AN ENGAGED UNIVERSITY: RESCUING SMES DURING THE COVID-19 CRISIS

The economic effects of isolation policies resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic have led small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to look for alternatives to survive. Within this crisis scenario, an engaged university has an important role to play in a regional context in addressing not only health issues, but also any resultant social and economic problems. An engaged university needs to take actions that go beyond its traditional missions of education and research - it has to deliver knowledge to society. This paper analyzes a university-community project in Brazil to identify the necessary elements that help promote a regionally-engaged university: the SOS-PME Advisory Network project, which was originally designed to assist SMEs during the crisis. As a result, we identified elements necessary for promoting the university’s third mission - social engagement by way of a university-community project: an engaged team, multidisciplinarity, project management, agility, alliances, a communication strategy, institutio- nal support, and reputation.


INTRODUCTION
Countries are implementing different degrees of lockdown and social distancing rules (World Health Organization [WHO], 2020).
The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic have moved outside the border of health issues and created an economic crisis without precedent. Since any suspension of economic activities reflects on the gross domestic product (GDP) and employment rates, it is concerning that at least 600,000 micro and small enterprises have closed down their business due to this pandemic, while revenues have decreased in almost 88% of all businesses in Brazil (Serviço Brasileiro de Apoio às Micro e Pequenas Empresas [Sebrae], 2020). In 2018, these companies accounted for 54% of all formal jobs and 27% of the country's GDP (Sebrae, 2018), which increases the potential negative impact on the Brazilian economy by even more.
According to the Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística (IBGE, 2020), by June 2020 70% of the companies operating in Brazil had reported negative impacts on their activities due to the pandemic -reductions in sales, production and services, and problems with keeping supply chains stocked and access to them open, although 13.6% of these companies reported positive effects. In August-2020, 40% of all construction companies and 39.7% of all retail businesses were suffering severe negative effects (IBGE, 2020).
In this scenario, universities that have a recognized trajectory of civic engagement, such as the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), have had a major role to play in developing projects for addressing not only health issues, but also social and economic problems. The SOS-PME Business Advisory Network was developed within this context, to provide small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that have been economically damaged by the COVID-19 crisis with viable solutions for facing up to it. But what is the role of universities in the face of this crisis?
How can universities contribute to society in order to overcome the negative economic impacts triggered by this pandemic crisis? How can universities mobilize to help businesses that are threatened by the crisis?
Entrepreneurial universities comprise a variety of academic traditions, decision-making levels, research values, and suborganization cultures that form a complex system that tries to become an important agent in society for economic growth and social change (Klofsten et al., 2019). The regionally-engaged university model relates to the task universities have of transferring knowledge to small and medium-sized local enterprises (Uyarra, 2010). In this theoretical approach, however, a gap remains with regard to the role of regionally-engaged universities (Perkmann et al., 2013) in a crisis setting. The literature dealing with the civic engagement of higher education does not have the visibility and recognition that its results deserve, and it has been dominated by experiences from North America and Europe (Watson, Hollister, Stroud, & Babcock, 2011). Thus, this paper aims to analyze those elements that are mobilized within a project for supporting SMEs during the COVID-19 crisis and that help promote a regionallyengaged university within the Brazilian context.
In order to do so we conducted a case study of the UFRGS SOS-PME Advisory Network. This project, which was initially developed in the Management School, has quickly gained supporters from different departments in UFRGS and from other community participants. The main objective of the project is to help small and medium-sized local businesses co-create solutions for overcoming the economic crisis. To do so the Network offers a consultation process involving researchers and students from the university and community volunteers, thus promoting an exchange of knowledge between UFRGS and the community.
Universities have been entrusted with multiple missions (Sánchez-Barrioluengo & Benneworth, 2019). Besides their two main missions of education and research, they must translate this research into technological development, inspire change in social and government practices (Wadhwani, Galvez-Behar, Mercelis, & Guagnini, 2017), and engage in knowledge exchange activities, all of which will ultimately drive regional development (Perkmann et al., 2013;Sánchez-Barrioluengo & Benneworth, 2019). It is important to point out that knowledge exchange may be both direct and unidirectional by way of technology licensing, or less direct and bi-directional, involving partnerships with local businesses by way of consultancy and conversation (Breznitz & Feldman, 2012). As the theoretical and management contributions of the research we identified those elements of a regionally-engaged university that were strengthened by way of a university-community project. These elements can help develop university projects that involve the third mission of UFRGS and other regionally-engaged universities.
To understand SOS-PME as being a project, in this paper we assume the definition of a project to be "a temporary organization to which resources are assigned to do work to bring about beneficial change" (Turner, 2006, p. 1). Thus, we used elements such as project organization, project management, outputs (direct results), and outcomes (benefits) to organize the presentation of the project. For the discussion, we used the theoretical elements of regionally-engaged universities as our analysis guidelines.
In the next section we present a literature review of entrepreneurial universities, more specifically of regionallyengaged universities and their theoretical elements. The third section describes the methodological procedures we adopted in the research. We then explore the study results and present our discussion. Final considerations consider the main contributions and the research limitations.

