Reimagining Corporate Social Responsibility in the Idea of University Education as the Public Good

Abstract

Corporate social responsibility (CSR), as the concept of both practice and research, is still generally understood and explained in narrow political lenses, basically due to the economic and instrumentalist rationality. Such rationality tends to result into more reproductive outcomes about the social conditions than what ought to be transformative. As such, not much is researched and documented about CSR in what could be alternative practical explanations beyond the taken-for-granted orientations. Toward closing this seeming research gap in the theory-practice nexus, the institutional research about which this article is reporting has examined the dialectical relationship of CSR with the idea of university education as the public good. The study entailed the content analysis of the institutional records in one case of university education in South Africa. The history of the university and the relations that the university has with its community were complex enough to make a single case study about the value of corporate social responsibility and the idea of the public and common good (CSR for UE-PG). The main finding of the research is that the university is grappling with her history, which constrains her from transcending into new heights about CSR for UE-PG, despite the commitments to do so!

“Nature is the ‘inorganic body’ of human thought and action, with which human beings ‘must remain in continual interchange’ if they ‘are not to die’……..The opposition is derived from the fact that, although human consciousness is a product of nature, it is nonetheless a qualitatively distinct part of nature………this contradictory totality, which constitutes the relationship between human subjects and objective conditions, is a dynamic and developing one”. [1]

1. Introduction

In this article, I argue that Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), both as a concept and a subject of inquiry, still needs several iterative cycles of theorization and research if the concept is to reach high levels of intellectual maturity. As it were, the concept seems to be more about the espoused value of relevance and responsiveness from an excusable position of the private goods. This seems to be the case in how the private organizations need to defend their existence by making it a point that profit making does not uncontrollably escalate in the face of abject poverty, increasing unemployment, and widening inequalities (PUI). The global economic crisis of 2008–2012, especially in the Global North, has taught us that the claims that the market rules might be about chasing a mirage. In several cases, the State had to intervene in preventing the complete collapse of capitalism, thus bringing into a sharp contrast the claim that capitalism is self-regulatory, is best for society, and must be left unto its own device. In this article, I argue that even in the public university education sector, where public accountability and institutional autonomy may be constitutionally protected along the academic rights and freedoms, such freedoms cannot be dispensed without maximum levels of responsibility. While university education is ostensibly about the public good (UE-PG), it looks like, in some cases, it can easily become the case of pretense, grandstanding, and political posturing. As I argue elsewhere [2], it could be the case when the leadership, management, and government systems can undermine the very principles of integrity, trust, good reputation, and legitimacy as espoused in the code for corporate governance and reporting. In those, and similar, cases, institutional rights and individual freedoms cannot remain uncontested. As I argue in this article, such rights and freedoms must be mediated, if, indeed, the UE-PG is also constitutive of corporate social responsibility, as it ought to be.

Therefore, the potential irresponsibility in the university education context, which can entail sacrificing the scholarship project because of systems of domination and control, and their dominant explanations about quality, need to be problematized. Such cases of being complicit in the perpetuation of social disadvantage and exclusion can take place when the compliance modes of thinking, making, and doing have as their source the abuse of power, whose source is historic privilege and advantage. This project was motivated by the need for the defense of the academic project in general and academic leadership against the onslaught of populism, which can masquerade as quality. Silences about what ought to matter in academic leadership run the risk of being over-shadowed by the complexity of power relations in the politics of knowledge and of being. Institutional management and governance structures can be the worst culprits in such situations, resulting in claims about quality bordering on pretense, grandstanding, and political posturing! The South African university transformation context displays such a complexity of social systems in quite strange ways, the ways which I prefer to refer to as the Contradictory Totality of a Special type. While there is a unity of purpose at the macro level, there is always a diversity of implementation at the micro level, which then becomes an interesting area of scholarly focus by critical realist-oriented researchers and practitioners. It can become a fiercely fought-for project, through reflexively dialectical processes, so that such engagements must ultimately allow for transformative agency to emerge!

Previous studies linked to the study of the category of Historically Disadvantaged Universities (HDUs) in South Africa revealed serious cases of mistrust, poor reputation, and illegitimacy both in the institutional academic project and, worse still, in the management and governance structures. Such cases could be claimed as antithetical to the idea of university education as a public good, when quality enhancement constitutes the focus of critical analysis. In such contexts of historical and structural disadvantage, quality ought to be the actual measure about the public and common good. However, given the complex history of university education in South Africa, this means that quality can remain a contested issue along power and materialist interests. Such would be the contested issues about quality when the subject must be problematized against the perspectives of systems of domination and control coupled with their dominant explanations of what can be claimed as quality. This is what the article therefore focuses on, how a report about quality can masquerade as actual quality when the opposite might be true. Surfacing the latter as contradictions of Being and Becoming, by means of a social realist theory, which is anchored on the critical realist philosophy, allows for identifying the nature of these contradictions at systemic levels. Such contradictions play out in dynamics of structural and cultural systems, which, by their interactions with human systems as the common factor, allow for what might be the actual truth about quality and thus what kinds of choices and emancipatory projects can be embarked upon to potentially address the contradictions.

Practically, the article addresses corporate social responsibility as revolving around two main questions, Relevance to What and Responsiveness to Whom? About university education, the questions become whose power and whose truth? Through these questions as idea markers, the discussion, therefore, has as its focus and context corporate social responsibility, where the outcome ought to be both a public good (the currency that university education provides) and access to such goods. Integrated quality management systems, therefore, become the mechanism, the means to an end.

By this study, I did a content analysis of standards 4 and 9 where the choice was informed by the idea of quality as a cultural system (belief, ideas, standards, and norms, that is, standard 9, about coherence, functionality, reasonable, and meaningfully structured) and as a dialectical relationship with the structural system (roles, functions, and responsibilities, that is, standard 4, about governance structures, management, and academic leadership), both of which are enacted by agency. A consideration of the academic leadership allowed for understanding the more viable and sustainable quality management system as emerging, “corporateness” from below, that is, when quality is more owned by the faculty than prescribed by policies and strategies. What is of critical importance to the realist is causal efficacy, the weighted role of each element of structure, culture, and agency, from what occurs as events and processes further to how such events are experienced at the level of the empirical domain [2, 3]. However, while the structural is quite enduring, the most important measure for a social phenomenon (the idea of university education as a public good) is by means of a cultural system, an integrated quality management system assessed as coherent, functional, reasonable, and meaningfully structured, which can only be possible when enacted by a transformative agency. The power of analytical dualism is to treat each of the structural system and the cultural system as analytically distinct!

The main finding about this comparison was that the ranking of standards 4 and 9 of the WSU SER, when compared with other data about the institutional quality management culture, revealed social practices (silences and superficialities) of evaluating and reporting about quality as not responsible enough about what ought to matter about the idea of university education as a public good! The complexity of such a cultural system was mired in dynamic relations with the structural system and how explicating the role of human system, through reflexive-dialectical processes, tends to result more in reproductive outcomes than in the idea of transformative outcomes. Specifically, the study was based on the contents of reporting about quality by juxtaposition of two main variables,

1. Governance structure, management, and leadership, with

2. Coherence, functionality, reasonableness, and a meaningful structure.

From a social realist perspective, the variables constituted governance, strategic planning, leadership, and management as a structural system, on one hand, and integrated quality assurance system measured as a cultural system, on the other hand. Therefore, the case of accounting for quality, as the idea of university education as a public good, would be regarded as incomplete about other compelling cases about quality. The WSU SER claims have confirmed similar cases about the study of HDUs in the South African transformation project [4]. These are the cases where mistrust instead of trust, poor reputation instead of good, and illegitimacy can remain endemic governance and leadership challenges. Only when the right choices and emancipatory projects can be embarked upon as dynamic forms of institutional culture that reimagining corporate social responsibility might be a new possibility for the public and common good. That will be the practical dimension of the study.

Theoretically, it becomes the case when accounts about the social phenomenon can inadvertently and unwittingly draw on theories that draw on de-ontological positions and self-referential explanations than what the social realist explanations, based on critical realist philosophy, can allow for.

The analysis then takes a particular focus on scholarship of engagement as the potential exercise of transformative agency where the core business of community engagement and partnerships, of learning and teaching, and of research innovation make for the example of the necessary constructs and discourses for corporate social responsibility constructs. The scholarly engagement of the constructs as discourses, in the contexts of university education and its espoused value for the public and common good, albeit with demonstrable silences about the critical construct of scholarship of engagement, coupled with glaring superficialities as evidenced by the cited crisis events in one case of an institution, allowed for what could be finally declared as the exploratory research whose value was to build on similar studies in other countries [5]. The significance of such exploratory research is thus to advance what ought to be the CSR theorization and conceptualization in social contexts and their expressively veracious considerations.

The research value for such an exercise, as scholarship, entails promotion of a cultural system about CSR for UE-PG. Specifically, it is about how the institutional units, which can be designed and managed to work in discrete and fragmented ways, ought to learn to work in ways that can promote collaboration and partnerships. The net result is organizational learning at all performance levels of operations, business, and strategy, including the potential relevance and responsiveness of the institution to the local, regional, and national developmental imperatives.

Therefore, this article is organized around the basic logic of reproduction-understanding-broadening-advancement in research. While CSR is generally understood to be a private sector terrain, its mainstream practices need to be theorized in context-specific ways, especially for the university education sector, which is fast embracing business management models as part of its governance and leadership systems. Such broadening strategies about the concept will advance the scholarship about the concept, especially in consideration of what could be value addition when the idea of university education as a public and common good can be understood as dialectically related to corporate social responsibility. As such, the article is structured according to the following main sections,

1. The discussion of corporate social responsibility as a concept, which needs to be extended to the university education context and its ideal for the public and common good.

2. The examination of the relevant philosophical and theoretical perspective for better understanding and explanations of the contemporary challenges about the concept.

3. An outline of the crisis events in the case of a university where corporate social responsibility was espoused, and yet the values of its application as integrated quality management system constituted a disjuncture.

4. An outline of the main findings, which surfaced the dissonances in the aspirations and reality about the idea of the public good in university education, when quality is a measure.

5. A discussion about the value of transformative agency, including the rationale for why corporate social responsibility still needs to be subjected to scholarship advancement.

2. University education transformation in South Africa, the contradictory totality of a special type

Conceptually, and for the purpose of the discussion in this article, a multi-dimensional understanding of university responsibility about quality as a scholarship of engagement is mapped out as follows:

1. Corporate social responsibility, which needs to be considered for the context of university education.

2. The idea of university education for the public good, which should serve as the main outcome for why a university exists.

3. Integrated quality management system, the mechanisms for the attainment of the outcomes.

4. Scholarship of engagement as the unit of analysis for how the mechanisms and the outcomes can be achieved or not.

Scholarship of engagement as the organizing principle for the academic project promises the potential answer about the academic project as the measure of quality in the following three ways,

1. What are the conditions of integrated quality management systems (IQMS) as the idea of university education as a public good progresses over time and in space?

2. How can the academic project be governed, managed, and led as an integrated quality management system, and why the focus on agency for scholarship of engagement ought to matter for the idea of corporate social responsibility?

The very notion of corporateness is all about both emergence and irreducibility. While the sum of the parts ought to count in consideration of ecosystems, some systems cannot be fully understood by means of reductionist thinking. For that reason, it makes a scholarly imperative that university education for the public good (UE-PG), as a concept, ought to matter when dialectically related with corporate social responsibility (CSR) and why the relationship can be problematic at systemic levels. As it were, challenges about corporate social responsibility, both as a concept and a theorized practice, are well documented in the contemporary literature, ranging from claims about the complete absence of agency theory [5] to the limited application of the agency theory in such fields as corporate governance, firm ownership, and born global firms. The areas of practice seem to include a range of areas, from corporate governance, firm ownership, and born global firms to the fields, which include impact examination of top management characteristics, board structure, ownership by domestic investors, foreign investors, business group firms, family ownership, state ownership on the firm internationalization decisions, etc. [6]. However, university education is not for profit institutions, although the long-term goal might be for the private goods. For the latter reason, and in consideration of the role of university education or higher education and training as a common and public good, a critical question arises, what corporate social responsibility ought to mean in their context for the access to such goods? It ought to be so because the intellectual project that constitutes the idea of university education is all about engagement as a concept, a belief system, albeit not as a value-free exercise. In such an engagement, the approach should always try to avoid what could be conflation or reification. Such forms of reification, for example, the assumption that claims about corporate social responsibility constitute the proxy for social justice and equity, may have to be problematized by drawing from critical realist ways of thinking.

Therefore, a social justice project that seeks to reflect university as a public good ought to adopt a kind of descriptive analysis that reflects these complex issues about a social phenomenon. As such, a transcendental argument can be made in ways that the actual reality about a social phenomenon, namely, CSR for UE-PG, cannot be reduced to the events thereof and further to the experience or observations of those involved. Corporate social responsibility in the context of university education and for the public good (CSR for EU-PG) ought to be about beyond-ness. Beyond just the operational effectiveness and efficiency variables about business, it ought to be about a values-driven moral and ethical stand, including impact tracking for sustainable value creation. Against this brief overview about the ontological assumptions about CRS for UE-PG, not much is researched and documented in what could be alternative practical explanations beyond the taken-for-granted concepts [2, 3].

Therefore, in response to two recent claims, [2, 3], the engagement of the social world from the realist social theory allows for understanding and explanation of the social phenomenon as a dialectical relationship of structure, culture, and agency. It requires the understanding of the interplays of the latter in analytically distinct ways. In that regard, this article contributes to the fast-increasing body of knowledge, by focusing on the value of agency as the subject of research. Therefore, the related questions, as the motivation for the critical realist-oriented research project, in this article, are:

1. What constitutes the idea for university education if it is not about being in, of, and for the idea of university education as a public good?

2. If the answer to the latter is in the affirmative, why then does university education seem to reflect silences and superficialities about corporate social responsibility as potentially constitutive of such goods?

Toward deconstructing these conceptual and contextual issues, it is quite significant to note that the South African university education system, almost three decades post constitutional democracy, continues to be fragmented especially when in consideration of the academic performance profiles [7, 8]. To the critical realist-oriented scholars and practitioners, this is the case of a contradictory totality. In explaining contradictory totality, [1] declares that,

“The unity (of a social structure) is derived from the fact that nature is the ‘inorganic body’ of human thought and action, with which human beings ‘must remain in continual interchange’ if they ‘are not to die’, humanity being ‘a part of nature.”

The unity of purposes derives from the common view about what university education is for, in the South African context for developmental imperatives. The diversity from such a unitary view arises when the idea of university education is not just about the public good but also a human rights issue and how those rights can be enacted. Contradictions, therefore, become more manifest when in consideration of the institutional performance profiles, and the degenerative mechanisms about UE-PG in argument about how university education is potentially antithetical to the ideals of corporate social responsibility.

2.1 Continuities from the old regimes of power and of truth

Post 2000 in South Africa, the most enduring question about the constitutional democracy is the whole debate about the national welfarist versus the developmental state, with the latter being imposed on the university education role and the resultant identity and performance crisis. HDUs are still struggling to give full expression about EU-PG idea as corporate social responsibility. The regional challenges about HDUs continue to be about their role, which would turn out to be more about the access and massification of HET rather than the actual economic development of the communities in which they were positioned/operating from. HDUs’ academic project systems would not be internally integrated enough, hence the regional integration challenges that reinforce the HDU status. The role of community outreach and engagement, partly informed by the global trends about the creation of “the metropolitan university models as the response to the inner-city decline” ([9], p. 297), emerged in university education studies especially in the context of the national democratic revolution. “The policy debates about the role of universities in society took place at the local, so that these institutions could become more relevant to equitable development in their contexts,” ([9], p. 309). On the other hand, the value of university education as knowledge constitutive is still challenged at the micro level as indicated in the RSA university education profiles [7, 8], where the third lowest band of universities is still enduring.

The challenge for universities affected by the HDU phenomenon and the basic principles of institutional learning where the simple solutions in the form of current knowledges and skills assessment must be able to translate into the economic value add about the regional integration question. This then refers to the need for individual abilities (individual agency) to become institutional capabilities (corporate agency) where the institution must be able to engage its complex challenges in ways that can be more responsive and relevant to regional challenges. The failure in such a project continues to be the case of stagnation about such universities and of pretense by its management and leadership systems [4].

Therefore, how scholarship of engagement would have to provide the right explanations about quality as relations of macro and micro politics in the context makes for this important question about quality as epistemic logic. That would refer to the idea, values, presuppositions, and belief systems about knowledge that need to be made explicit if the complexity of power relations in the politics of knowledge and of being might be finally resolved. This would have to be the point of resistance and transformative political action in the academic project as a form of micro politics. Such politics would have to take the counter hegemonic narratives toward truth that can enhance each one of participants in the university project and in ways such that opportunities for humanity can be elevated! It is this “blackness” that reflects a particular phenomenon of the HDUs, which operate through the structured racist apartheid system, and its spatial planning and social exclusion policies, used to operate in the “Bantustans” or black communities. Among these communities, there is also a particular feature of the then Homelands, in which such universities were established as a form of ostensibly free communities, when the then racist Nationalist party of South Africa would grant self-governance (Homelands). The enduring challenges of power and privilege make such institutions continue admitting students from predominantly working-class families (SWCF). This is the category of students that, due to the socio-economic conditions, cannot afford to be admitted in affluent universities, be it historically white and advantaged or historically Black but relatively advantaged. Such is the confluence of forces that can militate against the mainstream notions of quality, and therefore of responsibility, along the complexity of power and privilege.

2.2 Relevance and responsiveness as the measure of the common and public good

Integrated community engagement ([10], p. 8) refers to one of the core functions of higher education, involving working constructively and co-operatively with communities that are connected to the institution, to make that institution more adaptive and responsive to needs that it could service. Such integrated community engagement has the potential to affect or influence almost every aspect of an institution’s functioning. In addition, as argued, for example [10], community engagement should be specifically integrated with learning, teaching, and research and should be based on, and enhance, the disciplinary knowledge and expertise of the institution. Against the backdrop from the latter two main observations for the value of university education for the public good, the following statement becomes quite compelling about the case of HDUs ([9], p. 309),

“There is no guarantee that place-based strategies will work to revive lagging cities, of course, but the evidence suggests that if the possibilities inherent in greater local regulation and engagement in the interests of the public good are ignored, higher education will not be able to greater opportunity, and will likely serve to reinforce and exacerbate inequality in South Africa”.

Furthermore, what could be regional integration is provided for in the body of knowledge; for example, [9], it refers to the development of place-based roles of universities and the critical need for subnational and city-level participation in higher education planning and development. Integrated community engagement and regional integration, in such contexts, refer to the subnational and especially the city-level opportunities that exist for universities to become more integrated into their place-based contexts, as a way of achieving their mandate to redress inequality. This also entails how the development of the region, through program qualifications mix, enables the required capacity to create jobs, drive innovation, and reverse some of the detrimental effects of decades of migrant labor and under-development.

Therefore, in this article, I have organized my argument and claims around the case of historically disadvantaged universities (HDUs), in South Africa, which, due to the conditions that are not of their own making, are still located in the communities that used to be reserved for blacks and the lowest stratum in the socio-economic ladder. These university institutions, which operate from these communities, continue to face difficult questions about relevance (knowledge systems) and of responsiveness (student or people-centeredness). They face the questions about CSR for UE-PG as relevance to what (cultural system of belief, values, norms, and standards) and responsiveness to whom (students’ first choice for university education). The communities were framed, through settler colonialism and the structured racist apartheid system, as the Bantustans and later as homelands (HL). It is from this enduring legacy of many years of modern slavery that these HDUs still admit students from working class families (SWCF). For this reason, the HL-HDU-SWCF phenomenon will be the basic feature in discussing the absences and silences about the CSR cases, which are the basis of my claims. Out of 26 universities in South Africa, eight belong to this HL-HDU-SWCF phenomenon. The unfortunate picture about the phenomenon, and therefore the CSR ideals, is that, for many, and almost three decades into constitutional South African democracy, the phenomenon is still characterized by the PUI factors, as briefly introduced above, which, in turn, have a face along black color, female gender, and rural location. Therefore, the HL-HDU-SWCF phenomenon faces a myriad of systemic and contextual challenges that have been compounded by the demands of both Rhodes Must Fall and the #FeesMustFall movements (2015–2017) and the unprecedented unfolding crisis of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Such a character about the idea of university education takes a particular reflective exercise in the South African context. At the macro level, it is best captured in two expressions. This is the context that I prefer to refer to as the complexity of power relations in politics of knowledge and of being. In the HETSA context, knowledge production is still characterized by settler colonialism and the old apartheid system where the universities that used to be characterized as historically white, or still black but relatively advantaged, remain so almost three decades into constitutional democracy [11]. In such a context, the case about the HETSA transformation project provides for the potential response to the current limitations of mainstream theories about CSR for UE-PG. About HETSA alone, the debates become very contrasted against the enduring systems of class, race, power, and privilege, which therefore pose a serious challenge to CSR as generally understood.

In the subsequent section, I discuss the need for surfacing the ontological position about CSR for UE-PG and why drawing on the realist-oriented theories, by focusing on the role of agency, allows for the better understanding and explanation of the construct of CSR for UE-PG. It is for this reason that, for these purposes of the claims and the main argument in this article, the discussion revolves around what ought to be the unity of theory and practice about CSR in the context of UE and its expressively veracious considerations.

3. Surfacing the ontological assumptions about corporate social responsibility

The idea about CSR for UE-PG calls for the need for surfacing what could be its ontological positions. Drawing on powerful theories should allow for the better understanding and explanation by focusing on the role of agency. Critical realism philosophy and its argument for the study of reality as ontology challenge both the objective and socially constructed views about reality. Critical realist-oriented theories challenge the mainstream theories that are self-referential and are deontological. Such theories tend to be complacent about the natural necessity without fully addressing what might be the inadequacies of their claims. They tend to be dislocated from reality about a social reality/phenomenon and thus remain self-contained. They are more about surface ontology, that is, reducing the reality to the understanding and explanations thereof. To counter such a weakness, both critical realism philosophy and the realist social theory, as the explanatory program, allow the analyst to adopt a paradigm that is commensurable with the context and in ways that can be socially and culturally relevant and responsive. By the power of transcendence, the analyst is then able to question a type of science (pseudoscience) that selects what counts as reality and what reality to count to promote interests or socially constructed views.

Table 1 suggests that corporate social responsibility can be understood and explained as an open and complex social system. Such systems take the three main elements of structure, culture, and agency. Drawing on the critical realist philosophy, as the under laboring to the explanatory program as the social realism theory [2, 3]allows both for the understanding and the explanation of CSR for UE-PG as the interplay of systems at a particular point in time and space. The people inherit the conditions that aren’t of their own making. As such, the present is always constituted from historical and social relations. For the future to possibly change for the better, that takes place through reflexivity and human action. Therefore, to surmise social realist-oriented scholars, problem solving should entail the ability to engage the present in reflexive-dialectical processes that can allow for transformative agency to emerge.

Domains of reality from a critical realist stance,; (Roy Bhaskar, 1998; 2008)	A map of Corporate Social Responsibility from a social realist stance; (Margaret Archer, 1996; 2007)
Empirical level: Powers are perceived and experienced	Corporate social responsibility is experienced and observed in particular ways, which constitute the idea of university education as the public and common good and how such goods are experienced and observed.
Actual level: powers, though actualized (and thus experienced and observed at level above), may not be felt.	Corporate social responsibility takes place as events, processes, and the emergent patterns and trends thereof.
Real level: generative powers are possessed but may not be actualized (as events and processes, and further as experienced and observed)	Structural arrangements: Corporate social responsibility roles, duties, and responsibilities as regulated by the establishment of University Councils	Cultural registers: Corporate social responsibility ideas, beliefs, values, and norms, namely, discourses of social justice and equity or of economic rationality and neoliberal thinking, and/or the variations of each	Human systems: Enactment of both the structural arrangement and per the cultural registers: Actors goals, intentions; choices and projects/decision making; interests; desires about Corporate social responsibility
	Structural emergent powers/properties (SEPs): powers & tendencies to determine causal powers	Cultural emergent powers/properties (CEPs): discourses (as representations of attitudes and values that permeate everyday life)	Agency/personal emergent powers/properties (PEPs): (reflexivity & autonomy of council members as individuals, actors, and corporate)

Table 1.

The domains and social reality of corporate social responsibility as adapted from Dwayi [4].

The current challenges about CSR theories and practices, per already cited cases, call for the realist understanding of CSR as the agency as deep ontology, stratification, causal efficaciousness, and emergence. The social system elements of structure, culture, and agency (SCA) take two forms, the macro level, which is enduring because it derives from history and social relations, and the micro level, which can be enacted; hence it is regarded as the level of mediations. The explication of the elements of structure, culture, and agency (Table 1), firstly, as analytically distinct and secondly, as emergent from the three domains of reality, helps to accord the causal mechanism to each of the elements, including the power of agency as causally efficacious. In this regard, the personal emergent powers and properties (PEPPs) enable people to reflect upon their social context and to act reflexively toward it, either individually or collectively, objectively or subjectively. The significance of agency in resolving the problems about the primacy of structure in social science is when the PEPPs help humans to become active shapers of their socio-cultural contexts, rather than being the passive recipients thereof. Critical for social realism, therefore, is the question of how the chosen values and belief systems operate at the realm of agency [12].

Consequent to the first phase of the National Institutional Audits in South Africa (2008–2011), there was an increased voice from the critical realism scholars about the challenges of reporting about quality, when such reports can be seen to be drawing from de-ontological positions and self-referential explanations (details in the introductory section). As already indicated, the article does not seek to rewrite such a report but to focus on one such case of reporting by doing the critical realist analysis and the social realist account about the case of a historically disadvantaged university in South Africa. The main purpose is to advance the value of making a transcendental argument when engaging an issue as complex as evaluating and reporting about quality, incl the outlining of the challenges thereof, when engaging the topic CSR for UE-PG. Critical realist philosophy in terms of the domains of reality Table 1 allows both for the principles and tools of analysis. The critical realist principles include judgmental rationality as the position against singular/single story explanations. The thinking tools thereof, namely, transfactuality, retroductive reasoning, and transcendental argument, allow for understanding of this philosophy as a metatheory, the tool about clearing the field or for under laboring the actual theory as the program of action, which is social realist theory. In this regard, social realism theory allows for the explanations of the social phenomenon (namely, corporate social responsibility) as interplays of structure, culture, and agency over time.

Therefore, the value of Table 1, as representative both of critical realism philosophy (the three domains about reality) and of social realism (the social world as structural, cultural, and human systems) is about thinking, hypothetically speaking, about the elements of structure, culture, and agency as analytically distinct and determining of causal efficaciousness (the relative weight of each element on the other, especially structure, culture as sense and meaning making expressed as beliefs, norms, and standards). Because of the transitive and intransitive nature of the objects at the domain of the real, what then leads the critical oriented analyst is the transcendental question, that is, making an educated guess about,

“What mechanisms must have been generating the kinds of the events and processes as those that are manifest at the domain of the actual and how the latter is further reflected as the empirical data?

Therefore, one of the positions that make social realism to be a powerful explanatory program is the ability to apply its tools about rationality. One of those, relevant for the discussion, is transfactuality, that is, the ability to engage the assumption that, at empirical level, because the numbers are, or the statement is; the numbers or the statement thus serves as a measure of reality. Transfactuality allows for abductive logic as questioning the taken-for-granted views about what appears as empirical, because the observations and opinions at the domain of the empirical are the result of other two emergent layers (domain of the actual and the domain of the real) in non-deterministic and in irreducible ways. Therefore, this description of what the ontological assumptions can be about CSR for UE-PG seeks to foreground the role of agency (human system as choice or non-choices, as actions or no actions), which operates in dynamic relationships with the social and cultural systems, as indicated in Table 1.

4. The WSU transformation project, a contradictory totality of a special type

The case about Walter Sisulu University is its power to present the challenge about understanding and explanation of Corporate social responsibility for university education as a public good (CSR for UE-PG) at systems level. The macro level, the always structural and cultural systems level, always predates the micro level (the human system or agency), which always reacts to the former. In simple terms, the micro refers to the actual project about quality enhancement, especially the choices and actions or no choices or inactions thereof, thereof, when the institutional roles and functions (structural system) coupled with the related beliefs, norms, and standards (cultural systems) are always enduring. The main claim therefore about CSR for UE-PG is that, while the unity of purpose is about repositioning WSU on a new growth path, the variety of surfaces at the point of the human system due to the role of governance structures, management, and leadership in quality enhancement arethe exercise of agency! After this brief introduction about WSU as a case study, the rest of the discussion covers the following sections and beyond:

• Section 4.I: WSU in transition, from Regime 2015–2019 to Regime 2020–2024, and how WSU, in reappropriating herself, seeks to embrace scholarship of engagement as the organizing principle for the academic project. The nature of the academic project is understood as the quality enhancement project, the representation of CSR for UE-PG.

• Section 4.2: How WSU, in one case of quality management and reporting, seemed to fall short in her own commitments about scholarship of engagement.

• Section 4.3: How the three crisis events in the WSU academic project confirmed the case of, thus constituting the silences and superficialities about, the quality claims.

• Main Section 5: How the three institutional directorates, which should have been the champions for scholarship of engagement, seemed to misrepresent the principle, therefore constituting the case of contradictory totality.

