INTRODUCTION

In the country, the Colombian State since 1968 formally deposited in the ESAP the research tasks and the entire training process of administrative public knowledge. With the issuance of Decree 523 of the year 2000, the aim was to modernize the organizational structure, deploy efforts by decentralizing mission processes and move towards research generation, in a territorial perspective contextualized and relevant to the development challenges of the regions. For this, a series of factors and resources were prescribed to generate a substantive change in the historical results on the subject.

However, the complexity of knowledge management and the singularities of sociopolitical spaces, at the national level such as those surrounding the development of the ESAP, territorial Cauca, may have altered the results compared to the general model of apprehension of administrative public knowledge proposed in the policy guidelines. Thus, the question is what organizational factors have influenced the development of research management at ESAP, Cauca territory, from 1999 to 2013?

To address the issue, this paper aims to show the results of the research within the stamentary components of the School, starting from the conceptual discussion of its management, compared to the policy guidelines¹. The parameters of the methodological tracking are addressed, which are based on a hermeneutical approach that gives rise to documentary description and qualitative findings from the experiences and perceptions of students and teachers in which seven (7) emerging categories converge that account for the importance of establishing what factors have strengthened or weakened research management for the generation and strengthening of research, to then collect the findings and finally draw the conclusions.

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

THE ORGANIZATION

The concept of organization has been an element that has surrounded academic research in the field of public administration. But not for that reason, there are unfinished precisions, for which it is necessary to return to it and discuss it to find the substratum that allows to shed light on this work and today there are multiple alternatives for its description, almost all concentrated on similar characteristics.

Based on this, some authors contribute to its definition, highlighting the following concepts:

Chiavenato, (2001), asserts that organizations are social units (or human groups) intentionally built and rebuilt to achieve specific objectives. The latter then, are proposed and built with the exercise of planning. In this sense, organizations are rebuilt, that is, they are restructured and reconsidered as objectives are achieved or better means are discovered to achieve them at less cost and effort. In other words, the organization is not an unmodifiable unit, but a living social organism subject to change (Wallace et al., 2011; Corre et al., 2018) .

The approach that Chiavenato makes about organizations is pertinent to achieve the objectives of each of the processes, but this only develops when there is a well-structured planning and a group of people willing to meet the goals, each time making a record of errors that may occur and make the necessary corrections so that they are better and better in the techniques performed.

For his part, Dávila (1985) cited by Villafañe Solarte, (2009), states that:

Organizations are groups or associations of people related to the basic functions of society (communication, goal setting, production and distribution of goods and services, etc.). Although they can reach a large size, there are also very few members. The purposes proposed in the organization are determined with relative precision: thus, they define the type of relationship possible within it (p. 30).

In this sense, the author alludes that organizations have different characteristics (class, size of the company, Mission, Vision, policies), which are oriented to fulfill planned purposes.

In this way, the organization implies the cooperation of those who are part of it, so it is relevant that higher education institutions, in this case the ESAP, incorporate strategies that entail commitment and comprehensive development of their activities with a view to service of society, understanding that it is instituted as a living organism that is constantly innovating and that can create new organizational models that motivate students to transform, create and, above all, to investigate. In this regard, a close and symbiotic relationship is essential between administrative knowledge, knowledge management and the organization as the center of management in general and of research management, unfolding in factors as follows:

Prominence of the factor

It is attributed to those elements that condition a situation, that generate changes or transformations. Within this framework, the definition is stated, which opens the understanding of it from the organizational context.

Kume (1992) points out that a factor that influences a result is understood as a force or condition that cooperates with other forces to produce a determined result. Thus, this can positively or negatively affect an activity, process, organization, which makes it possible to take those results to enhance, improve and strengthen them. That from the process the cause-effect relationship takes center stage. In this sense (García.1997) highlights that a factor is defined as each of the elements or circumstances that contribute to producing a result.

Due to the above, the authors denote that a factor is perceived as a variable of the organization that, in the first place, affects its result; and, secondly, to the environment and the organizational structure, where these factors are established. Moreover, in the way they affect the development of activities and strategies that must be carried out to achieve the proposed objectives. In this way, the conditions generated by the organization in front of each organizational process have a significant impact on the achievement of the objectives where it is necessary to establish strategies to ensure that these factors have a positive impact within it. However, they must be discriminated.

Organizational factors and their classification

It is recognized that organizations, as social entities, are different and diversified from each other. Each one has its own characteristics, ideologies, human capacities, specific resources, institutional policies, etc. Regardless of its size or business name, organizational factors are established that predominate and incur in its operation and therefore affect its results.