A REGIONALLY-ENGAGED UNIVERSITY
Universities are evolving towards a more entrepreneurial model and no longer focus exclusively on education and research (Etzkowitz, 2004;Lazzeroni & Piccaluga, 2003). They can serve as a driving force for economic growth and prosperity (Guerrero, Urbano, Fayolle, Klofsten, & Mian, 2016), and during a crisis scenario, for the survival of the local economy. The role of an entrepreneurial university goes beyond merely generating knowledge products. Universities have a leading role to play in creating entrepreneurial thinking and actions, and developing entrepreneurship capital (Audretsch, 2014). Despite the discourse claiming that universities are 'ivory towers' and have no regard for the public good, many academics are motivated by their deep desire to make a difference by helping society (Renwick, Selkrig, Manathunga, & Keamy, 2020).
Taking a broader view, an entrepreneurial university empowers the whole of its community to commit to developing a mindset for generating knowledge, and of creativity, and innovation in times of uncertainty. Such universities assume the mission of solving complex problems and creating opportunities as a means of adding value to society and contributing to sustainable development, both locally and internationally (Listo, 2019).
To place the entrepreneurial transactions of the university in the context of organizational structure and the wider innovation system, we present three university models based on a set of typical third mission outputs, following Perkmann et al. (2013), Cohen, Nelson, and Walsh (2002), and Sánchez-Barrioluengo & Benneworth (2019): (i) the entrepreneurial university, which focuses on commercialization activities, such as patents, licenses, and spin-offs, is considered one of the best ways of measuring the market's acceptance of academic products; (ii) considering its knowledge transfer potential, the engaged university that is involved with 'soft activities', like collaborative research, contract research or consulting, is more valued than if it registers university patents for many enterprises; and (iii) the regionally-engaged university that emphasizes engagement via soft activities for improving local absorption capacity and increasing the knowledge of its regional environment.
According to Cherrington, Scheckle, and Khau (2019), the key concepts for supporting the engagement of the university community itself and the community the university serves are: dialogical engagement, community, and active citizenship. To create such engagement requires a sense of community and cohesion, which is supported by collaboration, trust, and open communication. It involves constant dialogue and reflection, besides intentionality and the commitment of all stakeholders to collaborate.
Among the elements that mobilize and shape the engagement of the universities' civic and social responsibility, as identified by Watson et al. (2011), are the extent of the community's unmet needs; the commitment of institutional leaders to raising university engagement; government policies that promote or require student service and engagement programs; the university's reputation; challenging financial constraints; greater incentives for research and teaching in the traditional academic system as an obstacle; and dependence on student expectations and leadership (this might be important experience, and relevant to their employment prospects, or it might be an activity that competes with their academic studies).
Putting the engagement role into practice might orient universities towards knowledge transfer outcomes, or more general contributions to regional economic development activities (Sánchez-Barrioluengo & Benneworth, 2019). When universities interact regionally they promote local innovation and economic development (Klofsten et al., 2019). This is true under normal circumstances, and crucial when there is a crisis. When economic prosperity is not possible, the regionally- Knowledge as a result • increasing the knowledge of its environment; • contributions are "knowledge spillovers"; • knowledge transfer outcomes or more general contributions to regional economic development activities.