4.1 WSU, an impactful and technology-infused university

For this article, Walter Sisulu University (WSU) was chosen by means of convenient and purpose sampling. The critical element was access to the data, among which was the Self Evaluation Report (SER) of May 2022 [13], which had just been released at the time of the article. WSU is a university in transition, from the previous institutional strategic plan of 2015–2019 to the current one (2020–2024). Both phases have scholarship of engagement as the defining principle [14, 15]. However, the phases were also characterized by the crisis case of student exclusions; although these events dated back to 2009, 2011, and 2014, there was strong evidence that these cases were not managed in a responsible way. The second crisis related to program accreditations. In the light of the latter, WSU, which was the last institution to be audited in 2010, was among the first institutions that were required to submit their SER as part of the national institutional audit. This was also partly due to the enduring crisis of her academic project, as will be clarified later. Above all, the author, as an insider researcher, had a strategic advantage to the institutional records, while taking care of what could be validity threats about endogenous research. The main goal of this project, therefore, and beyond WSU and HDUs about macro challenges, would be to engender/stimulate the necessary conversations in similar contexts but without being deterministic. Contemporary scholarship about corporate social responsibility should seek to advance the context-specific and actor-driven ways of engaging corporate social responsibility as a multidimensional concept, with realms of new possibilities for the public good. For this article, CSR for UE-PG takes a particular dimension of scholarship of engagement as the realm of quality as logic, power matrix, and the idea of being/ontology. As such, quality can be contested along the ideas, beliefs, norms, and standards that always reflect power dynamics.

Therefore, the national institutional audit of 2021–2024 coincided with the change of guard at WSU, which would usher in the new institutional strategic plan 2020–2024, “An Impactful and Technology-infused African University”, “In Pursuit for Excellence.” The following extracts from the WSU Self Evaluation Report (SER) are quite instructive about what the discussion in this article refers to as “The 2018/19 Factor,”

“The SER focuses on the period 2018-2021. This means that the Report straddles two Strategic Plan periods (2015-2019 and 2021-2030). For WSU, 2019 was a watershed year for many reasons. First, it marked the end of one Strategic Plan, and ushered in another. Second, it was the year in which several of the key executives overseeing quality management in the University’s core business in the current administration assumed office. Third, the development of the Vision 2030 Strategic Plan as well as (several) the improvements articulated in the SER commenced that year.” ([13], p. vii).

“The writing of the SER commenced during the last quarter of 2021. It was anchored by five professors and the Institutional Student Representative Council (ISRC) President, under the auspices of the Quality Management Directorate.” ([13], p. x).

However, WSU history and social relations would remain like an albatross around her neck. WSU, from her establishment, assumed the status of a historical disadvantaged university, as briefly alluded to in the previous section, with the inherent homeland and student from working class families as some of its defining features. While this university had been spared the unfortunate situation of being under administration for the second time post constitutional democracy [4], the institution was still grappling with the legacy of the first administration regime [16] and the recommendations of the first phase of the national institutional audits [17], especially the governance, leadership, and management crisis events of the first regime (2015–2019). What would remain quite instructive, for the purposes of the discussion in this article, would be the potential continuities from the old regimes of power and of truth, namely, the systemic challenges of regional integration and integrated community engagement, let alone the systemic issues of trust, good reputation, and legitimacy, as the case of contradictory totality.

The main pointer about the need for transformative agency in the form of governance structures, management, and leadership of the academic project can be easily inferred from the executive statement by the new vice chancellor and principal ([13]; p. xxix), which called for,

“......the imperative of continuous and progressive capacity-enhancement among the different echelons of University officials”;” the harmonization of institutional processes is paramount”; “a culture of aligning all institutional processes to the University’s vision, mission and strategic goals”.

4.2 Scholarship of engagement as the organizing principle for a viable and sustainable academic project

Against the backdrop both of WSU as a developmental university (2015–2019) and the recommendations of the first phase of the national institutional audits [17], WSU adopted for both her regimes (2015–2019; 2020–2024) scholarship of engagement as the organizing principle for the academic enterprise. This principle promotes the idea about WSU as an Engaged African University [14, 15]. University Senate, as the academic board, gave the three Institutional Directorates a specific mandate to develop an enabling system and the implementing agents for such a principle and for the idea of an engaged university.

Figure 1 portrays scholarship of engagement as emergent from, and as the product of, the three Directorates (Scholarly Learning and Teaching, Community Engagement and Research and Innovation), which are central to the implementation of the institutional quality management system [10]. According to this model, the three functions (in the form of the Directorates, for the case of Walter Sisulu University, for example) must interface in the following three important functional areas for scholarship of engagement to be possibly realized:

1. Scholarship of teaching and learning (Directorate of Learning and Teaching) and engaged research (Directorate of Research and Innovation).

2. Such an interface also must give expression to community engagement programs and services in the form of work, integrated learning, service learning, short learning programs, etc.

Figure 1.

The conceptual model for an engaged African university, which emerges from the infusion model expressed as scholarship of engagement.

As can be inferred from Figure 1, scholarship of engagement is conceptually and dialectically related with quality as the enabling system for CSR for UE-PG. Conceptually, CRS can be simplified by the two questions, relevance to what and responsive to whom, which therefore take the subject-object relationships. In this way, the idea of university education as the public good becomes a convenient concept, which, when analyzed along the macro-micro politics of quality management and reporting, allow for the concept of scholarship of engagement to be practically possible! At the macro level, the three Directorates have business integrated quality management systems as their core, whereas at the micro level, scholarship of engagement ought to be the key success factor.

Therefore, the WSU academic project functions, published in the self-evaluation report (SER) as part of the institutional audit process [10], allowed for the potential analysis of the value of understanding the role of agency in the theory and practice of CFR for E-PG. The main argument for answering such a question (relevance to what and responsive to whom?) would be about identifying, understanding, and explaining the silences and superficialities of such SER submissions in the form of contradictions and inconsistencies in the three main functions.

1. Transformative community engagement and partnerships should have been about emergence in ways that allow WSU to be well integrated with its local communities as the form of regional integration. The role of the Institutional Directorate for Community Engagement and Partnerships would therefore be understood from this value of the embodied knowledge in the idea of university education as the natural order.

2. Relevant and impactful research and innovation, as knowledge types, should be central in CFR for UE-PG. The role of the Institutional Directorate for Research and Innovation would therefore be applicable to the discursive resource for the idea of university education as the social order.

3. Quality and impactful learning and teaching should allow for the importance of reflexivity in the CFR for UE-PG. The same claims would therefore be made about the institutional Directorate for Learning and Teaching, for the practical knowledge as the practical order, thus surfacing the potential for internal integration for regional integration.

Therefore, the case of WSU as CSR for UE-PG, as represented in the SER, would become a convenient way of making inferences (transcendental argument) about what could potentially be the case of contradictory totality where university education is supposed to be a public good and thus a representation of corporate social responsibility (the unity of purpose), and yet, diversity arises from implementation. In this way, CSR for UE-PG would play out as contradictory totality in two ways.

• Externally, the extent to which the challenges of regional integration and integrated community development can be addressed as relevance to what and responsiveness to whom? Whose power and whose goods count?

• Internally, as the basis for the latter, the extent to which the academic systems and processes for the public good could be said to be internally integrated in terms of their relevance and responsiveness both to the internal and external factors.

Scholarship of engagement as the organizing principle for the academic project promised the potential answer about the academic project as the measure of quality in the following three ways:

1. What were the conditions of integrated quality management systems (IQMS) as inherited from the previous regimes?

2. How was the academic project governed, managed, and led as an integrated quality management system, and why the focus on WSU Directorates for scholarship of engagement (Figure 1)?

3. How did the IQMS ratings in selected focus areas indicate the silences and superficialities about CSR for EU-PG as evidenced from other data sources?

The research value for such an exercise, as scholarship, would entail promotion of a cultural system about CSR for UE-PG. Specifically, it would be about how the institutional units, which were designed and managed to work in discrete and fragmented ways, could learn to work in ways that could promote collaboration and partnerships. The net result would be organizational learning at all performance levels of operations, business, and strategy, including the potential relevance and responsiveness of the institution to the local, regional, and national developmental imperatives.

4.3 Looking beyond the self-evaluation report: the challenge of open and complex social systems

The first point of analysis would be the very notion of a developmental university (2015–2019) and how that regime managed some of the 30 recommendations (out of only 5 commendations) from the Institutional Audit Report of 2011.

Table 2 provides the case about WSU and therefore the evidence of historical and structural disadvantage, which played out in the form of CSR for EU-PG. Recommendations 19 and 20 would somehow find expression in the form of crisis events that would punctuate both regimes (2015–2019; 2020–2024), hence the second points of analysis.

Vision Statement: Walter Sisulu University (WSU) will be a leading African comprehensive university, focusing on innovative educational, research, and community partnership programs that are responsive to local, regional, and national development priorities and cognizant of continental and international imperatives.
Value: Quality, which means a commitment to institution-wide quality management; value and reward excellence; and uphold and protect the integrity of the university.	Value: Access and success, which refers to providing equitable access to higher and continuing education at all stages of adult life to students who have a potential to succeed.
HEQC Recommendation 19: “The HEQC recommends that WSU develops an appropriate institution-wide strategy on teaching and learning, and assessment, to ensure the success of students, which is consistent with the University’s aspirations to be a developmental university that has specific teaching and learning goals, and which is linked to academic and pastoral support systems”, p.12.
HEQC Recommendation 20: “The HEQC recommends that Walter Sisulu University firmly implement its academic exclusions policy” p.12.

Table 2.

WSU vision statement, selected values, and recommendations from the national institutional audits 2011.

