Digitalisation as a competitive advantage: how universities use digital change

Universities and academic departments use the visibility and relevance of the topic of digitalisation to raise their profile, establish new degree programmes and fields of research as well as to present themselves as trailblazers. This is the key finding of an NRP 77 research project led by Katja Rost (University of Zurich). The research team investigated which strategies universities and departments in Switzerland use because they recognise opportunities and chances to gain a competitive edge.

The most important findings

Swiss universities are in competition with one another – for financial resources, personnel, attention, authority, reputation and legitimacy. Many players are using the digital transformation to get ahead in the competition for resources and to raise their profile. The research team from the Department of Sociology at the University of Zurich has used the digital transformation to show that universities and academic departments have a high capacity for adaptation and innovation.

Digitalisation is also particularly interesting because it affects almost all disciplines and is changing not only scientific methods, but also the work at universities themselves. The project has highlighted the dimensions of digital change at universities: In terms of content, digitalisation is triggering the development of new research fields, topics, disciplines and degree programmes. Administratively, the expansion of infrastructures for research and teaching as well as the further development of teaching formats and methods play a role. The digitalisation of academic work – from data collection and analysis to publication – is also shaping the transformation.

Significance for policy and practice

The results provide new insights into how competitive mechanisms promote innovation and adaptability as well as and the resulting opportunities and risks for the future development of the Swiss higher education system. The project thus made an important contribution to research on higher education and science in Switzerland by making it possible to observe change processes in a targeted manner.

Three main messages

1. The autonomous universities in Switzerland show a high level of initiative and responsiveness when it comes to taking up a topic that is considered relevant for the future in the public discourse. One important explanation for this is that even formally autonomous universities depend on material and immaterial resources, namely reputation, attention, financial support from their sponsors and, very importantly, justification (legitimation) for their virtually complete public funding. Universities and their semi-autonomous units, right down to the individual scientists, are all looking for opportunities to improve their relative position in securing resources compared to others. This often takes on the characteristics of competition; however, depending on the actor and level, we are dealing with very different competitive spaces. In all these spaces, it is important for an observer to distinguish between two dimensions: how institutions talk about the topic of digitalisation in their communications at the one hand, and the scientific, scholarly, and content-related appropriation of the topic in research, teaching, and continuing education on the other. The universities are very active and creative when it comes to getting themselves involved as relevant players or using a current topic for their own interests and purposes. This suggests, at least to some extent, as an indication that the governance and financing system that have been built up and developed through the reforms since the 1990s is having a positive effect.
2. There is a competition in the Swiss university system and it affects the willingness and activity to take up new topics, thereby opening up new opportunities for universities to pursue their own interests. It is quite obvious that university administrations, researchers and research groups, as well as departments and disciplinary communities, are in competition for material and immaterial resources. At all levels, actors try to gain relative advantages in a competition for financial resources, personnel, career positions, attention, interpretive power, reputation, relevance and legitimacy. The topic of «digitalisation» has shown that there is a multi-layered competition – or rather, that many actors are using this topic to gain an advantage in the competition for resources and to make themselves look good. Two conclusions can be drawn from this: First, more broadly, “digitalisation” can be understood as an example to study and understand the adaptability and innovative capacity of universities and their members in the face of new issues, partly driven by competition. From this perspective, «digitalisation» can be used as a case to monitor the competitiveness and strategies of universities and researchers. In this context, «digitalisation» is an interesting example because it is a challenge for almost all disciplines, as it also changes the scientific methods and work itself. Second, from a narrower and more content-specific perspective, the framework of competition can help to interpret and explain the observable activities in the area of digitalisation at and by universities.
3. This project helped clarify the dimensions in which digitalisation at and by universities can be observed and examined. “Digitalisation” is a very general term for a highly diverse and multifaceted process. As far as the field of Swiss higher education is concerned, the research team empirically examined some selected dimensions of this change, focusing on those that are driven by active, interest-based action, whether it is more of a bottom-up or a top-down logic. The levels and dimensions include the content level, which is reflected in new research areas, new research topics, new disciplines, and also new study programmes. Then, there is the administrative level, the question of infrastructures for research and teaching as well as the didactic dimension of teaching formats and forms. And there is the aspect of the digitalisation of the scientific work itself, its publication and evaluation. Added to this are the external effects of research and teaching activities of universities.

Find out more about the methodology used by the researchers and further background information on the NRP 77 project website:

You will find further research projects on the topic of digital transformation conducted as part of the National Research Programme NRP 77 here: