Managing Academic Resistance to Research of Academics at a University of Technology

Although rudimentary forms of knowledge exchange and sharing unfold within universities through knowledge dissemination in lectures and academics' collaborative production and sharing of research publications, how to manage the produced knowledge is painstaking for Universities of Technology, historically profession-oriented universities without a solid culture of scholarly research. Even when digital platforms for knowledge management are increasingly availed to academics to develop, document and share knowledge during its production, pockets of academic resistance to research and knowledge management are not uncommon to UoTs, academic enclaves where research productivity is only beginning to emerge. Drawing on eight academics who exhibited resistance to research productivity due to a strong Technikon mentality that did not emphasise scholarly research, this paper seeks to develop a culture of knowledge sharing through encouraging academics to conduct world-class research, embrace digitalization of research, and foster academic collaboration with other research institutions. The findings suggest that resistance to research was a consequence of lack of research skills, the legacy of an education system that neither enhanced strong research ethos nor championed the inculcation of scholarly research, heavy teaching workloads that consume the time available to carry out research, numerous departmental meetings, assessments and other academic commitments. Future research should examine the extent to which the competing teaching and administrative responsibilities undermine the research productivity of these academic staff. The hiring of part-time staff to conduct invigilation duties during assessments and reduction of departmental administration responsibilities through a round robin of documents could increase the time availed to conducting research activities at national and international levels.