The second point of analysis would be in consideration of what have been institutional crisis events over time. These were the events whose source was the previous dispensation (2015–2019) and beyond [17]; yet they would have to be managed in the current regime (2020–2024). Two of these events, the academic crisis events of 2019/20 and of 2021/22, serve as the clear indicator of how this university is still grappling with ensuring the quality of her academic project. These were the cases of social and systemic integration as contradictory totality (the unity of purpose but the diversity of outcomes), both externally in terms of regional integration [9] and integrated community development [10] as well as of internal integration where contradictions apply within the system itself (the cases under study). Such events, as the elaboration on the SER, would help indicate the systemic challenges confronting WSU over time, the case about CSR for UE-PG whose resolution point should be the question of agency.

4.4 The Three Crisis Cases, continuities from the old regimes of power and of truth

4.4.1 The Crisis event I: The G 7 Rule Cases of 2019/20

From a document analysis about the selected case of science, engineering, and technology programs, 100 students were academically excluded during the academic year of 2019/20 and were then de-registered in February 2020. The anomaly of the case became more serious when students were registered for 2020 academic year only to be de-registered a few months later. This was not the first case, as the HEQC Recommendation 20 had resulted from a similar case in 2009. The crisis took place despite the mitigating strategies in place about the students who could be at risk of academic success [17, 18]. The academic monitoring strategy for student access and success prescribed the roles that managers, faculty, and various forms of student academic support can put in place to mediate student challenges in learning. The strange turn of events was when the university had to make a public apology after students had been excluded, long after 70% of the initial cohort of students had left the system. The public apology, in the form of a media statement of 09/02/2021 (Daily Dispatch), would read as follows:

“The university assumes full responsibility and offers an unqualified apology to affected students and their families. We assure you that the matter is under investigation and that consequences management will occur where necessary”.

There is no evidence that consequences followed the managers who had failed in implementing the corrective action plans long before the students were excluded. On the other hand, evidence can be inferred, through retroductive reasoning, therefore constituting a strong assumption that the affected students and families, due to their socioeconomic backgrounds, did not have access to the media statement and were not even aware about what could be a recourse to their plight. This was the first case of corporate social irresponsibility that can constrain access to the public good that university education is supposed to offer. In consideration of Recommendations 19 and 20 by the National Council on Higher Education, the G7 Rule cases could be regarded as the case of the interventions in place, but the system keeps on backfiring.

The case about CSR for EU-PG arises from the implicit assumption that admitting students from working-class families, the equity issue, to university education means the quality of success. The case becomes more serious when there are mediation strategies in place for such high-risk students only for the university management to undermine the very processes for academic support. G 7 Rule cases apply to each course or module, over a semester (6 month) or year. Abductive reasoning requires that the social analyst understands and explains the conditions that must have led to the inaction of the management (heads of departments and deans of faculties) about strategy implementation and of the governance structures (academic boards and university council) about the poor implementation of university policy on academic exclusion (CHE IQF Focus Area 1, Standard 3). However, the results were quite instructive; 70 students, from the identified cohort, could not have access to the public good due to the inaction of those who should have acted on the quality management systems in the form of institutional strategies and policies.

4.4.2 The Crisis Event II: Program Accreditation Cases of 2021/22

The local and national media houses were in a frenzy in 2022 as reflected in the following captions:

“WSU plays accreditation cat and mouse” (DD, 01/04/2022).

“WSU Council calls for accountability on accreditation debacle” (DD, 13/04/2022).

“WSU students vow to take Butterworth campus over accreditation fiasco” (DD, 21/04/2022).

“Accreditation debacle sees WSU Graduation Ceremonies Cancelled” (DD, 25/04/2022).

Out of five programs that had been declared as unaccredited during the academic year 2021/22, the intervention took place with the help of external consultants including direct assistance by the national bodies (the National Department of Higher Education and Training and the National Council on Higher Education). The seriousness of this case included the university management being accountable to the National Portfolio of Parliament on Higher Education, which called for the application of the consequence management policy in addition to the promised corrective action plans. One program was still declared unaccredited after submission of corrective action plan, which was an indictment on academic leadership, program management, and governance structure (CHE IQF Focus Area 1, Standard 3). Communication with one of the teaching development specialists, who had assumed the new role of a Campus Manager, indicated that the unaccredited program resulted from the internal challenges emanating from a relaxed culture, lack of cooperation, and lack of proper guidance (CHE IQF Focus Area 3, Standard 9). These program accreditation cases constituted a breach of the program review and accreditation policies and strategies that the university had as the structural requirements for quality management (CHE IQF Focus Area 3, Standard 9). The crisis revealed yet another case of contradictory totality, that the program reviews and accreditation criteria can translate to the ability to monitor and evaluate the quality of program management. The crisis event called into question the very key performance areas that informed the responsibilities of the affected heads of departments and the deans of faculties (Table 3). The case also had serious implications to the oversight functions that are supposed to be played by the institutional governance structures (academic board and university council), including the National Department of Higher Education, the approval and funding institution, and the National Council on Higher Education, the university education professional body. The same case about abductive reasoning that was alluded to in Crisis Event One also applied here.

KPA/; HELM Level	Head of Department	Faculty Dean	Deputy Vice Chancellor Academic Affairs and Research1
Strategy: Recommendation 19 & 20, (HEQC, 2011); Quality Integrated Systems: Recommendation 17, 26, & 27, (HEQC, 2011)	Strategy development and execution; Curriculum/program development and quality assurance	Strategy development and execution, in that s/he actively supports the Campus Rector in the leadership and management of the academic project at the campus level in the following areas: Teaching and learning.	Strategy development and execution at thecampus level that supports the implementation of the WSU mission, vision, values, and strategic priorities.
Monitoring: Recommendations; 04 & 15, (HEQC, 2011)	Monitoring, evaluation, and reporting	Monitoring, evaluation, and reporting	Monitoring, evaluation, and reporting.

Table 3.

Selected key performance areas for the cohort of management and leadership levels, Walter Sisulu university.

¹

As part of the Divisional Model, Faculty Deans would the report to Campus Rectors, who, some how report to DVC AAR and the Vice Chancellor and Principal.

Tracking for dis/continuities about a dis/functional culture of integrated quality management systems from the WSU Institutional Audit Report, HEQC, 2011, compiled by the author.

4.4.3 The Crisis Event III: The Institutional Forum Report about Mr. X of (2018 to 2022/3)

In the Institutional Forum Report about Mr. X, which served at the University Council of 22 April 2021 and as the vice chancellor and principal (WSU Regime 2015–2019), had undermined the University Council by breaching the Job Upgrading and Recruitment Policies, which resulted in the appointment of a senior director as a member of the new university management. The report was quite scathing about the University Council, which abrogated its powers in the appointment of a senior director. The same case about abductive reasoning that was alluded to in Crisis Events I and II also applied here in particular about the abuse of power by the said vice chancellor and principal, coupled with the abrogation of powers by the university governance structure (Tables 4 and 5).

The Directorate of Community Engagement and Partnerships (DCEP) is responsible for managing partnerships between the; University and external bodies, overseeing international education programmes such as study-abroad programmes, assisting with industrial placement of students (Work Integrated Learning), and community development programmes. In the University’s 2030 Vision, impactful “community engagement and partnerships” features as the third strategic goal. A section of the Vision document breaks this goal into specific deliverables, to be pursued as part of learning and teaching, and research and innovation mandates, and overseen by the CE&P Directorate. Institutional oversight of the Directorate’s activities is Senate Engagement and Partnerships Committee.

The Directorate of Research Development and Innovation (DRI) is the capacity-building and administrative hub for research, postgraduate studies and innovation at WSU. It provides policy, strategic and operational support to the University in the core mandate area of research, postgraduate studies and innovation capacity development and administration. Institutional oversight of the Directorate’s activities as well as the research, postgraduate studies and innovation activities of faculties and related entities is provided by Senate Research and Higher Degrees Committee (SRHDC).

The Directorate of Learning and Teaching (DLT) is responsible for the QMS in respect of academic development by offering services that are designed to respond to the learning and teaching needs of Walter Sisulu University students and academic staff. In order to ensure that our academics are grounded in the latest pedagogical trends, DLT supports eligible staff to enroll for a formal qualification in learning and teaching in higher education. The programme (Postgraduate Diploma in Higher Education - PGDHE) is offered by Rhodes University and University of the Witwatersrand. In the 2021 iteration of the Programme design, Quality Assurance in Higher Education is a core module. The Directorate also enrolls academics in short- learning programmes, such as Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL), offered by UKZN and Rhodes University. Institutional oversight of the Directorate’s activities is provided by the Senate Learning and Teaching Committee.

Table 4.

The three directorates’ roles and the management of quality enhancement (as sourced from [13]).

Directorate for community engagement and partnerships	Directorate for research and innovation	Directorate for learning and teaching
Research and community-oriented service entities	Research Niche Areas	Integrated Academic Development
Risk and Vulnerability Science Centre: Researches risks and vulnerabilities arising from environmental and socio-cultural stressors in the rural Eastern Cape.; National Water Pollution Laboratory: A government-funded research entity that monitors, through research, both freshwater and sea water, thus enabling the University to play a key role in the development of South Africa’s “Blue Economy” sector.; Centre for Entrepreneurship Rapid Incubators (CfERI): Founded through a partnership between the Department of Small Business Development (DSBD) and Small Enterprise Development Agency (SEDA), the Centre seeks to accelerate the growth and success of entrepreneurial initiatives and nurture a culture of entrepreneurship among graduates.; Institute for Advanced Tooling (IAT): A government-funded technology station whose objectives include providing technology support services and training to the regional manufacturing sector, SMMEs, inventors, individuals, academic institutions and large companies.; e-Skills Co-lab: Facilitates ICT skills development, with a focus on the Eastern Cape small, medium and microenterprise (SMME) sector.	Renewable Energy Technologies,; Process Technologies & Material Science in Engineering,; ICT for Sustainable Development, (iv) African Medicinal Flora and Fauna,; Cardio-Metabolic Health Research (vi) Sustainable marine & Freshwater economic development,; Small-scale Agribusiness & Rural Non-farm Enterprise Research; Creative and Cultural Technology & Industries,; Human rights & development, and; Sustainable development & contemporary issues in society and education	Learning and Teaching with technologies (Blended and online teaching and learning); Professional academic staff development; Scholarship for teaching and learning; Curriculum development and transformation; Student peer learning and support; Academic advising; First Year Support

Table 5.

