideas. Not all partnerships will succeed, but the successful organization is one that is open to experimentation and trial and error. To be sure, support structures need to be in place that enable such relationships to germinate, but the future lies less in mimicking what other institutions have done and instead in building an identity based on innovation.

Because of increased collaboration across borders and a focus on differentiation rather than similarity, the import of quality assurance is likely to rise. The most obvious example is that of for-profit higher education in the USA. New providers entered the academic market and their experimentation gained initial admiration. Over time, the experiments were cause for concern. Low completion rates, increased costs, and fraudulent claims plagued the industry when governmental and accrediting agencies investigated its activities [32]. The same sort of oversight needs to be done with the ventures universities begin across the globe to ensure that the activity is of high quality and measurable cost. An increase in global partnerships suggests that a Ministry of Higher Education's role is likely to move from a funding agent to that of a design or certification authority. The likelihood also exists that cross-border collaboration will require cross-border alignments of those who determine quality assurance.

Universities interested in building global partnerships obviously need offices focused on the matter, but to build a regional and global community, a variety of mutual topics need to be discussed. Commonsensically, global partnerships require multiple partners. A first step is to develop new data collection systems that will be utilized by those groups who are working together. Institutions can be proprietary about their university's data, and global partnerships require the opposite sort of action. Data sharing, especially among institutions without a history of data collection and analysis is an initial step for successful collaboration.

The sharing of data, however, is simply a first step in regional cooperation that needs to be considered, developed, and enhanced over time. Universities in developing economies often face a severe "brain drain" that needs to be reversed [33]. Global partnerships in open markets suggest not simply an economic free trade zone, but also an academic one where faculty participates actively at more than their home institution.

Similarly, rather than a reliance on national professional and disciplinary associations that cater to a local clientele, cross-border associations can work together to increase the teaching and research capacity of the academic staff in the region. Just as global partnerships suggest increased student and academic mobility, so too might staff mobility be enhanced. The key component here is a commitment to openness, experimentation, and rigor in the mode of supply.

Research cooperation also will be reconfigured. Rather than research project "A" being done in one institution and research project "B" in another, there ought to be a proliferation in modes of supply. The joint funding of Ph.D. programs, for example, is one possibility for partnerships where faculty and students from multiple institutions work together on projects that are of regional benefit and enable students to gain skills aimed at the future rather than the past. Students trained on more than one campus return to their host university with networks and skills not ordinarily gained in a discrete program.

Although I have argued here for a changed organizational culture aimed at innovation in an era of globalization, of necessity, one key player in the environment needs to be addressed. Universities are located in countries and in one manner or another they are framed by the stance a country takes toward its neighbors and toward education. A country can enhance or restrict global partnerships based on its willingness to have its institution engage in such activities. As opposed to previous opportunities, however, a country does not necessarily need to provide long-standing revenue for an activity. Nevertheless, a country also has to be willing to enable its institutions to operate in ways that may be at odds with the cultural or economic mores of the country. "Venture capital," for example, is not a phrase commonly used in socialist countries, but I have suggested such an arrangement might be beneficial for a university seeking a global partnership.

How faculty thinks and works is not only framed by an academic culture but also by the national culture from which they come. In general, I see such differences as a strength, and institutions and faculties can work out their differences, but if a nation state is wary of such collaborations, then long-standing partnerships are going to be at risk. An initial step is for a ministry and its institutions to develop codes of conduct that enable the ground rules to be understood. Finely tuned, restrictive rules are less likely to enable collaboration then models aimed at enabling partnerships. Any country has a vested interest in seeing its universities prosper, but in general, steering global partnerships from afar, such as from the ministry, is less likely to produce sustainable projects. Those closest to the project are the best qualified to determine the parameters of the project.

#### 6 Conclusion

I have approached global partnerships as entering a new era because of globalization. Although universities always have had unique cultures, I have suggested that rather than aiming at maintaining the status quo, the culture now needs to shift toward innovation. Such movements certainly come with risks, but also rewards. A successful university aimed at innovation and increasing global partnerships will acknowledge that not all such ventures will succeed. Nevertheless, the parameters of what is necessary for global partnerships will be apparent. Such projects do not simply occur without cultural and structural supports both within the university and at the Ministry level.

The future holds great possibility for new sorts of arrangements that go far beyond simply shipping students to one or another country or for singular faculty exchanges. The potential for arrangements that work at resolving some of the world's more intransigent social and environmental ills are significant. The question is if our institutions have the ability to reorient themselves toward long-standing arrangements that enable our students, faculty and staff to function and prosper in new ways.

