The Teaching Company Scheme: Effecting Organizational Change through Academic/Practitioner Collaboration

Abstract

The UK′s Teaching Company Scheme, established in 1975, has been responsible for setting up almost 1,000 collaborative projects between academics and businesses, all with the primary aim of effecting organizational change. The interest which the scheme has aroused has usually centred on its effectiveness as an investment of government money in industry, and on the effectiveness of academic/business collaborations. The potential of the scheme to act as a “laboratory” in which to study organizational change processes has gone almost unnoticed. By studying projects completed within four different companies, attempts to analyse the effectiveness of Teaching Companies as an organizational change process, and to develop a case for the scheme as a potentially valuable source of future research opportunities.