The role of the WSU directorates in integrated quality management systems (sourced from [13]).

Therefore, the three cases indicated the challenges of ensuring integrated quality management systems, where Focus Areas 1 and 3 (Table 6) apply, respectively, to governance structures, management, and academic leadership roles (Standard 4), juxtaposed with the variables about the quality as coherent, functional, reasonable, and meaningfully structured (Standard 9).

Focus Area 1: Governance, Strategic Planning, Management and Leadership support the core academic functions					Focus Area 3: Coherence and integration of Institutional Quality Management System supports the core academic functions
Standard 4: There is clear understanding of and demonstrable adherence to the different roles and responsibilities					Standard 9: Relationships that exist between components of the Institutional Quality Management Systems
	Ranking parameter				Ranking parameter
Variable delivered from standard	Non-functional	Needs significant improvement	Functional	Mature	Variable delivered from standard	Non-functional	Needs significant improvement	Functional	Mature
	1	2	3	4		1	2	3	4
Governance Structures			X		Coherent		X
Management			X		Reasonable			X
Academic Leadership		X			Functional		X
					Meaningfully Structured			X
MEAN SCORE	2.75				MEAN SCORE	2.50

Table 6.

An outline of the discourses/practices of use in focus areas 1 and 3, standards 4 and 9, about the state of IQMS (sourced from [13]).

The infused Table 12 (p. 20) and Table 18 (p. 47) allow for the application of critical realist analysis on Focus Area 1, Standard 4 and Focus Area 3, Standard 9 (adapted from [13]).

The third point of analysis would be the IQMS at WSU, the program management requirements: SER Focus Areas 1 and 3 alluded to Standard 4 on governance structures, management, and academic leadership roles. In the case of WSU, such functions referred to HoDs, faculty deans, and DVC:AAR.

Table 3 outlines the selected key performance areas (KPAs) for what would be the cohort of academic leadership and management at WSU for both regimes (2015–2019; 2020–2024). The selected were only those KPAs that related to the purpose of this study about the idea of university education as a public good. The positions of Head of Department (HoD), Dean of Faculty (Dean), and Deputy Vice Chancellor Academic Affairs (DVC) represented the academic management and leadership structure for each of the business units (CHE IQF Focus Area 1, Standard 4). Such a structural arrangement, for example, took the case of a department with specified academic programs and courses, a faculty as the combination of related disciplines or schools, and the Office of the Deputy Vice Chancellor as the executive manager for the academic project. From a critical realist perspective, what becomes important for a normative descriptive analysis is the enactment both of the structural arrangements (roles, responsibilities, and duties as key performance areas that each position prescribes) and the logical connections thereof (ideas, beliefs, and propositions as the value system that each position requires in practice), both of which are then enacted as the exercise of agency (the choices and projects, or the absence of, as related to both). The indicated KPAs are structured in relation to the recommendations from the last institutional audit report [17] to which quality enhancement, as scholarship of engagement, ought to respond. According to this table, and further to Figure 1, scholarship of engagement is therefore infused within the functions and roles of academic leaders, management, and governance structures. Therefore, a critical realist-oriented project, based on the principles of judgmental rationality and its caution against the single story/narrative and transfactuality and retroductive reasoning as the logical tools, would seek to answer the following transcendental question:

What reality must be like for the integrated quality management system of the WSU to be ranked the way that the authors of the SER did?

5. The critical realist analysis: the role players in scholarship of engagement

The National Framework for Institutional Quality Audits explained the next phase of the institutional national audits ([10], p. 27) as follows:

“Self-evaluation needs to be understood as a meaning-making activity, and all levels and categories of staff, as well as units such as faculties and departments across the institution and across all sites of delivery, should participate, even though the professional quality assurance staff manage the process”.

In Section 3 of this article, the following extract referred to the case of “The 2018/19 Factor”:

“The writing of the SER commenced during the last quarter of 2021. It was anchored by five professors and the Institutional Student Representative Council (ISRC) President, under the auspices of the Quality Management Directorate” ([13]; p. x).

5.1 The WSU self-evaluation report and the three directorates

According to Table 6, the ranking parameters allow for the institution to be able to reflect on how it manages its integrated quality management systems according to each variable. The ranking parameters are briefly outlined below:

1. Not functional: Areas of serious concern exist in the institution’s quality management system in that either there is no quality management system in place or the quality management system is not considered to be functional in terms of the identified standard.

2. Needs substantial improvement: The institution’s quality management system is not fully developed or functional in terms of the identified standard and needs substantial improvement.

3. Functional: The quality management system in the institution meets the expected thresholds in terms of the identified standard, but some minor areas may need further improvement.

4. Mature: The institution’s quality management system, as measured against the identified standard, is generally mature, integrated, and coherent and is effective in achieving its differentiated purpose of enabling student success; good learning, and teaching practices; groundbreaking research, including local research; and impactful, integrated, and ethical community engagement and demonstrates good, sustainable governance (as appropriate for the institution).

5. The overall and holistic evaluation of the institution, in the form of a narrative summary, forms the conclusion of the audit report.

Table 3 reflects how the WSU team rated the SER and how the Focus Areas 1 and 3 reflect the nature of integrated quality management systems as enacted by governance, strategic planning, management, and leadership. Thus, by this study, I did a content analysis of Standards 4 and 9 where the choice was informed by the idea of quality as a cultural system (belief, ideas, standards, and norms, that is, Standard 9 about coherence, functionality, reasonableness, and meaningfully structured) as a dialectical relationship with the structural system. While the cultural system is meant the beliefs, ideas, standards, and norms, that is, Standard 9 about coherence, functionality, reasonable and meaningfully structured, the structural system, on the other hand, is meant the roles, functions, and responsibilities, that is Standard 4 about governance structures, management, and academic leadership. It is worth noting that both systems are enacted by agency (Table 1). A consideration of the academic leadership allows for understanding the more viable and sustainable quality management system as emerging “corporateness” from below, that is, when quality is more owned by the faculty than prescribed by policies and strategies. What is of critical importance to the realist is the causal efficacy, the weighted role of each element of structure, culture, and agency, to what occurs as events and processes, further to how such events are experienced at the level of the empirical domain (Table 1). However, while the structure is quite enduring, the most important measure for a social phenomenon (the idea of university education as a public good) is by means of a cultural system, an integrated quality management system assessed as coherent, functional, reasonable, and meaningfully structured, which can only be possible when enacted by a transformative agency. The power of analytical dualism is to treat each of the structural system and the cultural system as analytically distinct!

Also, the potential strength of comparing the two focus areas was for the value of internal coherence. When one focus area is cross-referenced with the other, the data self-triangulate. Such triangulation should entail not only the completion of the claims across different focus areas of the report but also the confirmation in ways that can allow the analysis to possibly arrive, in an abductive logical way, to more credible and trustworthy findings and conclusions about the data (the value of abductive/retroductive reasoning is explained in Section 3 of this article). For the purposes of the discussion in this section, the Focus Areas 1 and 3 allowed for the delineation of two important aspects. Focus Area 1 allowed for the concept of corporate social responsibility and the structural system of roles, functions, and responsibilities. This is the terrain of governance structures, management, and academic leadership. Focus area 3 allowed for the idea of quality as a public and common good and how such good is made accessible to all when the integrated systems can be ranked along coherence, functionality, reasonableness, and meaningful structured. The critical realist analysis of the Standards 4 and 9, which constitute these focus areas, therefore potentially allowed for the account of the nature of the interplay between the elements of structure, culture, and agency for analytical purposes only, where agency, in terms of ranking parameters, could be compared with other forms of data about the same systems and, in that way, reveal the inadequacies of the claims in accounting for quality. Such a project is about the beyondness, that is, beyond the surface ontology about what works and does not work about quality management as the measure of the public good. It is about the focus on the conditions of enablement and constraints of the access to such good. Social realism as reflected in Table 1 enables the social analyst and researcher to address the interplay of structure, culture, and agency at the domain of the real (stratified reality by means of deep ontology), as causal efficaciousness and effectiveness and therefore as emergent at the two domains above (domain of the actual and domain of the empirical)! Where such an analysis results in reproductive outcomes about quality, such a case should be problematized by identifying the potential constraints about agency if the more transformative outcomes might constitute the realms of new possibilities.

Therefore, both the organizing principle about scholarship of engagement and the role players in it as the 3 directorates, as reflected in the SER content, evidenced about Focus Areas 1 and 3 (about the reported quality management systems), allowed for the critical realist analysis and its advocacy for the transcendental reasoning. Calling on the mixed methodology and triangulation (that is, checking for the completion of data, confirmation of the stated claims about quality by cross-checking with other data sources and, most importantly, retroductive reasoning) helped the realist-oriented analysis to arrive at credible findings and conclusions about the potential case of corporate social responsibility where quality ought to be the measure of the public good.

The main finding of this comparison was that the ranking of Standards 4 and 9 of the WSU SER, when compared with other data about the institutional quality management culture, revealed social practices (silences and superficialities) of evaluating and reporting the quality as not responsible enough for what ought to matter in the idea of university education as a public good! The complexity of such a cultural system was mired in the dynamic relations with the structural system and how explicating the role of the human system, through reflexive-dialectical processes, tends to result more in reproductive outcomes than the idea of transformative outcomes.

6. The social realist explanation

In this main section, the developed insights are related to the scholarship of engagement according to the infusion model as the measure of integrated quality management system. Scholarship of engagement, as alluded to [14, 15], became elaborated over a period, from what was originally conceptualized and developed as the enabling system for a “developmental university” ([14]; pp. 3–4). Given the new WSU regime and context as the “impactful and technology-infused African university”, how the concept would allow for a social realist explanation in dynamics of structure, culture, and agency would have to be the focus for the social realist researcher. In simplified and practical terms, the explanation would take the What is (Structure), Why (Culture), and How (Agency) dimension about the scholarship of engagement as the quality measure and therefore a representation of corporate social responsibility for the idea of university education as the public good. Corporateness, in that regard, would be about the whole issue of emergence, the emergent properties and powers of structure, culture, and agency in irreducible ways (the analysis was analytically distinct; the explanation cannot be reduced to the original component parts but in relation to them)! Complexity also counts in such a realist explanation but in nondeterministic ways. While there is the macroelement of structure (governance structures), related thereto is the microelement of agency (management). The same applies to management and academic leadership. This social realist explanation therefore calls into question what the directorates did and/or did not seem to have done as scholarship of engagement. Comparing such claims beyond the SER rankings but with the three crisis events against the backdrop of Recommendations 19 and 20 from the first phase of the National Institutional Audits, also in consideration of the key performance areas for university management and leadership, therefore allowed for understanding both the nature of complexity and the potential resolution points about its contradictory totality.

1. At the level of the structural system, while the university policies and strategies for G7 Rule cases for program accreditations and for job upgrading and selection are espoused, such policies and strategies do not serve as proxies for the actual intended results. As the process to the actual rankings, the crisis events, which are not mentioned at all in the SER, should have been considered as part of the evidence in describing the challenges of the WSU integrated quality management system.

2. At the level of the cultural system, the understanding and application of the policies and strategies about point (a) above is not an apolitical, value-free, and neutral exercise. Both the rankings and the no mention of scholarship of engagement as a quality measure attest to what can serve as the privileged information against the other. The very champions of scholarship of engagement displayed glaring silences in writing the report. Not a single word about the scholarship of engagement appeared in the contents of the report.

3. At the level of both structural and cultural system is the role of agency as the human system. Agency in this case refers to choices or no choices and to actions or inaction about quality/scholarship of engagement at the points of management, academic leadership, and governance structures. The absences as reported in points (a) and (b) above are quite instructive about the nature of contradictory totality in the WSU case and why this university continues to suffer the stigma of being a historically disadvantaged university.

As evidence in the Crisis Events II and III, both management and governance structures are complicit in perpetuating structural and historical disadvantage. Occupying such positions of corporate responsibility can be declared to be about “pretense, grand standing, and political posturing.” Such social ills inadvertently and unwittingly promote mistrust, poor reputation, and illegitimacy to such students, staff, and managers who are always on the receiving end of brutality, patronizing bullying, and condescending attitudes as demonstrated in the Crisis Events I, II, and III. Such forms of bullying and dehumanizing tendencies are antithetical to the idea of university education as a public good. They are nowhere in repositioning WSU as an “impactful and technology-infused African University.” They are antithetical to the espoused values of Wisdom-Integrity-Excellence, which are ingrained as the academic crest in the certificates, diplomas, degrees, and in other accolades that students of WSU receive upon their graduation. Unless the governance structures can immediately stem the tide, there is no way that this much resourceful university to most students from working-class families in this region can ever be fully regionally and acceptably integrated into her community development projects.

6.1 The crisis of omission and commission

One of the main shortcomings of the WSU SER, at least from the perspective of realist-oriented researcher-practitioner, is the complete omission of the term, Scholarship of Engagement. This concept is well explained, in the institutional documents [14], as a special form of scholarship. The report missed the opportunity to mention this important concept in ways that can indicate the integrated approach about quality. Elaborating on the concept, with evidence, would have enhanced the variables per the standard number 9.

Therefore, on the strength of available data about the Crisis Events I, II, and III and further on the complete silence which derives from no mention of the concept of scholarship of engagement as the organizing principle for the academic project, the quality-related claims, as appeared in the institutional Self-Evaluation Report of 2022, were found to be incomplete and therefore deserved to be disconfirmed, at least from the critical realist-oriented researcher-practitioner’s point of view.

However, retroductive logic, on which this discussion is anchored, calls for making inferences about why the Self-Evaluation Report, in the way it was written and the evidence provided for its claims, would arrive at such a conclusion about the nature of integrated quality management systems at WSU? The discussion in this article has revealed the frivolity of the claims about quality when in consideration of the following:

1. The actual domain of SER rankings against the reality of Crisis Events I, II, and III renders as superficial the claims about quality. From a critical realist perspective, no mention of any one of the crisis events was also eventful, albeit as silences, at the domain of the actual and further to how such events were experienced at the domain of the empirical. Students who are on the receiving end both of G7 Rule cases and program accreditation cases had their dreams dashed, with huge psychological and social damage in their aspirations versus the reality of what can be constraints to them in accessing university education as the public good. Staff who can be on the receiving end of policy breach as in the case of Mr. X and the IF Report suffered the same fate, albeit not to the extent of the students’ plight. Despite the act having been committed in 2018, five years down the line, the case is still on the agenda of the University Council with no end in sight at the time of this article.

2. The actual domain of SER ranking against the actual events as none mentioning of scholarship of engagement as the organizing principle for the academic project. From a critical realist perspective, no mention of the concept of scholarship of engagement in the SER was also eventful at the domain of the actual, albeit as silences, and further to how such an event was experienced at the domain of the empirical. The same case about the crisis events also applies in the case of no mention of scholarship of engagement. There is not a single case where scholarship of engagement is mentioned as a concept in the WSU SER except broad references to Evidence No. 47 ([13], p. 15).

The availability of evidence per points a) and b) above would be quite compelling about the state of quality about Focus Areas 1 and 3 and therefore adding weight in the rankings. Therefore, what must be the structural generative mechanisms behind the events? The “WSU 2018/19 Factor”, as described in Section 3.1 of this article, seemed to be the pointer to what could be the structural generative mechanisms at the domain of the real, which therefore might have given rise to the events and the processes of compiling the report at the domain of the actual and further to how the report could then become a subject of inquiry at the domain of the empirical (Table 1). The WSU 2018/19 Factor, as described in Section 4, would have to be understood and explained in ways that are dialectically related both to the concept of scholarship of engagement and with the continued albatross around WSU’s neck, as evidenced, for example, in the Crisis I, II, and III. A critical realist-oriented social sciences researcher would be interested in the nature of the contradictory totality as the potential continuities from the older regimes of power and of truth. How would the potential systems of domination and control operate by means of pretense masquerading as merit?

As evidenced in Crisis events I, II, and III, this can be the case when such systems can have social and academic exclusion agenda as the case of corporate social irresponsibility! Such systems, unfortunately, become more complex at the points of cultural system, with the dominant explanations about quality. Engagement of meritocracy from a critical realist perspective argues that such a social phenomenon not just is an apolitical, neutral, and a value-free exercise but also results in reproductive outcomes, the case of social injustice and inequity, especially for the historically and structural disadvantaged. Such social ills, such forms of pretense, grand standing, and political posturing need to be ameliorated and, at best, be abolished.

Despite the interventions in place, namely, the policy on academic exclusion (Section 4.3) and the program management requirements (program accreditation criteria and heads of academic department and faculty deans’ key performance areas (Section 4.4)), coupled with the institutional strategy for monitoring and evaluation of student access and success (Section 4.3), it could become the case of systems that can keep on backfiring thus, with silences about such cases in the SER, constraining the potential for improvement. What a form of complicity to historical and structural disadvantage, exclusion, and marginalization! Mentioning scholarship of engagement as a concept would have invited more evidence to its successful application, the failure of which would prescribe lower ratings of the SER, due to the inaction of the academic leadership and management. Also, a reference to the crisis events would have worsened the SER rankings, for the same reason, especially about the governance structures!

It is quite glaringly strange that even at the level of the governance structure (the new regime of 2020–2024), scholarship of engagement could not be identified as one of the most important principles for how quality can be enhanced through integrated systems for an “impactful and technology-infused African university.” It is similarly not coincidental that in addition to the governance structure level, the management could not see value in identifying the crisis events as the albatross in how quality can be constrained in a university whose academic values are anchored on Wisdom, Integrity, and Excellence, a university that is “In Pursuit of Excellence”. The net result, in such possible unintended consequences about reporting about quality, shall be the enduring challenges for this category of universities in South Africa, which, due to the legacy of the settler colonialism and the structured racist apartheid system and partly due to the inaction of those who should have acted, the indifference of the professorate when it should have known better, and the silence of the voice of social justice and equity when it should have been loud, therefore reproduce mistrust instead of trust, poor reputation instead of good, and the Illegitimacy of the academic project when it could have been legitimate.

6.2 The transcendental argument about the silences and superficialities of quality reporting

Both the silences about scholarship of engagement and the crisis cases as the events and processes at the domain of the actual already opened the window of inference about the nature of reality at the domain of the real. Thinking of such a domain and causal efficaciousness points to some compelling evidence about the crisis events of the academic project at WSU, dating back to 2018, 2011, and even 2009. The fair conclusion is that the SER has been completed based on a privileged information as the dominant explanations about quality, whose sources are the systems of domination and control about the idea of university education as a public good. A consideration of the crisis events, against Focus Area 3 about quality systems, surfaces the challenges of the institutional culture along the four variables and what could be the practical alternative mechanisms in avoiding the crisis:

1. Coherence versus incoherence (the potential pursuit for an ideally internally coherent system about quality in relation to student success, program accreditation, and program management)

2. Functional versus dysfunctional system (the potential pursuit, in relation to policies and strategies, of mediation strategies for G 7 Rule cases for a 6 to 12 months duration, namely, evaluation of courses/teaching; program accreditation arrangements for 3-year program, namely, program reviews; talent management, the human resource development plan in place is effectively managed and led)

3. Reasonable versus unreasonable (the potential pursuit of student and staff aspirations versus reality in the idea of university education as a public good)

4. Meaningful versus meaningless structures (the pursuit of structures and role-playing in the cases where scholarship of engagement could be the solution. WSU and corporate social responsibility, “Relevance to What and Responsiveness to Whom”)

Points a) to d) above constitute what could and should have been the role of the three directorates (Figure 1), at the least, in developing the culture of integrated quality management systems, for a university whose slogan is “A Pursuit for Excellence.” The acid test, however, would be to implement such “pursuit” strategies by means of an “infusion model” when the systems and processes are designed and led as part of academic leadership function as praxis artistry, that is, the level where there must be the unity of theory and practice in practice! As evidenced by the discussion in this article, the mainstream quality management practices, which can masquerade as responsibilities, were not relevant and responsive enough, especially in the Crisis events I, II, and III. To address the inadequacies thereof, the practitioners at WSU would have to embrace the notion of beyondness, that is, the ability to understand and explain the structural generative mechanisms at the point of emergent powers and properties, which abductive and retroductive reasoning can allow for.

