UNIVERSITY-INDUSTRY COOPERATION IN THE AUTOMOTIVE INDUSTRY: A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF RESEARCH PROJECT'S OUTCOMES

This paper aims to identify and analyze all possible outcomes of joint-research activities involving university-industry cooperation in the Italian automotive industry. In detail, this paper is focused on analyzing the social processes involving creative and knowledge-based efforts by adopting the participation observation methodology [1] [2]. This study analyzes such interactions and the corresponding effects throughout the design and implementation process of an Enterprise 2.0-based platform in the production lines of an Italian multinational company, which operates in the automotive industry. The joint-research project is realized by the University of Calabria and FIAT-Chrysler Automobiles in collaboration with some Italian Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). It is funded by the European Commission and the Italian Minister of Education, University and Research. It aims to perform valuable research activities and to transfer them to the industry at hand, thus providing a stimulus for knowledge sharing, and supporting the creation of innovative recognition and reward systems in business contexts. Moreover, such an institutional policy supporting university-industry research projects is geared to strengthen the collaboration between academic and business organization, and aims to enhance industrial development in low-income regions by means of employing young and highly-skilled researchers. By a methodological point of view, this work identifies all possible outcomes by means of adopting a broader perspective than the existing on in literature. In detail, macroeconomic, socio-cultural, institutional and corporate slants are considered. The analysis takes into account all potential stakeholders and the corresponding outcomes by adopting the stakeholder's perspective proposed in [3] [4]. The assessment of project's results is performed by listing its outcomes and evaluating them by means of a panel of experts, in charge for evaluating the project's impacts on the community of stakeholders. This work is an academic research paper adopting a case study approach. The research structure integrates the field literature review and a novel framework built on the participation observation model of analysis [1] [2].