METHODOLOGICAL PROCEDURES
We carried out a case study of the UFRGS SOS-PME Advisory Network project to obtain a deeper understanding of this particular phenomenon (Yin, 2003) and the dynamics present in this particular setting (Eisenhardt & Martin, 2000). UFRGS is a nationally and internationally recognized education institution, which is ranked among the best universities in Brazil (UFRGS, and e) 42 assessment forms completed by volunteers regarding their satisfaction with the advisory process and their perception of the positive and negative aspects of the project. The data from these documents were consulted to describe the agents involved in the project and to identify, among other aspects, elements of their process of engagement, the aim being to identify via content analysis those representative elements of the project that promote an engaged university (Bardin, 1977).
Finally, by way of participant observation (DeWalt & DeWalt, 2002), and using the theoretical elements of a regionallyengaged university we were able to analyze the project's relevant aspects for achieving the research objectives, such as the project's organization and management process, including the communication strategies that were used throughout the advisory process and with different actors. Each of the project coordinators shared their observations in a weekly online meeting. These project coordinators observed the dynamics of the teams and the results achieved during the weekly online meetings and project management boards, and the elements that were observed were registered in the meeting minutes. These documents were used as the basis for much of the project's qualitative analysis. Exhibit 2 summarizes the sources and data analysis strategy, arranged by research objective.
Exhibit 2. Sources and data analysis To conduct this analysis, we used descriptive statistics for analyzing the data collected via forms in order to describe the business profiles, the impacts the companies faced as a result of the pandemic, and to map out their needs. We also used content analysis (Bardin, 1977) of the final reports that were prepared for each business and present the results that emerged from the analysis of all these organized data. As we said before, the SOS-PME is a project, and the Results Section describes its organization, management, outcomes and outputs, while discussion of the results is based on the theoretical elements of a regionally-engaged university.

RESULTS
Brazil was facing different degrees of social isolation when, on March 16, 2020, UFRGS suspended all non-essential on-campus activities, including teaching. In this scenario, and believing that universities have a major role to play in addressing social and economic problems, at the end of March the SOS-PME UFRGS project was launched. One of the key drivers for engaging a university's civic and social responsibility is the severity of the community's needs (Watson et al., 2011). The critical situation of SMEs sensitized a group of academics who mobilized to create this project. Originally designed by a group of scholars from the Management School, it quickly brought on board the UFRGS Scientific and Technological Park, scholars from other units, and even other universities. Business owners and volunteers were invited to register to take part in the project.
The company problems initially addressed were: finance and accounting, strategic and operations management, marketing, human resources, and information technology.

SOS-PME project organization
The project was organized into service teams, each led by a coordinator, usually a member of the university (a professor or one of the administrative staff), or an alumnus who is recognized as a researcher or an acting senior entrepreneur, and at least three further volunteers. The team members were chosen by the coordinator to guarantee multidisciplinary and complementary coverage of the expertise needed for the business chosen for help. Most of the team members were graduate students who considered it to be a valuable learning experience, besides making a relevant social and economic contribution to society.
It corroborates the importance of students' positive expectations when they engage in university-community projects (Watson et al., 2011), but also highlights the leadership role of scholars when they head them up.
The teams were involved in the process of assisting entrepreneurs and could count on specific help from special task forces. It is important to highlight that the internal organization of the team meetings did not consider hierarchies when helping