6.3 Being serious, university education “In pursuit for excellence” as transformative agency

At the time of the article, the Final Institutional Audit Report was not yet published. But the SER and the evidence data provided in support of its claims could be quite comprehensive and compelling. However, both Crisis events I and II made public knowledge, including the direct response of the National Ministry of Higher Education and Training and the National Professional Body, among many others. Such a variety of interventions took place at a macrolevel! The authority for scholarship, however, resides at the microlevel. At microlevel, HDUs have a huge responsibility to stem the tide of mistrust, poor reputation, and illegitimacy. They cannot afford to be found wanting to use privileged information at the great expense of the other.

Therefore, to possibly transform the system, transformative agency for the WSU context and its expressively veracious considerations need to be concept-dependent and be understood according to the orders of reality in three systemic and mutually inclusive ways. The SER silences and superficialities, as discussed in this article, were quite compelling as the case of reproductive outcomes that always reinforce the historical and structural disadvantage on the insignificant other. Transformative agency, as both being serious and practically alternative, would have to consider scholarship of engagement and role-playing as in terms of the subject-object-relations logic. It can be surmised that if the WSU SER had made claims along the following three systemic points, such a report could have enhanced the understanding and explanations of the idea of university education as a public good and therefore be able to approximate to the relatively high standards that are required for corporate social responsibility:

1. Scholarship of engagement as the concept relates to the need for quality enhancement in academic leadership, where the focus is on a coherent, functional, reasonable, and a meaningfully structured cultural system at the operation level. The quality of evidence would have to be measured in terms of the first crisis event. Academic leadership ought to be the embodiment of knowledge about the quality of teaching, learning, research, and community engagement. Such an embodiment calls for high levels of reflexivity at the social level of a typical university context. The Crisis Event I was the case of how a study period at the course level should be mitigated by the duty of care on behalf of the students at risk of academic success. Scholarship of engagement at this level needs to be conceptualized along the operations management principles, targeting the academic staff and heads of academic departments as mediators in the seemingly academically exclusive but also irresponsible system and its abusive processes. Such intervention must target the G 7 Rules Policy and its strategies in a way that the latter can be implemented in a more responsible way by being relevant to all concerns, claims, and issues that inform students’ academic performance, in addition to being responsive to each case of a student at risk of academic success. Emerging at this operational level would thus be the first element of relevance and responsiveness (RR-).

2. Scholarship of engagement at the management level, while mutually inclusive of the above, would target the business unit level, the program level where the deans of faculty and the faculty board play an oversight and a monitoring function. The management level ought to be the sole defender of quality and therefore of scholarship at the practical level. Crisis Event II about program accreditation indicates what can go wrong for a program duration of 3 years, beyond the course/subject/module level of 6 or 12 months. Responsibility as the duty of care at this level would seek to avoid the current cases of program disaccreditation, with dire consequences for students from the working-class families (SWCF). The pursuit of excellence at this level would require efficient and effective monitoring, evaluation, and reporting systems for scholarship of engagement. Impact-tracking for inbuilt self-regulating systems and processes would have to extend the first elements of RREE—but not in mutually exclusive ways. The challenge, as surmised about the silences and superficialities of the WSU SER, however, would be the value of scholarship that must provide powerful theories of change for the assumed impact and in ways that the triple Es (Efficiency and Effectiveness for the idea of Excellence in context-specific and actor-driven transformative ways) can allow for impact tracking (RREEEI-).

3. Scholarship of engagement and the governance structures, while inclusive of the above, would target the strategic level and thus avoid the institutional culture of policy breach and the seemingly blatant undermining of university council/governance powers, as evidenced in the Crisis event III. Inclusive of the coherent, reasonable, and meaningfully structured variables, the latter event made the worst case of how corporate governance and leadership practices can engender the dysfunctional culture of integrated quality management systems. Duty of care as corporate social responsibility at this level would take care of Senior and executive management level as it seemed to apply in the Crisis Event III. Scholarship of engagement at institutional governance would have to allow for a more viable and sustainable institution, especially at the cultural system level (Focus Area 3, Standard 9). Critical for the governance structures therefore would have to be concerted efforts for sustainable value creation, thus allowing for RREEEIS modeling to emerge at this level but not in mutually exclusive ways with the first two levels.

6.4 RREEEIS modeling, the academic project development framework

Therefore, the three points in Section 6.3 would constitute the realms of new possibilities of how corporate social responsibility can allow for the equity of student access for the quality of success to university education as a public good. Such would be the most workable solution, at least from the critical realist perspective to the two questions that sought to explain the concept of CSR for UE-PG in context-specific and actor-driven transformative ways: Relevance to what and Responsive to whom? These ought to be the “beyondness” questions, the pursuit of excellence as scholarship of engagement beyond just the operational effectiveness and efficiency variables about its business but as Values-driven, moral, and ethical standards including impact-tracking for sustainable value creation. The net result would be the ability to manage “Excellence” within the contexts of contradictory totality, where the “Effectiveness and Efficiency” variables (effectiveness and efficiency) seem to constrain excellence. In the process, to design built-in impact-tracking systems at each point of the value chain, so to eliminate value inhibitors while promoting value enhancers. The target should be to ensure the sustainable value chain of trust, good reputation, and legitimacy internally in the academic project for the public good in systemic ways, that is, from course to program and to institutional and corporate levels. The RREEEIS modeling constitutes what I propose in this article as the thinking tool toward what can be the critical realist-oriented academic project development framework (APDF), which I intend to subject to more iterative cycles as advancement of the concept. Externally, the net result would be a potentially viable and sustainable university that is regionally integrated and is not only well integrated with its local community but also regionally, nationally, and internationally integrated in line with Goal No.17 of Partnerships and Collaborations by the UN SDG 2030. Ideally, that would be the possibility of corporateness, which, as emergence in the domains of reality, is achievable when made analytically distinct at the interplays of structure, culture, and agency.

The ability to manage, lead, and govern such interplays for WSU would need social and sociocultural systems that can explicitly engage the notions of quality beyond the systems of domination and control, which can be complicated by means of a defeatist logic and its inadvertent and unwitting deontological position and self-referential explanations. Such explanations never go far enough to account for the complexity of social justice and equity as the role of leadership in corporate social responsibility as the exercise of agency. The strangely unique case of HDUs in South Africa calls for actors who can courageously defend the interests of the historically and structurally disadvantaged, excluded, and marginalized communities, both within and external to the university institutions, by means of the progressive and socially reconstructive projects. Such choices and projects, when designed on the principles of internal integration in the idea of UE-PG, can manifest optimal levels of corporate social responsibility at maximum reflexivity. Acting about CSR in ways which can engage in the truth about and which can help others to embark on the emancipatory choices and projects for the insignificant other should constitute a duty of care. That must constitute the ways of reimagining corporate social responsibility where integrated community development and regional integration in university education roles and functions ought to matter. That can make a huge difference and help enormously in the realization of the idea of university education as a public good!

7. Conclusion

This article reported on academic project functions, in one case of a comprehensive university in South Africa, as published in the self-evaluation report. The advent of the national institutional audit (2021–2024), the second one post constitutional democracy, allowed for the potential analysis of the value of understanding the role of agency in the theory and practice of corporate social responsibility for the idea of university education as a public and common good. The enduring social ills in the form of abject poverty, increasing unemployment rates, and the escalating inequalities on a global scale cast doubts about the agenda for human flourishing in general and about the globally celebrated constitutional democracies and their Bill of Rights. The consistent question for South African transformation project of university education is about corporate social responsibility: relevance to what and responsive to whom?

The article was organized around the main argument that corporate social responsibility (CSR), both as a concept and a subject of inquiry, still needs several iterative cycles of theorization and research if the concept is to reach high levels of intellectual maturity. This need is more than urgent in the context of university education in the HDUs’ case in South Africa, where the measure of the public good, and of how to access such goods, needs to be developmental imperatives. The university education sector in South Africa, having completed the first phase of the National Institutional Audits (2008–2011), is in the middle of the second phase (2021–2024) but with strong evidence for the enduring concerns, claims, and issues about quality whose history is rooted in the legacy of a socially exclusive system. Therefore, the article seeks to contribute to, and expand on, the necessary conversations that, through reflexive-dialectical processes, can allow for a transformative agency to emerge.

The main goal of this project was to engender and stimulate the necessary conversations in similar contexts but without being deterministic. Contemporary scholarship about corporate social responsibility should seek to advance the context-specific and actor-driven ways of engaging corporate social responsibility as a multidimensional concept, with realms of new possibilities for the public good. For this article, CSR for UE-PG takes a particular dimension of scholarship of engagement as the realm of quality as logic, power matrix, and the idea of being/ontology. As such, quality can be contested along the ideas, beliefs, norms, and standards that always reflect power dynamics.

The research value for such an exercise, as scholarship, entails promotion of a cultural system about CSR for UE-PG. Specifically, it is about how the institutional units, which can be designed and managed to work in discrete and fragmented ways, and how such units can learn to work in ways that promote collaboration and partnerships. The net result is organizational learning at all performance levels of operations, business, and strategy, including the potential relevance and responsiveness of the institution to the local, regional, and national developmental imperatives.