The developing knowledge economy affects organizations within the innovation system where higher education institutions (HEI) are regarded as a significant part. There is a large amount of research that focus on different aspects of collaboration such as the outcome, the process and its infrastructure. To emphasize HEIs role in the national and regional innovation systems concepts such as Mode 2 and Triple helix, and the Knowledge triangle, have developed. These concepts have also heavily influenced Swedish innovation policy.   This thesis is set to analyze collaboration work between Swedish HEIs and the public and private sectors, and to understand how collaboration: i) occurs in practice in research and undergraduate education; ii) is influenced by policy efforts, and; iii) influence HEI’s internal and external social capital building. Firstly, research and teaching links is analyzed to highlight the integration of collaboration, research and education within specific research profiles. This is because previous research has neglected collaboration and its effect on undergraduate education. Secondly, social capital theory is used as a framework for the analysis. Social capital theory is used to obtain a thorough understanding of individual researchers’ attitude to collaboration and participation in collaboration activities.   The results indicate that short term projects had long-term effects since it established new education programs and projects. Collaboration also effects undergraduate education through research profiles with their integration of research and education in groups within as well as outside the HEI. The results also show that social capital building through top steered initiatives is complex. In the HEIs there was no relation between researchers expressing a positive attitude towards different forms of collaboration and a high participation level in collaboration activities. This suggests that building of external social capital within HEIs is not related to the nature of the internal social capital. There was interfaculty differences in both the researchers’ attitude to collaboration activities and participation in collaboration activities. As expected, professors had more opportunities and ability for collaboration. They also indicated a resistance to use a central infrastructure for collaboration to build external social capital. The opposite was demonstrated for professors from the humanities who had little experience of collaboration. They still did not to use the infrastructure to a large extent. Suggestively policy makers should encourage a more efficient external social capital building through earmarked funding for collaboration on a department level rather than on the HEIs’ central level.

A shift has occurred in the traditional type of centralised government control to a more multilevel type of governing referred to as governance. The change from government to governance can be illustrated with an emphasis on networks and social capital enhancement. In higher education this is enveloped through a larger emphasis on institutionalisation of collaboration between the higher education institutions (HEI) and the surrounding environment. In lieu of large block grants come financial incentives through semi-governmental agencies embracing collaboration projects between industry and HEI as well as municipalities.` This licentiate thesis objective is to study the collaboration task’s practical implication on undergraduate education in terms of social capital enhancement and research and teaching links. This is reported in two articles that elaborate on social capital establishment through a policy program and whether policy programs focusing on research collaborations also have an effect on undergraduate education by improving research and teaching links. In general, the findings of this thesis indicate that semi-governmental policy programs have a positive effect on establishing new social capital between regional HEI, industry and municipalities, and that semi-governmentally financed research profiles also have a positive effect on undergraduate education by introducing a link to research outside and within the HEI. / QC 20110117