Editorial

Alexander Cotte Poveda1

Director CIFE Journal

University of Santo Tomás

The relationship between university, business and the State

Management and business growth examine the course, prosperity and progress of business activities and the business community in economic, social, cultural, financial and institutional aspects. Likewise, it continually studies the connection between State, business and university; investigates how the government, its national policies and local governments influence the technological renewal and innovation of firms and incorporate methodologies and approaches to include the academy and improve the competitiveness of the firms in a globalized environment. The institutional corporate management is, then, the technical way of directing the different processes of organization, implementation, assessment and planning of a firm, which can be interpreted as a requirement within the competitiveness of the industry, particularly in the firms that want to venture into new markets.

The university given its academic and research condition and as generator of new ideas has a work and a task associated with its social commitment, which it must apply in benefit of society and its surroundings. From this perspective, the university is a reform agent because of its capacity to promote, produce, generate new knowledge and disseminate knowledge in accordance with its multidisciplinary orientation, both in its research and extension functions, by integrating its efforts around problems and solutions for businesses. Research, as a pillar of the university, is then closely related to its mission; it is in this respect that the theoretical and practical justification of business management and development emerges in the public domain, its relationship with the quality of education and its various interrelationships.

The industrial economy studies the reciprocal relationship of firms within competitive markets. It is an approximation with a theoretical approach from the applied microeconomics and its most diverse instruments that should not only include as a source of study the maximization of profits per se, but a central element for the analysis must include the public, since the maximization of profit is not the main postulate, but, on the contrary, the maximization of wellbeing plays a predominant role among the premises of the general public administration.

The previous ideas allow us to reflect in this recent publication of the journal Revista CIFE: Lecturas de Economía Social on several of the subjects previously presented. In this new version of the journal, we present a sample of the research results that allow us to review the condition of education as a public good and its relationship with the economy, the correspondence of the business, the State, the labor market and different social networks that are result from their different interactions.

The article entitled “Current Trends of higher education in Colombia” by researchers John Jairo Gómez, Henry Laverde Rojas and Álvaro Díaz Niño analyzes the current state of trends of education in economics. From a more general perspective, the article by Alejandra María Linares entitled “Trends of higher education in Argentina, Chile and Mexico” shows the relevant characteristics of the educational systems that govern the new structures of higher education in these countries and their implemented models.

From the perspective of the industry economy, two researches are presented that focus on examining the processes of deindustrialization that occurred in Colombia in the near past and the behavior of companies in the tourism sector from a local development approach. In order to address the first topic, the work of researchers Juan Carlos Buendía Pastrana, Roberto Carlos Osorio Mass, Jaime Eliécer Rangel Bolaños and Margarita Rosa Miranda Villera, under the title “Deindustrialization in Colombia since the economic opening”, shows recent evidence on this process; on the other hand, in the article “Strengthening process for companies in the tourism sector - restaurants - in the municipality of Restrepo (Meta)”, authors Kelly Johana Vargas Betancur, Yesica Lorena Hernández Castillo and Alejandro Quiñónez Mosquera carry out a regional sectorial approach to the subject of tourism industry and its implications for local development.

This recent edition is concluded with two research papers. The first has as general purpose the theoretical analysis of innovation and its application in the dairy industry; the research is entitled “A theoretical approach to innovation. Sources and barriers in the dairy sector”, authored by researchers Carlos Augusto Rincón Díaz and Rubén Darío Díaz Mateus, who show the importance of forming productive conglomerates less sensitive to technological competition. The second research paper published in this edition is entitled “The effectiveness of labor reforms on the unemployment rate. An analysis of the context of Mexico and Colombia for the period 2002-2012”, by researcher Angie Lorena Pradilla Chaparro, which shows how unemployment is one of the fundamental variables that affects productivity and growth in countries.

We hope this new delivery will be an expression of the plurality of CIFE Journal, both in the topics presented and in the methodological approaches implemented in each of the published papers.

1 Editor of the journal Revista CIFE: Lecturas de Economía Social, of the University of Santo Tomás, Faculty of Economics. Mailing address: Facultad de Economía, Universidad Santo Tomás, carrera 9 n.o 51-11, piso 3, Bogotá, Colombia. Emails: [email protected] and [email protected]