Abstract

Universities of technology in South Africa have transitioned from being vocational and professional education–based institutions to fully fledged universities in the last sixteen years. Despite this systemic change, it remains unclear whether researchers and academics at one university of technology have sufficiently transformed their research ethos and repertoires to effectively cope with the research and technology innovation demands of a research-oriented university. The researchers wondered about the extent to which this university’s academics and researchers, who traditionally have been accustomed to training graduates for work placement, have fully embraced a culture of research and innovation. Drawing on inputs from eight academics who exhibited resistance to research productivity, by overemphasizing teaching while downplaying their research responsibilities, this article explores the motivations for such counterproductive behavior, to make inferences about existing barriers to research productivity at the university. Weak connectivity, unsophisticated laboratory software, limited subscriptions to leading databases, heavy teaching loads, and bureaucratic constraints and retirement policies were found to be among the technological, organizational, and environmental constraints that undermined research participation and generated resistance to research and innovation.