**6.3 Being serious, university education "In pursuit for excellence" as transformative agency**

At the time of the article, the Final Institutional Audit Report was not yet published. But the SER and the evidence data provided in support of its claims could be quite comprehensive and compelling. However, both Crisis events I and II made public knowledge, including the direct response of the National Ministry of Higher Education and Training and the National Professional Body, among many others. Such a variety of interventions took place at a macrolevel! The authority for scholarship, however, resides at the microlevel. At microlevel, HDUs have a huge responsibility to stem the tide of mistrust, poor reputation, and illegitimacy. They cannot afford to be found wanting to use privileged information at the great expense of the other.

Therefore, to possibly transform the system, transformative agency for the WSU context and its expressively veracious considerations need to be concept-dependent and be understood according to the orders of reality in three systemic and mutually inclusive ways. The SER silences and superficialities, as discussed in this article, were quite compelling as the case of reproductive outcomes that always reinforce the historical and structural disadvantage on the insignificant other. Transformative agency, as both being serious and practically alternative, would have to consider scholarship of engagement and role-playing as in terms of the subject-object-relations logic. It can be surmised that if the WSU SER had made claims along the following three systemic points, such a report could have enhanced the understanding and explanations of the idea of university education as a public good and therefore be able to approximate to the relatively high standards that are required for corporate social responsibility:


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

reasonable, and meaningfully structured variables, the latter event made the worst case of how corporate governance and leadership practices can engender the dysfunctional culture of integrated quality management systems. Duty of care as corporate social responsibility at this level would take care of Senior and executive management level as it seemed to apply in the Crisis Event III. Scholarship of engagement at institutional governance would have to allow for a more viable and sustainable institution, especially at the cultural system level (Focus Area 3, Standard 9). Critical for the governance structures therefore would have to be concerted efforts for sustainable value creation, thus allowing for **RREEEIS** modeling to emerge at this level but not in mutually exclusive ways with the first two levels.

#### **6.4 RREEEIS modeling, the academic project development framework**

Therefore, the three points in Section 6.3 would constitute the realms of new possibilities of how corporate social responsibility can allow for the equity of student access for the quality of success to university education as a public good. Such would be the most workable solution, at least from the critical realist perspective to the two questions that sought to explain the concept of CSR for UE-PG in context-specific and actor-driven transformative ways: *Relevance to what and Responsive to whom*? These ought to be the "beyondness" questions, the pursuit of excellence as scholarship of engagement beyond just the operational effectiveness and efficiency variables about its business but as Values-driven, moral, and ethical standards including impacttracking for sustainable value creation. The net result would be the ability to manage "Excellence" within the contexts of contradictory totality, where the "Effectiveness and Efficiency" variables (effectiveness and efficiency) seem to constrain excellence. In the process, to design built-in impact-tracking systems at each point of the value chain, so to eliminate value inhibitors while promoting value enhancers. The target should be to ensure the sustainable value chain of trust, good reputation, and legitimacy internally in the academic project for the public good in systemic ways, that is, from course to program and to institutional and corporate levels. The RREEEIS modeling constitutes what I propose in this article as the thinking tool toward what can be the critical realist-oriented academic project development framework (APDF), which I intend to subject to more iterative cycles as advancement of the concept. Externally, the net result would be a potentially viable and sustainable university that is regionally integrated and is not only well integrated with its local community but also regionally, nationally, and internationally integrated in line with Goal No.17 of Partnerships and Collaborations by the UN SDG 2030. Ideally, that would be the possibility of corporateness, which, as emergence in the domains of reality, is achievable when made analytically distinct at the interplays of structure, culture, and agency.

The ability to manage, lead, and govern such interplays for WSU would need social and sociocultural systems that can explicitly engage the notions of quality beyond the systems of domination and control, which can be complicated by means of a defeatist logic and its inadvertent and unwitting deontological position and self-referential explanations. Such explanations never go far enough to account for the complexity of social justice and equity as the role of leadership in corporate social responsibility as the exercise of agency. The strangely unique case of HDUs in South Africa calls for actors who can courageously defend the interests of the historically and structurally disadvantaged, excluded, and marginalized communities, both within and external to the university institutions, by means of the progressive and socially reconstructive projects. Such choices and projects, when designed on the principles of internal

integration in the idea of UE-PG, can manifest optimal levels of corporate social responsibility at maximum reflexivity. Acting about CSR in ways which can engage in the truth about and which can help others to embark on the emancipatory choices and projects for the insignificant other should constitute a duty of care. That must constitute the ways of reimagining corporate social responsibility where integrated community development and regional integration in university education roles and functions ought to matter. That can make a huge difference and help enormously in the realization of the idea of university education as a public good!