SOS-PME outcomes
A common weakness of several of the business owners was their inability to react at the beginning of the pandemic. The sudden need to close physical stores, the global need for digital transformation, and the prospect of reduced revenue have emotionally destabilized many business owners. They were unable to consider possible alternatives and act on the changes required. Listening to community problems and mobilizing volunteers with different expertise, the SOS-PME teams were important for indicating alternatives and bringing positive perspectives to business owners as knowledge was exchanged in co-creation activities involving university staff (researchers, students, and administrative staff) and society (volunteers and businesses owners). Figure 4 shows the characteristics of the businesses and the situation they were in when they applied to the project. The main problems they reported were systemic vision and strategy, finance, and marketing (70%). These problems, however, were not necessarily confirmed during the meetings. A shortage of cash as a result of the pandemic, for example, pointed to finance as a requirement, when the real need was actually related to other areas, such as marketing, sales, strategy, or operations.
Most business owners said that the state their companies were in was either an emergency (32.9%), or urgent (47.1%). The impact of reduced revenue was reported by 76.1% of the businesses, with 52.9% of them indicating a reduction in revenue of more than 50%, while more than half intended to close or greatly reduce their operations. Poor management controls and a lack of tools were also identified. Some businesses were already facing financial difficulties that had been aggravated by the sharp drop in revenue caused by the pandemic, and few enterprises had savings to face up to unexpected events, like the current crisis.
The main business sectors helped were services, food processing, retail and trade, and distribution. With regard to the age of the companies and the number of employees, they have been operating, on average, for 11 years, and have 5 employees, excluding outliers. The situation reported by the entrepreneurs, sensitized the project staff, thereby ensuring a sense of urgency, greater involvement, and speed of delivery.
After the advisory process, the main problems found were: a reduction in revenue; adaptation of the business operation; keeping a financial balance; retaining employees; and obtaining loans. As a result of the advisory process, the teams provided the business with possible solutions and alternatives, with recommendations as to the short and medium-term efforts needed to increase revenue and reduce expenses (Exhibit 3). The scientific knowledge and previous reputation of the university, combined with the knowledge acquired from analyzing the data and helping the businesses, provided the researchers and volunteers involved in the project with practical knowledge of the real impact of the pandemic on local businesses. This led to the project and the university being recognized in the community, as a reflection of which team members were invited to participate in interviews for 15 local and regional newspaper articles, and take part in TV and radio interviews over a period of 6 months.
The volunteers expressed their satisfaction with the project, as the following report testifies: "Participating in the SOS-PME project has been very gratifying. I learned a lot from the situations and experiences of the business owners and I had the opportunity to apply my knowledge to solve the real problems of these people and their businesses".
Business owners also expressed their satisfaction with the project. Common quotes from them were similar to the following: "Listening to the opinions, understanding the problems and getting ideas from the advisory group was all very valuable and contributed to solutions emerging for overcoming the crisis and surviving it". Overall, the feedback from all the participants has been extremely positive and of great gratitude.

Figure 4. Businesses situation
Exhibit 3. Main recommendations Efforts to increase revenue Efforts to reduce expenses • Adapt sales/services/communication to digital media; • Product delivery; • Sales promotions/customized sales; • Offers of new products/services; • Market expansion through digital platforms (courses, e-commerce, social networks); • Expansion of business partnerships; • Communication efforts: * Strengthening communication in digital media/social networks; * Generating content to strengthen relationships with customers; * Positioning/repositioning of the business/brand.
• Cash flow management; • Tax management; • Inventory management; • Operational/business process improvements; • Negotiation with suppliers/customers; • Implementation of control tools; • Use and implementation of management tools; • Managing and retaining employees; • Control/reduce cash withdrawals from members; • Reduced product offer (focus); • Strategic pricing of products/services.

SOS-PME outputs
In this section we describe the direct outputs of the project. Over and above the companies that have been helped, two new project propositions have emerged and a new service has been started. In addition to the assistance that was provided, in order to guarantee that there was an exchange of knowledge between researchers, volunteers, and business owners, Instagram lives were held on topics that were relevant to the main needs that had been identified.
These videos, which were viewed more than 2500 times, were open to the community, with invitations being specifically sent to all entrepreneurs and volunteers registered with the project.
Because of doubts about layoffs involving the businesses that were helped, as well as numerous questions about whether the careers of these entrepreneurs would continue, a new project was developed for helping the unemployed, or those seeking a new direction in their careers. The project entitled SOS Carreiras brings together researchers and volunteers from the people management research area, and since June 2020 has been providing 63 people with career guidance and introducing them to entrepreneurship as a possible new career.
With the resumption of teaching activities at the university, we saw the opportunity to combine the advisory services for business owners with the learning activities on undergraduate courses. In this sense, service learning, active teaching, and learning methodology have emerged as an opportunity for community development using the project experience as an instructional strategy to meet learning goals (Jacoby, 1996). A pilot service was created within the scope of the UFRGS Center for Studies and Research in Business, with nine undergraduate courses from the two main state universities becoming affiliated; together they will assist more than 40 entrepreneurs.
Another important project derived from SOS-PME is the Mentoring Network, which aims to construct a network to bring