The following table supports the elements of an organized structure of these resources according to the components of intellectual capital, such as: human capital, structural capital and relational capital.

Indeed, table 1 lists the organizational factors or resources that exist in the ESAP, and which are the means to achieve each of the objectives proposed in the action plans for each year in research management.

Table 1: Organizational Factors Structure.

Source: Own elaboration based on Edgar & Albright (2022).

In this way, it is possible to address the intellectual capital held by the ESAP, territorial Cauca, and the organizational factors that are part of it, both tangible and intangible and that can be summarized in human, structural and relational capital.

INTELLECTUAL CAPITAL

LThe existing definitions that make up the concept of Intellectual Capital show a certain degree of heterogeneity. They corroborate a still emerging state of the concept and the need to continue researching while cooperating or working in a network, between academics and professionals, to create a scientific community or a research program of generalized conceptual acceptance among those (Bueno, et al., 2008, p. 52).

In the same way, there are definitions of other authors, such as that of Kristandl and Bontis, (2007), who state that there are theories that are related to the previous contributions, such as the Theory of Resources and Capacities.

The theory mentions the relationship between strategies and resources to become a source of competitive advantage for the company.

Therefore, in relation to intellectual capital, it is the way in which knowledge is intermingled, to strengthen the organization; and knowing how to transmit and generate new knowledge in order to improve each one of the processes and be increasingly competitive compared to other companies.

RESEARCH MANAGEMENT

Research is one of the first important spaces to promote in higher education an adaptation to contemporary challenges, characterized by globalization and competitiveness (Ekbia & Hara, 2008 and Gómez Marín et al., 2022). It is then, a need to universities structure educational models in accordance with the needs of the context, which is framed in the management of research as a relevant aspect to assume said changes. In this regard, let us consider the considerations of some authors who state the following aspects on the subject.

From the ESAP, in the Agreement 010 of 2006, a concept of research management is underlined that states “that the ESAP conceives research as the primary source of knowledge and scientific knowledge, which is the basis for all academic activity and serves as a support for teaching, advice, training and projection of the institution”, related to what was mentioned by Ferrer and Clemenza (2006), which also shows their inclination towards social projection.

According to Ferrer and Clemenza (2006), the management of university research is one of the first spaces that new generations must go through; a work for the cultivation of science and the capitalization of the social environment. Its functions are not only framed in the creation, transmission, and dissemination of knowledge, but also aspire to be inserted in the integral development of the community. It implies the interrelation of the academy, who must also participate with the State as a facilitating body.

From the author’s point of view, it is the reciprocity of investigative actions must be given inside and outside the academy to strengthen the generation of knowledge. In addition, the State must be involved in the generation of resources that help development and social transformation.

Indeed, from the perspective of the System, by virtue of which the mechanisms of Research Management are of an academic, normative and organizational nature and integrate and articulate the actions of the different units responsible for the development of the missionary functions of the ESAP; regulations and management processes must ensure “greater impact and effectiveness” of the research results in the consolidation of the academic community and its institutional projection. In this sense, research is not understood without its association with the processes of training, teaching and institutional projection.

In contrast, with what was stated above, there is very little interaction between universities to strengthen scientific production, because each institution has its own resources to develop research and sometimes very limited for the execution of projects, added to the lack of interest of some teachers and students to carry out this important activity for the generation of new knowledge.

Let’s see for now, how some of these elements emerge from the methodology that was considered in this research.

METHODOLOGY

For Heidegger (1974), the hermeneutical historical approach corresponds to a natural way of interpreting the reality of things; seeks scientific knowledge as a product of the interaction of the knowing subject with the object of knowledge through transforming action². From this point of view, the tracing of the processes historically developed by the School, with respect to research training, was based on the construction of meaning from the perception of students and teachers against the official discourse of strengthening research (Tucker, 2020) . For this reason, its emphasis on the study of meanings of human actions and social life through the combination of techniques, related to the concept or quantitative or qualitative language (Pereira, 2011).

In this case, the investigation gives an important value to the knowledge represented in the complementarity of the documentary information and the understanding of perceptions that surround the process of the investigation management in the ESAP, as essential components to carry out a more dynamic investigation, to obtain a greater understanding of the present reality.

On the other hand, in order to achieve a reflection on the perception and knowledge of students and teachers regarding the organizational factors that affect the management of research in the ESAP, action research - reflection based on the paradigm, reflective critic (Lafrancesco, 2003). This to generate critical thinking about the actions that enable research training at the school.

Likewise, the information technique was used, through documentary review, through files, records, resolutions, existing documents in the library, which allowed analyzing the advance and setback in the development of research management. Likewise, a focus group was held with fifteen (15) students from the Territorial Public Administration program, belonging to research teams (seedbeds, training groups, young talent), from the period between 1999 and 2013, with a guide booklet of 14 questions, based on the categories called organizational factors and research management. Finally, an interview was conducted with ten (10) of the professors involved in the investigative processes during the aforementioned period, based on an instrument that consisted of 10 questions, according to the categories previously evaluated.

In this sense, the analysis of the information was developed, through theoretical triangulation by means of three techniques:

1. Documentary Description. It is addressed from the documentation collected in the existing records and files in the institution, using Excel templates for its systematization.

2. Focus group and interviews. The categorization of the information collected was used, based on the definition of the highest relative and absolute frequency, based on the criteria or comments most mentioned by students and teachers.

3. Theoretical and conceptual comparison against the results obtained that give rise to the research findings.

FINDINGS

Description of research management at ESAP

The projection and diffusion of the investigative activity is measured from the institutional productive dynamics and the relations with the academic and scientific community. As is known, these are traced from the creation, mission and vision of the school.

Thus, the activities developed from 1999 to 2013 around research as the integrating axis revealed things like the following:

Table 2: Description of the Research from 1999 to 2013.

Source: self-made (2020).

Due to the above, it can be observed that the investigative activity in Cauca territory, measured by the number of research projects carried out, shows a growth trend. In what could be investigated in the Cauca region, there is a list of 46 investigations, from 1999 to 2013, concentrated largely in the years 2010 to 2013.

In the following graph and table you can see the number of works carried out, where there is a lot of information reflected in a number of documents that are waiting to be disclosed but that the weaknesses in management do not allow to consolidate in terms of the effects multiplicative that accompany the era of information and knowledge, which are in the library of the territorial Cauca. In this way, without it having been tacitly proposed, the school in its formulation processes ends up creating a kind of "information monopoly" that is recalcified in the territorial ones, feeds the dependency of the center and reveals inefficiency and ineffectiveness in the face of to the modernization models of the public administration that the institution proclaims in its curricula.

Likewise, as illustrated in the previous graph, in the years 2011 and 2013, the formulation of projects and their implementation intensified, but without conclusive effects. Thus, for example, if we stop to compare the years 2011 and 2013, those concerning projects of territorial interest, almost multiply by four. However, no impact is recorded at the level of publications, citations, training, or other external social effect, as the only destination, "the library".

Likewise, it is worth noting that the asymmetry and lack of reliability of institutional information restricts the possibilities of self-assessment for change. This was a constant in the development of this research, which ratifies the aspects stated above, and evidences the absence of a unified and easily accessible academic information system.

However, within the activities of promotion and massification of research practices, densification has also been scarce, which means that between 14 and 15% of these are concentrated in the participation of teachers in research hotbeds per year. This means that most of the activity is concentrated on teachers, something that was only surpassed in 2011 when student participation bordered on 60% of those involved (see table 3).

Table 3: Name of the projects carried out from 1999 to 2013.

Source: Own elaboration - library information (2020).

Table 4: Students and teachers involved in the research process in the following years.

Source: Own elaboration based on the documentary analysis carried out in the archives of the ESAP- Cauca (2020).

Note in contrast, the scant role of these agents in projects of territorial interest, which are precisely those that would fuel the process of decentralization of training and those that would nurture the context of the future exercise of intervention in the region.

Now, if we make year-on-year comparisons, the activity of teachers stands out in the hotbeds (see graph 1). However, its behavior is tremendously high-sounding, an issue that evidences the low consistency over time and the weakness of the planning process and administrative implementation as well.

Graph 1: Number of projects carried out at ESAP from 1999 to 2013.

Source: self-made (2020).

Graph 2: Tasa de crecimiento de actividades de investigación.

Source: author’s calculations according to database (ESAP, 2015).

Once again, the highly oscillating horizon is concentrated between 2010 and 2012, where an extraordinary peak of over 200% rises, but which drops sharply towards 2012 to levels between 50 and 80%. The interesting thing about the topic is that this time students and teachers scored almost in unison to the din of the hotbeds. In this it also has to do with the budget assigned by the central headquarters, where the territorial ones have no greater interference and on the basis of unclear studies on the subject, which leaves a large space without academic productivity.

