**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.

### *Reimagining Corporate Social Responsibility in the Idea of University Education as the Public… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.110177*

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:


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.
