Les rapports université/entreprise à l’Université Nationale Autonome du Mexique (UNAM) : la vision de professeurs ayant de l’expérience de collaboration avec des entreprises

Since 1988, the introduction of a market economy in Mexico have changed the government policy towards public universities in the country, reducing their budget and asking them to participate more actively in the national economy, by producing knowledge that could translate into innovation in the production sector. The budgetary constraints imposed on Mexican public universities affect their functions of teaching and worsen the conditions for research. The economic and political context after 1990 has created the eventuality in which academics must implement different mechanisms, including the establishment of relations with commercial enterprises as guided by the policies of the federal government, which were developed on the basis of recommendations by the OECD. In order to contribute to the theme of university/enterprise relations developing in Mexico, we conducted a case study on the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), the largest university and which is the most advanced institution in the development of scientific knowledge in Mexico. Using a methodological approach of qualitative exploration, our case study collected data from documentary and perceptual sources to describe the characteristics of the university/enterprise relationships at the institution. From an organizational point of view, we established the framework of our research on the theory of contingency, and for the analysis of knowledge production we have taken the basis of models of the triple helix and Mode 2. The documents on various important aspects on the framework of the university/enterprise rapport in Mexico and in UNAM have been consulted and 51 semi-structured interviews conducted with persons having institutional experience of work with companies. The target population of the research was composed of two groups: 1) full-time professors (faculty and researchers) working in the fields of biomedicine, biotechnology, chemistry, and engineering, and 2) persons having a management role in the relations between firms and the institution. The institutional policy of UNAM on the university/enterprise relationship and the structure supporting their creation and formalization has varied according to the changing criteria of successive university administrations. There are all kinds of enterprises, both public and private, collaborating with researchers at UNAM, however governmental and quasi-governmental enterprises are predominant. Related to the lack of scientific and technological infrastructure of most enterprises in Mexico, the major requests addressed to UNAM are for technical or professional services to help firms to solve specific problems. Nevertheless, particularly in the field of biotechnology, we identified some cases of closer collaboration pointing to non-linear innovation, as proposed by the Mode 2 and the Triple helix. The interviewed perceived more advantages than disadvantages from these relationships. Among the main benefits the researchers cited the acquisition of additional resources for research, including funds for student scholarships and some equipment, but several of them have remarked the importance of the knowledge coming from this contacts and the sense of reality they can convey in the training of students. On the basis of the answers collected, the government programs drawn up for science, technology and innovation did not seem to succeed in strengthening the relations between the knowledge generating institutions and the productivity sector of Mexico.

Keyphrases: Mode 2, Recherche qualitative, University-enterprise relations, Mexican university, Mode 2, Qualitative research, Triple helix, Case study