Graph 3: Inclusion of students and teachers in research groups from 1999 to 2013.

Source: self-made (2020).

In the graph it can be evidenced that there are few students and teachers who are immersed in research groups and that in one way or another they are the ones who are strengthened every day in the management of knowledge and information through the different social troubles.

Previously, an assertion was expressed about the little interest that universities have in strengthening scientific production and the lack of motivation of both teachers and students to carry out this activity. This is evidenced, in the case studied, in the little scientific production that has been carried out from 1999 to 2013, of which no indexed publications were found, nor groups endorsed by Colciencias and also no research groups with high academic production are consolidated.

Despite the fact that there is academic production in the Cauca region, a constant dynamic was not evidenced because in some years more projects were carried out than in others and this reflects a lack of leadership of the research faculty to articulate this investigative process and the academic coordination of the territorial Cauca, As Padrón Guillén (2001) puts it , it is the universities themselves that institutionally declare their interest in research and the need to reinforce this activity. But curiously, these do not begin by defining their specific interests. If the need to investigate is only declared, without leaving that framework of generalities, it seems that the insistence is on “investigating for the sake of investigating”, which makes the sincerity of the declarations doubtful, or, at least, the depth with which the real scope of the research processes is conceived.

Category results

The results of the triangulation indicated the use of various strategies when studying the same phenomenon, for example, the use of various methods such as individual interviews (ten (10) teachers, focus groups or investigative workshops with fifteen (15) students, (Benavides and Gómez Restrepo, (2005).

Accordingly, the complementarity of the theory was essential to determine the emerging category.

In the first instance, the findings respond to the results found in the students:

Conclusions

The results of the study reflect the inability of research management at ESAP. Administrative and political factors have hindered organizational processes in favor of the institution. The lack of territorial autonomy limits decision-making and the execution of actions linked to bureaucratic decisions significantly affect their development.

Although it is true that the existence of academic production in the territory is evident, a constant dynamic that allows generating progress in scientific research was not demonstrated, since in some years more projects were carried out than in others. The foregoing demonstrates a lack of leadership on the part of the Faculty of Research, to articulate this investigative process with the academic coordination of the Cauca territorial.

Therefore, research should be the support of the school, since it has been isolated or discriminated against by the administrations that are addressed by the ESAP. It also reflects the low quality in academic and research production and the disarticulation with the other processes, which limits the normal development of the research activity that every day becomes more visible in the universities to be at the forefront of society, knowledge and the construction of the public.

Consequently, the minimum progress in the development of research management was verified, due to the lack of commitment on the part of the ESAP, so that the projects are evaluated and socialized, based on the necessary support for a subsequent publication that allows the recognition of all the academic production generated in the Cauca territory.

It must be recognized that efforts have been made to strengthen research training from the classroom with the development and formulation of projects that have allowed students to acquire research training from the conceptual component. However, these developed investigations have not managed to transcend towards academic scenarios of greater impact.

In this way, it is very important that the ESAP, as an educational institution, must respond to the transformation of society and the demand of the community, as stated in the mission to strengthen the intellectual capital that is immersed in the organization and be more competitive when it comes to providing services to citizens. Although it is true that from the point of view of Structural Capital, bibliographic resources are evident for the promotion of research, there is no trained human talent to provide a better service.

Likewise, from the Human capital component, the absence of strategies and the lack of institutional support to favor the construction of knowledge of the educational community is reflected; and even more so if the constant change of administrative personnel is reflected to provide continuity and strengthening to the processes. As mentioned above, the deficiency of investigative work with social impact and its little diffusion prevent the potential of the Relational Capital of the School.

Therefore, the combination of knowledge, skills, experiences, intellectual property and organizational structures generate significant value for the institution, aimed at strengthening it to generate new knowledge. In this way, it is required that the school give importance to investigative activities, which constitutes a missionary component to be made visible from the organization.

On the other hand, it is evident that the management of the research is limited because the ESAP does not provide the relevant motivational tools, such as a room for teachers to have extracurricular time with students, computers, access to Internet is very deficient, etc., to encourage teachers to the world of research, in such a way that they can acquire a commitment to the organization. Even more so if teachers are teaching hours, which makes it difficult to generate significant efforts from their role, to promote research.

Therefore, the analysis carried out aims to seek strategies aimed at improving all organizational processes to strengthen research and be able to be at the forefront of a society based on information and knowledge. It is necessary to have adequate mechanisms towards the construction of new knowledge, channeling their research into its creation.