UK facilities management market 99

SIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre-DSC:9082.656405(1999) / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo

Imaginaries of Invention Management: Comparing Path Dependencies in East and West Germany

The ways in which societies and institutions institutionalize and practice invention management reflects not only how new ideas are valued, but also imaginaries about the role of science and technology for societal development. Often taking the US Bayh-Dole-Act as a model, many European states have recently implemented changes in how inventions at academic institutions are to be handled to optimize their societal impact. We analyze how these changes have been taken up—and made sense of—in regions with different pre-existing infrastructures, practices and semantics of invention management. For doing so, we build on a comparative analysis of continuities and changes in infrastructures, practices and semantics of invention management in North-Rhine Westphalia (NRW, a former Western state) and Saxony (a former GDR state) to reflect on how academic institutions have been handling inventions along transforming socio-political contexts. Building on document analysis and qualitative interviews with research managers, we discuss ongoing differences in practices of invention management and the semantic framing of the societal value of inventions in NRW and Saxony, and discuss how this can be understood before the background of their ideological, political and economic separation until reunification in 1990. Joining the conceptual perspectives of path dependencies and sociotechnical imaginaries, we argue that two critical incidents in the history of these states (the reunification in 1990 and a legal change in 2002) allowed for wide-ranging institutional alignments, but also allowed path dependencies in practices and semantics of invention management to prevail.© The Author(s) 201

Outsourcing as a strategy for facilities management provision in Nigerian universities

Outsourcing in universities is a form of privatization in which external providers are contracted to provide a traditional campus function or service but has however remained relatively unexplored. The purpose of this study is to explore its use as a strategy for facilities management (FM) roles in Nigerian universities. Using a cross-sectional questionnaire survey, total of 43 responses representing 43 out of 134 sample units used for the survey were received to give an overall response rate of 32%. Data collected were analysed using descriptive statistics and Spearman's rank correlation. Findings among others, reveal that five FM roles to which outsourcing has been most effective are campus security, cleaning services, plant operation and maintenance, waste management and laundry in that order while most of the procurement options have significant correlation with outsourcing success. The paper concludes that a number of FM services and functions have been outsourced or are currently being outsourced. Moreover, the services outsourced are mainly janitorial services which support the teaching, research and learning in the universities. By implication, knowledge of the level of effectiveness of outsourcing as a strategic option for FM will enable the universities adopt best options that will ultimately increase the efficiency and effectiveness of corporate governance within institutions. The paper recommends that universities should consider launching advocacy on the potential benefits of outsourcing to bolster the full acceptance of outsourcing particularly for hard FM which is presently not the case according to findings of this study