The ecosystem of constraints: faculty collaboration in resource-constrained higher education

This qualitative multiple-case study investigates factors constraining faculty collaboration in Ethiopia’s resource-constrained, politically sensitive public higher education. Through in-depth interviews, focus groups, and policy analysis across two universities, the research reveals a profound value-action gap. While collaboration is widely valued intellectually, its practice is hindered by a cascading system of constraints, such as de-professionalising economic precarity, demotivating national policies, and a socio-political climate of fear and ethnic fragmentation that erodes trust. Institutionally, scarce funding and punitive bureaucracy render supportive policies merely symbolic. These macro-forces fuel opportunistic behaviors and erode relational equity within teams. The study theorizes this configuration as a crisis of symbolic organizational learning and a failure to convert latent bonding capital into professional academic capital. I argue that conventional institutional levers are futile without first addressing foundational issues of economic dignity and political security. The findings contribute a contextualized model of constraint, highlighting how universal barriers are intensified and reconfigured within specific socio-political ecologies, offering critical insights for policymakers in similar resource-constrained environments.