#### References

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# 3 Global Citizens for the Twenty-First Century: The Role of International Partnerships in University Education

Feridun Hamdullahpur

#### 1 Introduction

The scale of disruption that our world faces from geopolitical to socioeconomic perspectives is vast. No single researcher, university or nation can achieve a breakthrough solution alone. The challenges are too complex, and finding success is only possible when we work together as a global community of educators, researchers and influencers.

At the heart of this is the need to collaborate across borders, languages, industries and disciplines. The challenges and opportunities in our disruptive world are only becoming more complex due to the acceleration of new technology, an ageing population in the West, an increasingly turbulent geopolitical landscape and more.

This chapter will explore the role international partnerships have for universities and how they educate, research and impact a disruptive future.

Cross-discipline cooperation has long been the focus of many institutions to increase the impact of research and the strength of our students' education. This approach can also be taken through international partnerships that leverage the combined power of talent, resources and vision that spans national boundaries and cultures. Our increasingly globalized world offers a range of opportunities for university education to grow and flourish at the individual level, institutional level and the national and global levels.

It is vital that international partnerships also bring together a range of partners that intersect with all aspects of our society. This means broadening the scope of traditional partnerships between universities to include partners in government, industry and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs).

And, how we develop international work-integrated learning opportunities will make the difference in our

F. Hamdullahpur (&) University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Canada e-mail<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
ability as universities to develop global talent when we need their leadership the most.

#### 2 Achieving the Three Levels of Collaboration Success

Internationalization within post-secondary institutions has evolved into a mosaic of programs and partnerships that look nothing like those seen in past decades [1]. Each international partnership is unique and has developed to suit a specific need for the institution, researchers or students involved.

A university's expertise, scope and goals are individual to their community of students, faculty and community members. While each collaboration has individual characteristics that make it ideal for both or multiple parties involved, achieving wide-ranging success in international partnerships means developing partnerships that have an Individual Impact, Institutional Impact and a National and Global Impact.

Implementing actionable programs that touch on each of these levels is vital in creating lasting and comprehensive international partnerships for universities. Because of the central role universities play in educating the world's citizens and their leadership in scientific, technological and policy research, achieving success at each level is the ideal approach for broad impact.

#### 2.1 Individual Impact

The Individual Impact of international partnerships most often comes in the form of student exchanges. The intrinsic characteristic of universities viewing the free flow of ideas that transcend borders, conflict and cultures as being very valuable has made international exchanges standard practice at most institutions around the world. As our world has become smaller and more globalized, the value of international experiences for students has only increased.

Increasing the ability of students to gain a global perspective through short-term and long-term exchanges offers valuable experiences for students that transcend their learning in the classroom. Offering and hosting exchange students from partnering institutions from around the world creates a lasting impact on the students involved that is immediately felt upon the completion of their education.

A survey of Asian companies found that 57% of surveyed companies agreed that hiring international talent is very important or somewhat important [2]. The demand is there for the talent, and students understand that there is significant value in international exchanges that can increase their career prospects.

The Erasmus Impact Study [3], which surveys European Union students in exchange programs, found in 2013 that the rate of unemployment for students who had studied abroad was 23% lower than those who had remained in their home country. This is not insignificant in the minds of students who are looking to their future prospects for employment throughout their university career.

Developing exchange offerings for students ultimately depends on establishing positive relationships with partner institutions with similar academic and research programs. Creating a framework that is mutually beneficial for both institutions and students create a good foundation for long-term relationships. To make these relationships and experiences as positive as possible, each university must ensure a cohesive process of bringing international students into their campus community.

There are also typical barriers international students face that need to be addressed to ensure a successful student exchange for all parties involved. These considerations include most pressingly, financial limitations that limit the ability for students to explore the world. Considerations also include screening for positive academic prerequisites, so students have the educational background needed to succeed, language support for those students arriving in a country that is not their native tongue, community integration services that bring exchange students into the greater university community, and the student mental health and wellness supports needed to serve international exchange students.

Many of these elements and expectations should be well-defined in the student exchange agreement to ensure that the responsibilities of each institution are clear to each party. Institutions can begin the exploration of such exchanges through a preliminary memorandum of understanding (MoU), but a formal agreement that is signed between both parties is necessary in the end.

Given different national and institutional cultures are at play when developing these agreements, what is customary at one institution or in one country may not be at another. Establishing expectations for each party ahead of time will help mitigate disagreements and possible legal issues that may arise in the future.

Embracing exchange students and the potential they have to add to the diversity of ideas and perspectives will strengthen the hosting university as the blending of cultures and experiences spreads throughout the domestic student population. The links that are created across nations and institutions start at the individual level and can last lifetimes. The impact is significant on the individual student involved, but also lends to what is possible at the institutional level when international partnerships are established.

#### 2.2 Institutional Impact

The second level of international collaboration that is integral to developing successful partnerships is those that have an Institutional Impact. Institutional Impact collaborations are primarily found at the research level. This includes, but is not limited to, joint research projects, co-authoring of research papers and the sharing of resources through joint research grants and research equipment use.

With the ever-present challenge of raising funds and the resources needed for any number of research projects, it can be difficult for any institution to have the equipment and field expertise to meet the curiosity and vision of their researchers. To meet this demand, like-minded universities from around the world can find common ground and partner on projects and work together towards discovery.

This can be joint research projects between disciplines to maximize institutional expertise or formally pooling resources to fund large-scale joint projects on previously agreed upon areas of focus. By building complementary agreements that lean into the strengths of each institution, there are more opportunities to make an impact across disciplines and fields. This can bolster the output from each institution that would not have been possible prior to the agreements.

Assessing the success of these programs can be established through several performance indicators that are individual to each project and institution. Traditional indicators include the number of joint research papers that are authored between the partnering institutions and the number of joint research grants awarded through the added strength of the collaboration.

Further to the partnerships between institutions is the addition of collaborations between universities and industry partners. The development of international research agreements between universities and businesses that are not domestically connected is becoming a commonplace. The transfer of ideas and innovations through collaborative R&D between academia and industry lends to an impact at the institutional level that creates generally positive outcomes for everyone involved.

According to a study in The Journal of Technology and Transfer, industry partners enjoy the benefit of having access to groundbreaking research and talent pools, and universities find a source of revenue to fund graduate student work and often the addition of needed equipment. This makes both parties likely to expand on more project collaborations in the future [4].

It was pointed out in the Individual Impact section the impact student mobility and exchanges can have on those students taking part in a cross-cultural experience. A similar benefit can be found at the Institutional Impact level through staff exchanges. Staff exchanges between institutions and cultures can have a fundamental impact on the innovative ability of any university through the exploration of how their peers from around the world face common challenges in their work.

These exchanges can include a university's communications team travelling to a partnering institution to collaborate and explore joint projects or a staff member travelling to another university to speak with and/or shadow a peer of theirs to experience their culture and share industry best practices. Universities hold a tremendous amount of talent in their staff and the power of collaboration amongst this community group can be leveraged both for closer relationships between individuals and to make improvements at an institutional level.

Universities have an opportunity to add to their research capabilities through collaborations that aim to bring like-minded institutions and researchers together. The impact of these collaborations can be highly valuable. In addition, through partnerships with the private sector and embracing an entrepreneurial spirit of discovery and creation, universities can be impactful on a whole other level that has significant implications nationally and globally.

#### 2.3 National and Global Impact

Remaining at this level of international cooperation can be both fruitful and limiting at the same time. Individual and Institutional Impact keep the emphasis of positive collaborations within the realm of student and university. While these programs can create strong impacts on the personal and institutional level, there is further room to grow international collaborations so they can have national and global impacts.

International programs that promote entrepreneurial enterprises and the development of university intellectual property into commercialized ventures will have the ability to shape and impact society at a far greater scale than institutional and individual levels. For many institutions, this can be a challenge to implement as it is counter to their established practices and can face resistance at a faculty level.

A number of universities around the world are making entrepreneurship a priority for their students, but what is often lost is the importance of international collaborations in developing technology and intellectual property (IP) that can have a global impact.

Growth within regional and global economies can be produced through a university's dedication to supporting entrepreneurship and innovative IP policy for students and researchers [5]. Coordinating with international partners through joint ventures and research projects with an eye on the commercialization of research makes the impact far greater than the act of discovery. Bringing innovations to the world and understanding global markets through international partnerships bring an element of coordination and global experience that students, faculty and alumni can use to their advantage down the road.

Creating international entrepreneurial experiences for students and faculty is a key in having a national and global impact that creates economic prosperity and provides a primer for future technological and scientific discoveries.

Challenges to the establishment of global ventures rest at the institutional and legal limitations of each partnering organization. Each university must adhere to a form of creator-owned IP policy that removes the barrier of who owns the IP by keeping the ownership with the researchers involved and not the university. This will fuel the desire and opportunity for more researcher-driven ventures as it incentivizes commercialization and limits any legal issues that may come to pass between partnering institutions.

It is equally as important that the partnering organizations promote entrepreneurship at their universities at a fundamental level. A creator-friendly IP policy is vital towards promoting entrepreneurship but additional supports such as mentoring, commercialization expertise and basic startup programs for researchers are integral to future success. Adding international experiences through research partnerships and international work-integrated learning experiences for students, such as cooperative education job placements, contributes to the future impact of international partnerships.

