Towards an enterprise research model for academics at University of Botswana

Abstract

We are in an age where there are several societal and scientific challenges that are facing humanity. The academics are not left out of this entire dilemma. The same academic who is expected to be active in research within the university system is also expected to be committed to teaching and service assignments. The research task itself requires a lot of processes scattered around various work, culture, people and structure such as writing proposals, liaising with the research department, looking for materials in the library, learning appropriate applications with the Information Technology (IT) department etc. The aim of this research is to establish the perceived gaps based on the process of academic research in the university. The study is based on a case study of the University of Botswana. It uses the Nadler-Tushman Congruence Framework to perform a gap analysis on the current system. The study is initiated as part of progress towards providing a model to identify opportunities for improvement in research services at the university. The outcome from the study is a proposed model to help align work, culture, people and structure. The blueprint provided by the model will allow one to see the real impact of change, identifying where gaps and opportunities exist, and understand how and where things can be improved for the benefit of all stakeholders. The model provides for a single point through which a researcher can request assistance from the various units of the system. Be-yond the single point of access, the various units should be able to provide support for the entire research process without the researcher necessarily having to leave their desk. It also provides researchers with information to build systems that can improve enterprise flow within the research process. An efficient way of achieving this will be to eliminate or minimize the human factor where necessary. The paper proposes that a more detailed model can be achieved using The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF) architecture model.