*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


*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.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.*

#### **Table 3.**

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

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**).

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).

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

#### **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 studyabroad 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]).*

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


#### **Table 5.**

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

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:


**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]).*

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

*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?*
