THE IMPORTANCE OF RELATIONAL COORDINATION TO IMPROVE UNIVERSITY RESULTS: THE CASE OF THE STATE BOLIVAR UNIVERSITY

The State Bolivar University in Equator is inmersed in a process of improving the teaching and learning organizational routines and the research results.

For this objective, the University has developed a project to diagnose the situation of start and define strategies in order to improve its results in teaching, learning and research processes in comparison with National and International Standards.

The project consists of applying the relational coordination model to different profiles at the University: lecturers, students and administrative staff,to proof if higher degrees of relational coordination explain better academic results according to the required national standards.

The relational coordination model analyses the efficiency in human relationships and communication ties amongst different professional profiles working in teams. As far as all of them share the same objective, develop mutual respect and apply proper mechanisms for making tacit knowledge turned into explicit, from the relational ties, and communication is provided frequently, on time and oriented to solve problems from the communication ties, organizations reach better results.

We have applied the relational coordination model to a representative sample of lecturers, students and administrative staff to the Bolivar State University at Equator and in this paper the results are presented.

Results of the application of the relational coordination model in other contexts in the same country and in other countries have been presented in previous editions of the INTED Conference. In this paper we just focus in the case of the State Bolivar University.

The results of this analysis and previous ones can help Universities to promote organizational routines that best fit their teaching, learning and research objectives.