DISCUSSION
By analyzing the SOS-PME project, it was possible to identify features that were considered essential for its performance. These features were arranged in categories as shown in Figure 5, which is explained below.
Initially, we can understand how important knowledge exchange is. We see it as a mainstream action that is the basis of the SOS-PME project initiative. It is found in planning actions for making the project operational and in the results.
The first element that was mobilized during the project was engaging leaders and volunteers from the university community, including faculty members, undergraduates, graduates and former students, thereby promoting interactions between stakeholders, like knowledge producers and users (Cooke et al., 2004). The second element is multidisciplinary knowledge. As the volunteers have different backgrounds, task forces in specific topics were created, which enabled different knowledge to be exchanged (Olmos-Peñuela et al., 2013;Trippl et al., 2015;Wang et al., 2016) with local SMEs (Uyarra, 2010). This was important for mobilizing the different areas of knowledge. The multidisciplinary nature of the project favored the establishment of internal and external alliances that offered a variety of services in accordance with the necessities of the businesses, and created local networks among stakeholders (Cooke et al., 2004). Figure 5. Elements mobilized for the SOS-PME project that promotes a regionally-engaged university Klofsten et al. (2019) state that regionally-engaged universities must be capable of promoting local innovation and this can be noticed when we consider two of the identified elements. One is the importance of agile project management.
Because of the context of the pandemic, the project coordinators used free online tools for managing it virtually and for interactions between companies and volunteers. The other element, which was inspired by agile methodologies, used short interactions to achieve practical outcomes by way of a standard and fast advisory process to ensure quick responses, as a strategy for increasing volunteer engagement and for delivering results to business owners in urgent and emergency situations.
A strong communication strategy is very important for guaranteeing regional engagement and social recognition.
SOS-PME's communication, which used social networks and the general media, added value to the project and the local community, attracted participants, and facilitated access to knowledge-based resources (Ponds et al., 2010). A sense of urgency was also essential for guaranteeing engagement. Knowledge spillover occurred during the interaction with the general community, as pointed out by Benneworth & Charles (2005) and Drucker & Goldstein (2007). Instagram lives, the SOS Carreiras project, and the Mentoring Network project were means of spreading the knowledge that was exchanged when helping the entrepreneurs.
Finally, institutional support and reputation were essential for including society and guaranteeing the seriousness of the project to all participants, whether business owners, volunteers, or other partners.
Using the theoretical elements determined by the literature review, we were able to relate them to the elements we found when categorizing the features of the project. The final result was that we proposed the formation of a close relationship between the theoretical element of a regionally-engaged university and the elements of initiative of the SOS-PME project. Exhibit 4 shows this.
Exhibit 4. Relationship between the theoretical elements of a regionally-engaged university and SOS-PME initiative elements

FINAL CONSIDERATIONS
The conclusion we draw is that an engaged university needs to take actions over and above its traditional missions of education and research; it needs to take the knowledge it has developed within its boundaries to society. In times of crisis, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, this positioning is even more critical.
Starting from these assumptions and using the SOS-PME Advisory Network/UFRGS case, we identified key elements for promoting regionally-engaged universities.
From the theory we used it was possible to determine six theoretical elements of a regionally-engaged university: engagement, collaboration, value-added results, institutional reputation and support, knowledge as a process, and knowledge as a result. We found eight elements of the SOS-PME Project for promoting a regionally-engaged university that relate to these categories: engaged leaders and volunteers, a strong communication strategy, internal and external alliances, practical deliverables, institutional reputation and support, multidisciplinary knowledge, agile project management and knowledge spillover.
The university's interactions with society strengthen its mission. The relationships established by way of the SOS-PME Project enabled knowledge to be collectively constructed. This result represents a very important signal for the advancement of UFRGS's engagement in the region. It also reinforces the role of universities, particularly knowledge-based activities, in the regional economic progress, improving their local absorption capacity and the knowledge of its regional environment, creating knowledge spillovers (Benneworth & Charles, 2005;Drucker & Goldstein, 2007)