TOWARDS DEPICTING THE ORGANISATIONAL CULTURE OF UNIVERSITIES OF TECHNOLOGY (UOTS): A SOUTH AFRICAN PERSPECTIVE

Year 2010, Volume: 2 Issue: 2, 17 - 22, 01.12.2010

Desere Kokt

Abstract

South Africa should like the rest of the world embrace the Knowledge Age. This is not always an
easy task as the country struggles with huge skill shortages that hamper progress. This is
aggravated by the fact that national research outputs have declined since the 1990’s and existing
knowledge producers (scientists) are ageing fast. South Africa has classical universities (which
focus on pure academic programmes), Universities of Technology (that focus on career oriented
education) and comprehensive universities (which are a combination of classical universities and
UoTs). This paper centers on Universities of Technology (UoTs) with its relatively recent
emergence as universities. UoTs were previously known as Technikons and were re-designed as
UoTs by the Minister of Education in October 2003. The focus of UoTs is mainly on technologydriven
training, development and research, essentially dove-tailing theory and practice. This is in
line with similar institutions of higher education world wide. UoTs assist classical and
comprehensive universities in generating new knowledge, but with an added component – that of
delivering knowledge workers to business and industry. It is thus reasonable that attention should
be focused on creating sustainable research outputs at university level, as a mechanism for not
only generating new knowledge but also to address the impeding skill shortages South Africa face
(SATN Research Output Committee, 2008). In this regard organisational culture could impact on
the sustainability of research outputs at UoTs, as it has the potential of unifying organisational
effort which could lead to increased outputs. This article aims to trace the history of UoTs and to,
by means of an explorative analysis, elaborate on the forces that shaped the overall organisational
culture of UOTs in South Africa.

Keywords

Universities of Technology (UoTs) in South Africa, organisational culture

References

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