**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:


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


#### **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".*