It is understandable that every university within their national border would want to contribute and be a part of building a strong, healthy economy through talent, knowledge and, more so, the integration of the two in the simplest form of entrepreneurship. However, many large-scale challenges (i.e. water scarcity, climate change, artificial intelligence) are of a global scale, and we need to understand and accept the importance and value of sharing and building solutions together with other nations through collaborations.

Of the nearly 200 million students who are enroled in universities and colleges worldwide, about 5 million of them study at institutions outside of their home countries [6]. This provides a tremendous amount of mobility of knowledge, culture, global awareness and opportunity.

And, since the world is in great need of collective learning from one another and building healthy economies worldwide, what could be a better opportunity to collaborate globally to achieve prosperity for all?

#### 3 The Wide Range of University Partnerships

Knowing that there is a range of international collaborations possible for a university broadens its ability to find the perfect institutional fit whether it is with another university, private enterprise, government or NGO. Partnerships are not limited to what can be traditionally thought of as academic exchanges of students and ideas, but can also be viewed as an act of collaboration that creates something neither organization could achieve on its own impact.

It is vital to weave collaborations together and build a network of cooperation that is complementary to all parties. Given the central role of universities to be centres of excellence where society comes to educate the next generation and find the discoveries that will drive future prosperity, ensuring all avenues of international cooperation are leveraged will strengthen outcomes and contribute a level of diversification needed in our complex, globalized economy [7].

There are several examples of these varying partnerships that can be found at the University of Waterloo.

#### 3.1 Soochow University, University of Waterloo and Suzhou Industrial Park Joint Institute of Research and Education on Nanotechnology

International partnerships can be tailored for comprehensive impact. While these partnerships add new layers of complexity to both build and sustain, they also have the opportunity to create positive outcomes that cross borders even outside of academia.

The strong and productive research partnership between the University of Waterloo's Waterloo Institute for Nanotechnology (WIN) and the Soochow University started in 2011 when Soochow University, the University of Waterloo and the Suzhou Industrial Park (SUN-WIN-SIP) initiated a Joint Institute of Research and Education. The objectives of the Joint Institute are to enable faculty at both institutions to engage in research collaborations, foster scholar exchange and stimulate entrepreneurship and innovation in nanotechnology [8].

The partnership is made up of several programs and agreements that blend research, education and commercialization that are aided by SIP and Waterloo's spirit of entrepreneurship and creator-friendly IP policy.

The research collaboration has shown to be productive as SUN and SIP have sponsored 24 collaborative SUN-WIN research projects in each of the four key theme areas of nanotechnology, namely nanoinstrumentation, nanobiosystems, nanoelectronics and nanomaterials development, since April 2012.

The first round of funding sponsored 12 projects, ten of which received 450,000 RMB (approximately \$70,000 CAD) and two of which received 750,000 RMB (approximately \$150,000 CAD) over three years. In 2013, seven additional projects were awarded 450,000 RMB each, and in 2015 five projects received the same.

During the initial phase of the collaboration process, Soochow University's Technology Transfer Office visited WIN in July 2012 to learn more about the University of Waterloo's commercialization practices, IP policies, entrepreneurship and faculty support. The University of Waterloo has a progressive creator-owned IP Policy that is unique amongst most universities around the world and has aided in Waterloo's researchers and students creating hundreds of startup ventures that include successful technology companies.

The partnership also brought graduate and undergraduate students into the agreement. Soochow University and WIN have signed agreements on collaborative educational programs for Soochow students interested in studying nanotechnology at the University of Waterloo, including the Doctoral program and the 3+1+1 joint Bachelor's/Master's program. In addition, WIN hosts several fourth-year Soochow students for a four-month research internship program which is sponsored by the China Scholarship Council.

This has allowed the University of Waterloo to attract top international graduate students to WIN and the university, and Soochow can offer their students the experience of studying at one of Canada's top nanotechnology labs.

Since the beginning of the nanotechnology collaboration between the University of Waterloo and Soochow, there has only been growth. These successes have also inspired the exploration of creating further agreements with additional fields of study, such as Energy and the Water Institute.

What began as an international research collaboration has flourished into a multidimensional partnership that has had fundamental Individual Impact, Institutional Impact and, with the focus on entrepreneurship, National and Global Impact.

#### 3.2 United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network

As discussed in the previous sections, universities have a central role in bringing international partners from all sectors of society together to face some of the most pressing challenges facing our world. An example of this effort that can have far-reaching national and international implications can be found in the partnership the University of Waterloo established with the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN).