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Academic entrepreneurship and the research productivity in Poland
Abstract
Is it possible to reconcile academic entrepreneurship with the internationalisation of scientists’ productivity? We provide an answer to this question through the statistical analysis of a representative survey of 811 scientists in Poland. Based on Robert K. Merton’s distinction between two types of scholars: local (oriented towards the national science system) and cosmopolitan (aiming at international achievements), we found that research productivity positively influences academic entrepreneurship, but that scientists who are productive locally engage in academic entrepreneurship more often than the cosmopolitan ones. This suggests that the internationalisation of one’s scientific activity, at least in countries transitioning from a local to a cosmopolitan mode of research, is an absorbing endeavour that only the most productive researchers can reconcile with academic entrepreneurship. Such countries should balance their policies regarding the career development of their scientists also to include the promotion of science-business cooperation and not just the internationalisation of research.
... In this case, the agent might rely on informal entrepreneurship through bypassing to act opportunistically, while the principal will try to align its agents through monitoring and incentive systems. Agency theory has been mobilized predominantly to explain the relationship between the academic entrepreneur and the TTO in the upper organizational echelon of institutional governance (Bojko et al., 2021;Parente et al., 2011). For example, both Markman et al. (2008) and Gianodis et al. (2016) concede that while bypassing is the result of the scientist's individual-level decision making, they examined the phenomenon at the organizational level. ...
... Interviewees could inadvertently reshape their narratives to present themselves more favorably thereby affecting data authenticity. However, self-reported data are relevant for understanding the nuances of academic entrepreneurship (Bojko et al., 2021) and have been used in other studies to explore the behaviors and opinions of academic entrepreneurs (Romero Sanchez et al., 2023). We employed additional strategies to mitigate bias (such as non-suggestive questioning and no pre-access to the interview guide) and found that entrepreneurs willingly shared even potentially unfavorable aspects of their journey (notably regarding flouting of institutional rules). ...
This article investigates the underexplored phenomenon of technology transfer office (TTO) bypassing in academic entrepreneurship. While TTOs are established to centralize and support intellectual property-based commercialization, a significant portion of entrepreneurial projects avoid the TTO. Relying on both economic (transaction cost theory) and ethical (Tyler's justice model) considerations, this study explores the motivations and contextual factors behind a researcher's decision to commercialize an invention using means other than the TTO. This multiple case study employs an in-depth exploratory qualitative approach to investigate five academic entrepreneurs across different disciplines in Canadian universities who chose to bypass their TTO, often in contravention of institutional policies. Our findings reveal a complex interplay among individual motivations, institutional policies, and market realities. We identified four paths of awareness and strategic intent in this process ranging from unintentional non-compliance to tactical avoidance which challenge a simplistic perception of TTO bypassing as merely unintentional rather than deliberate. The study also reveals four overlapping contexts that promote TTO bypassing: confidence in personal expertise, previous negative experience of using the TTO, peer-influenced skepticism, and external partner challenges. Furthermore, the findings show that the reasons for bypassing include both economic and ethical motivations which steer academic entrepreneurs toward alternative, privately managed commercialization paths. The article concludes with some implications for university managers and policymakers related to how to address the multifaceted motivations for TTO bypassing.
... Although internationalization and academic engagement are key priorities of HEIs' strategies (Bojko et al., 2020), the relationship between the two phenomena remains unclear. Previous literature has primarily focused on the collaboration between HEIs and industry, as well as the commercialization of knowledge and technology. ...
... Krabel and colleagues (2012) argue that promoting a diverse and internationally-oriented institutional environment stimulates creativity and the exchange of competencies, which can lead to innovation generation. Regarding academics' research orientation, Bojko et al. (2020) found that while academics focused on the development of national-oriented research activity tend to engage more with the local innovation system, academics with a stronger orientation towards international research tend to engage more in collaborations within the academic community. ...
Higher Education Institutions are expected to stimulate the innovation system and to contribute to the development of societies in a global perspective. Within this context, there is an increasing focus on internationalization. HEIs are developing institutional mechanisms to support internationalization while academics are expected to carry specific practices that allow them to improve the internationalization of knowledge production. At the same time, they are encouraged to engage with non-academic partners to co-produce and transfer knowledge, contributing, in this way, to economic and social development. Although there is some research on the impact of internationalization on academic entrepreneurship, studies on the effects in other dimensions of academic engagement with society are almost absent. This paper aims to fill this gap by analyzing the relationship between academics’ internationalization practices and perceptions and the development of different types of academic engagement. Our analysis draws on quantitative analysis with data provided by an international survey (APIKS) and explores the Portuguese context. Findings show that the different practices and perspectives on internationalization impact differently on the way scientists engage. While there are positive effects of internationalization of research on engagement, the time academics stay abroad and the high focus on publishing in internationally high-rated journals may negatively affect academics’ orientation towards the local community. This paper contributes to the debate on the role of the internationalization in the context of a knowledge-based society, considering different dimensions and a broad spectrum of knowledge-based engagement activities.
... Apart from funding, lack of government policy, research institutions, and facilities were other important challenges identified. A good government policy is a prerequisite for improving the research environment, which paves way for legal and administrative infrastructure for promoting research (Bojko et al., 2021;Guskov et al., 2018). The government of Nepal endorsed the National Science, Technology and Innovation Policy, in 2019, which provided generic recommendations such as improving research infrastructure and establishing specialized research centres/laboratories (MoEST, 2019). ...
This study aims to understand the perception of academic communities—both stationed in Nepal and abroad— on various aspects of research environment in Nepal and the challenges in carrying out research here. It further seeks to explore the relationship between different levels of research satisfaction, publications, funding and work experience. Here, we present the results of online questionnaire survey of 472 researchers from 47 countries who published research articles and collaborated with Nepal based researchers. A significantly high proportion of researchers stationed in Nepal reported an unfavourable research environment compared to their foreign counterparts. There were, however, no significant differences between the proportion of respondents stationed in Nepal and abroad who had favourable and neutral views on the research environment in Nepal. Researchers who were satisfied and very satisfied with their own performance had a favourable view on Nepal’s research environment. Lack of funding was the most agreed challenge among all researchers whereas “no government policies” received the most support from researchers based in foreign countries, and “no research culture”, “research facilities” obtained more responses from Nepal based researchers. With the exception of very dissatisfied ones, the number of publications, years in research experience and total funding (median) increased gradually from ‘not satisfied” to ‘very satisfied’ in both Nepal and foreign country-based researchers. Nepal based researchers published significantly fewer journal articles as lead authors compared to their foreign counterparts. They received a high proportion of funding from international grants and often self-funded their research projects. It is crucial to address funding challenges and foster a supportive research culture to enhance the research environment in Nepal.
... Luukkonen et al. 1992;Kwiek 2015). Still, scientific cooperation at the international level is a time-consuming and, to a wide extent, an absorbing endeavour (Bojko et al. 2020). The size and composition of scientific networks also have an impact on scientific productivity as solid and considerable networks award greater benefits (Gaughan et al. 2018) and scientific units that are managed cooperatively may contribute to increasing research productivity (Ramsden 1994). ...
Scientific productivity plays an essential role in the creation of innovation and it stimulates social and economic growth. This study aimed to identify the barriers to and facilitators of scientific productivity in engineering and technology field, as perceived from the perspective of academic managers. Along with quality approach, the study relied on semi-structured interviews with managing bodies, i.e. seven deans and deputy deans from four faculties representing scientific field of engineering and technology. A single case study of Polish technical university was analysed in accordance with Braun and Clark's six-step framework and coded in NVivo software. Findings fell into four themes: scientific publication, recognition, funding research, and collaboration. The results revealed more barriers than facilitators in terms of acceleration of and motivation for research productivity. Most of them related to human, financial, organisational, structural resources, and organizational culture. The novelty of our study lies in the insights into the middle management of universities in the scientific field of engineering and technology in light of the Positive Organisational Scholarship framework.
... The situations in Eastern Europe are very different (Bilić et al. 2017). A recent study found that although research productivity positively influences academic entrepreneurship in Poland, "scientists who are productive locally engage in academic entrepreneurship more often than the cosmopolitan ones" (Bojko et al. 2020). In other words, academics who lead the preferred model of academic career, namely one that engages them on an international level, have less time for entrepreneurial activities (see: D'Este andPatel 2007: 1299). ...
The main aim of this paper is to discuss the findings of qualitative research on academic entrepreneurship among foreign-born scholars in Eastern Europe, a region suffering from a lack of empirical studies on this topic. The academics raised and educated abroad are often perceived as a key nexus in the knowledge transfer and innovative economy in the global academic supercenters, such as the USA, Canada, or Germany. On the contrary, this paper argues that in Eastern Europe, the role of foreign-born academics is very different. Due to structural factors such as a limited number of potential entrepreneurs, the traditional academic entrepreneurship in the form of spin-offs and start-ups is virtually nonexistent. Some academics, however, get involved in academic entrepreneurial activities in the broader sense of this term. Based on 140 individual in-depth interviews and selected success stories, the paper argues that in Poland and Slovakia, special circumstances have created characteristic forms of entrepreneurship (e.g., the “academization” of industrial knowledge). At the same time, the potential remains largely untapped. Institutional barriers to entrepreneurship (lack of special policies pertaining to foreign-born scholars, unfriendly officials, and political climate) are thoroughly discussed in the concluding section.
This paper aims to examine the influence of academic founders on firm innovation performance from the perspective of equity distribution in entrepreneurial teams. Based on the prospectus data of 466 science and technology enterprises that applied for registration on the STAR Market from 2016 to 2020, we use textual analysis to classify founder identities into academic founder, technical founder, and business founder. Our results show that the performance of technical innovation in Sci‐Tech enterprises is optimal for academic founder‐led firms, followed by technical founders, and finally business founders. Ownership structure suppresses the positive direct relationship between the academic founder and innovation performance.
Entrepreneurial activity by academics is a critical component of university technology transfer. However, academics at the professorial level often express concerns that engaging in entrepreneurial activity might harm their research performance due to the perceived diversion of focus from core academic pursuits. To better understand the interplay of professorial entrepreneurial activity and individual scientific performance, we examined a sample of 789 US and European professors with an affinity for entrepreneurship. We found that professors working at highly reputable universities exhibited higher research performance. However, in a striking departure from widespread beliefs, this positive association is significantly amplified by entrepreneurial activity. This finding highlights an interesting dimension of academic entrepreneurship that warrants further exploration.
La investigación es uno de los ejes fundamentales sobre los cuales gira la actividad del docente universitario, en este sentido, el objetivo general de este estudio es determinar la productividad investigativa del Centro de Orientación y Promoción Integral del Núcleo Costa Oriental del Lago de la Universidad del Zulia, variable que se ha estudiado con base en las definiciones de Hurtado (2015). Para alcanzarlo se ha realizado una investigación enmarcada en el enfoque cuantitativo con paradigma positivista, de tipo descriptivo, con diseño de campo, transeccional y univariable, en la que participan cuatro (4) orientadoras que representan la población total de profesionales adscritas a dicho centro, quienes fueron abordadas mediante la técnica de la encuesta, empleando como instrumento el Cuestionario sobre productividad investigativa propuesto por Hurtado (2015). Como resultado de esta exploración, se tiene que la productividad investigativa del centro se centra en actividades de investigación y publicación, entre las que destacan la publicación de artículos de investigación y la participación en eventos científicos en calidad de ponentes, por encima de otras actividades relativas a la docencia y asesoría de investigación a la coordinación y evaluación de investigación. Sobre la base de estos resultados se recomienda estimular la participación de las orientadoras en otras actividades de investigación que son poco frecuentes para ellas, así como la creación de una línea de investigación específica sobre orientación y desarrollo humano que permita sistematizar los proyectos y estudios que estas docentes realizan.
Pierwsza na polskim ryku publikacja, w której autor analizuje funkcjonowanie globalnej nauki, pokazując: skrajne nierówności indywidualnych osiągnięć naukowych i niesprawiedliwy rozkład produkcji wiedzy, silne związki między dochodami naukowców i umiędzynarodowieniem nauki a produktywnością badawczą, rosnące znaczenie międzynarodowych publikacji w krajowych systemach nauki, różnicującą rolę badań w systemach szkolnictwa wyższego oraz rolę różnic między mężczyznami i kobietami naukowcami w różnych wymiarach kariery akademickiej.
Wskazuje również na podstawową rolę dobrze przemyślanych fundamentów reform szkolnictwa wyższego we wspieraniu funkcjonowania polskich naukowców w światowym obiegu idei i innowacji. Pokazuje też, że do absorpcji globalnej wiedzy niezbędni są naukowcy – tylko oni są w stanie produkować globalną wiedzę i zarazem dokonywać jej przekładu na krajowe potrzeby.
Globalizacja nauki stawia w centrum uwagi globalnego naukowca i jego indywidualne wybory zawodowe, takie jak sieci współpracy czy intensywność prowadzonych badań, pracującego na przecięciu nauki globalnej i krajowej. Globalizacja nauki promuje produktywnych uczestników globalnej konwersacji naukowej, funkcjonujących obok tradycyjnych naukowców lokalnych. Ponadto dzisiejsze wzorce publikacyjne silnie stratyfikują naukowców – pewne kanały publikacyjne liczą się radykalnie bardziej w karierze zawodowej naukowca niż inne; a niektóre kanały nie liczą się w niej wcale. Książka posługuje się niezwykle rozbudowanym materiałem empirycznym, poddając szczegółowej analizie dziesiątki tysięcy naukowców i setki tysięcy publikacji.
The purpose of this chapter is to reflect on how the pandemic has shaped entrepreneurial universities, academics and academic entrepreneurship. Against this background, some strategic dilemmas are considered for entrepreneurial universities, namely, first mission delivery and programme configurations, investment and funding, organisational configuration, institutional research priorities, third mission—technology and knowledge transfer—and university community and universities communities: resilience and progression. Considerations of how the pandemic has shaped academic and academic entrepreneurs are also discussed, concerning teaching, research priorities, research impact, technology and knowledge transfer and health and well-being.
Considering intrapreneurship theory, this study aims to examine the extent to which the entrepreneurial orientation of faculty employed at Kuwaiti higher education institutions differ across their individual-level attributes. Faculty entrepreneurial orientation will be assessed at three levels, i.e., innovativeness, risk-taking, and proactivity. For this purpose, we surveyed a sample of 291 faculty from Kuwaiti colleges and universities. The core constructs were operationalized using scales validated in previous studies. The hypothesized relationships were tested using the structural equation modeling method. Our findings indicate that while female faculty are more proactive than men, males are innovative and risk-takers to some extent. Moreover, Ph.D. holders are more proactive and innovative than Master’s degree holders. The relationship between specialization and both innovativeness and risk-taking is significant only for business, but not for engineering. Teaching experience is more positively correlated with faculty proactivity. The number of scientific publications is negatively associated with faculty risk-taking propensity. Additionally, faculty who cumulated significant industry experience are proactive in identifying long-term opportunities and threats for their institutions. Having earned professional certifications is positively related to some aspects of innovativeness and proactivity. Finally, faculty who received their latest degree from a non-accredited institution are more active in realizing ideas at work.
Zgodnie z zasadą homofilii, „podobieństwo rodzi związki”; co za tym idzie, sieci powiązań osobistych są homogeniczne w odniesieniu do wielu cech socjodemograficznych i indywidualnych (takich jak wiek, pochodzenie etniczne, pochodzenie klasowe, poziom zamożności, poziom wykształcenia czy płeć). Ponieważ nauka w coraz większym stopniu opiera się dzisiaj na współpracy, zasada homofilii może wywierać coraz silniejszy wpływ na karierę akademicką. Coraz większe znaczenie ma, z jaką intensywnością współpracujemy w nauce – i z kim współpracujemy. Współpraca w nauce (a dokładniej wzorce współautorstwa ze względu na płeć) stanowi podatny grunt do przetestowania zasady homofilii.
Wzorce współpracy badawczej mężczyzn i kobiet naukowców są konfrontowane w tym artykule za pomocą sześciu zmiennych: wiek biologiczny, stopnie i tytuł naukowy, dyscyplina akademicka, typ współpracy badawczej definiowany przez płeć naukowca, prestiż czasopism i typ instytucji zatrudniającej. Jednostką analizy jest indywidualny naukowiec, a nie pojedynczy artykuł.
Kluczowym krokiem metodologicznym jest określenie tego, co nazwaliśmy „indywidualnym portfelem publikacyjnym” (zdefiniowanym dla dekady 2009-2018) dla każdego polskiego naukowca widocznego na arenie międzynarodowej (N = 25 463 naukowców akademickich) z 85 uczelni, zgrupowanych w 27 dyscyplinach, wraz z ich 164 908 krajowymi i międzynarodowymi współautorami, którzy razem napisali 158 743 artykułów indeksowanych przez bazę Scopus.
Indywidualny portfel publikacyjny odzwierciedla rozkład zdefiniowanych przez płeć typów współpracy naukowej (współpraca między osobami tej samej płci versus współpraca mieszana) dla każdego naukowca. Punktem wyjścia pracy jest założenie, że powstawanie zespołów w środowisku akademickim, rozumiane jako publikowanie ze współautorami w różnej liczbie i o różnej płci, jest dobrowolne: naukowcy współpracują ze sobą wtedy, gdy uważają, że współpraca jest dla nich lepsza niż publikowanie samodzielne. Utworzone zespoły lub opublikowane artykuły mogą odzwierciedlać „indywidualne upodobania i postrzeganie zwrotu z inwestycji we współpracę, a także koszty koordynacji” (Boschini & Sjögren, 2007, s. 327). Analizujemy tutaj wskaźnik homofilii (czyli wskaźnik współpracy z osobami tej samej płci) na poziomie indywidualnym każdego polskiego naukowca i uogólniamy wyniki z poziomu indywidualnego do poziomu polskiego systemu szkolnictwa wyższego.
Emerging economies, as well as Hungary in Europe, are frequently host countries to multinational companies. For both parties it is a great challenge to build relevant knowledge- generating capacities which are attractive in respect of collaboration. In such collaborations those countries on the receiving end of foreign direct investment have the ambition to become more than mere pools of knowledge assets for multinational companies. An insight into Hungarian attempts to achieve this aim under difficult circumstances might be useful for other countries in similar situations. In recent years the majority of Hungarian business research and development expenditure has come from companies wholly-, or majority-owned by foreign interests. This high proportion indicates the significant role of foreign companies in the Hungarian research agenda and in business-university collaboration. This chapter focuses on how foreign companies are shaping business-university collaboration in research and experimental development and touches upon the role of government as facilitator. The subjects of research and development contracts and collaboration depend on the environment and on both potential partners—that is to say, by the types of demand generated by companies, and by how relevant are the competences and capabilities of universities in meeting these demands. Are they moving towards the cutting edge agendas inherent in Industry 4.0 and globalisation? Method of research: analysis of available data; information from websites and interviews with key actors who are partners in collaboration. The chapter also summarizes a few lessons which may be relevant for other economies too.
p class="Abstractheading">Purpose: Universities are an important component of regional innovation systems. There have been a number of studies during recent years in developed countries which analysed activities of universities aiming to increase their contribution in regional innovation. The aim of this article is to explore the evolution of third mission activities of universities in Slovakia and explore the role of public policy in this process.
Methodology/Approach: We used a document analysis of annual reports of all public universities in Slovakia to see which third mission activities universities claim to perform and how the situation has changed over the years. We also compared universities according to their focus and location. Several personal and telephone interviews were conducted to verify or supplement the information.
Findings: We found that among all third mission activities, the greatest change was observed in research and cooperation activities with businesses. This mainly resulted from a change in government policy but mostly due to very strong support from EU structural funds.
Research Limitation/implication: The study is based on annual reports of universities which do not necessarily cover all activities that universities actually perform.
Originality/Value of paper: The paper provides the first complete overview of the third mission activities performed by universities in Slovakia with a focus on their development over time. Also, it identifies the role which governmental policy plays in these processes.
p> Purpose: The main aim of the paper is to investigate the determinants of university-industry links, considering the number of contracts with industry as an output variable. Also, the spatial dimension of contracts is examined, explaining to what extent U-I cooperation is anchored regionally or nationally.
Methodology/Approach: The paper uses a unique dataset comprising 1,158 contracts with industry at the 25 faculties belonging to five technical universities in Slovakia. Negative binomial regression analysis is used to evaluate the determinants for academic engagement in contract research.
Findings: Empirical findings reveal the impact of the factors such as age, personnel structure, the intensity of supervising and experience in research projects financed by public authorities, mattering more than patenting or teaching intensity in the propensity of researchers to engage with industry.
Research Limitation/implication: The outcomes only concern technical universities in Slovakia, and there is still room for analysis of other faculties comprising other subject areas. Since there is no longer time series data, the 2014-2016 timeframe did not permit to explore additional contexts in the model.
Originality/Value of paper: Foremost, this is the first attempt to investigate the relationship between different factors and the level of contract research in Slovakia, making several contributions to the existing literature.
The impact of the academic leaders on the university’s entrepreneurial orientation has received only anecdotal attention, though they are recognized to be important for the flow and transfer of knowledge as they have a pivotal role in setting the strategic goals of their institutions. Our study addresses this gap by investigating the role of university leaders in fostering the creation of academic spinoffs. Particularly we focus on the impact of university leader’s international mobility. Through a longitudinal study of 1176 spinoffs from 59 Italian state universities over the period 2001 and 2015, we find that the mobility of university leaders positively affects the rate of establishment of academic spinoffs. Rectors that experienced international mobility in their career develop networks and collaborations that facilitate the business involvement of their institutions. These positive externalities are larger in internationalized universities as well as in international-oriented regions. The research contributions on human capital theory, social network literature, international academic mobility, and knowledge spillover theory of entrepreneurship are discussed.
Agency theory is a theoretical platform used primarily to describe processes related to corporate governance. However, the theory is also being used to describe the processes associated with the functioning of the higher education system. Contractual relationships in this sector make it possible to identify the institutions that may act as either principal or agent, depending on the research perspective. Relationships between the state/government (principal) and public universities (agents) are the most commonly studied paradigm.
The aim of this article is to present proposals for reform of the higher education system in Poland, using agency theory as the research perspective. The most important dysfunctionalities of the current system, viewed as a manifestation of the agency problem, are identified, and the proposed new standards of academic governance are confronted with theoretical mechanisms reducing conflicts of interest: outcome-based and behaviour-based contracts. The main recommendation contained in reform proposals is a desire to increase the institutional autonomy of public universities, leading to a strong leadership of the university authorities.
Industry–university collaborations (IUCs) have received increased attention in management practice and research. The need for innovation in today’s business environment and the ambition of policymakers to commercialize academic knowledge intensify this trend. However, although research has devoted considerable effort to finding the determinants of success for interfirm collaboration, much less is known about IUCs. This article presents the results of a systematic review of the literature on the collaboration between industry and universities. We perform an extensive analysis of research published on industry–university collaboration projects with the objective of distilling factors that influence the success of such collaborations. We propose a novel conceptual model, which synthesizes our empirical results, and use it to organize and categorize influencing factors and their interrelationship within the collaboration process. Based on our review of existing literature, we identify an agenda for future research in this domain.
Universities are now viewed as key economic actors within regions and are central actors in shaping and influencing entrepreneurial ecosystems. This has meant that universities now have to become more entrepreneurial in offerings, outlook and culture. However, a core actor in this process who is often overlooked is the academic. The ability of an academic to effectively transfer knowledge to industry is key to universities achieving their entrepreneurial mission and ambition. This paper explores the changing roles of academics to identify key distinctions between entrepreneurial academics and academic entrepreneurs. This is done through a systematic literature review spanning 25 years drawing on selected high impact journals in innovation, entrepreneurship and higher education studies. We categorise the types of activity that academics typically engage in and identify the motivations and challenges they face. From this, we identify two types of academics, the entrepreneurial academic and academic entrepreneur. We posit that there is a need for both types of academics to contribute to the success of the entrepreneurial university and conclude by outlining some avenues for future research.
Excellence and frontier research have made inroads into European research policymaking and structure political agendas, funding programs and evaluation practices. The two concepts travelled a long way from the United States and have derived from contexts outside of science (and policy). Following their conceptual journey, we ask how excellence and frontier research have percolated into European science and higher education policies and how they have turned into lubricants of competition that buttress an ongoing reform process in Europe.
In this study, international research collaboration (IRC) and international research orientation (IRO) have been studied at the micro-level of individual academics from the university sector (N = 8,466, 11 European systems). Both were studied cross-nationally, cross-disciplinarily, and cross-generationally. This study differs from most existing internationalization literature in its sample (Europe) and focus (patterns of internationalization in research), using more standard methods (a multivariate model approach). It addresses questions about the patterns of IRC and IRO, international publishing, and the predictors of IRC, or what makes some European academics more prone to collaborating with international colleagues in research than others. In the context of changing incentive and reward systems in European academic science, which are becoming more output oriented, it is ever more important for individual academics to cooperate internationally (as well as to co-publish internationally). "Internationalists" increasingly compete with "locals" in university hierarchies of prestige and for access to project-based research funding across Europe. Evidence is presented that co-authoring publications internationally is still a rare form of research internationalization in Europe (50.8% of academics co-author publications internationally). However, as compared with other world regions, the percentage of European academics collaborating internationally in research (63.8%) is very high. A striking cross-national differential within the youngest European generation of academics was found, which may be a strong barrier to intra-European research collaboration in the future.
This contribution examines the domestic reinterpretations of international and European recommendations in Central and Eastern European countries (CEECs). It asks under what conditions these institutional recommendations, but also global processes such as the university rankings, affect domestic public policies. The countries of Central and Eastern Europe, which have experienced a far-reaching reform process since 1989, have been particularly affected by new standards promoted at the European and international level. The article shows that the combined external and domestic pressures affect higher education institutions (HEIs) in multiple and sometimes contradictory ways. Based on the Polish and Ukrainian cases, it reassesses the (party) political factor in the reorientation of higher education (HE) reforms. It shows that Europeanisation and internationalisation are neither uniform nor linear processes. Ultimately, the announced diversification of HEIs appears as a longer-term process whose outcome remains uncertain.
Do highly productive researchers have significantly higher probability to produce top cited papers? Or do high productive researchers mainly produce a sea of irrelevant papers—in other words do we find a diminishing marginal result from productivity? The answer on these questions is important, as it may help to answer the question of whether the increased competition and increased use of indicators for research evaluation and accountability focus has perverse effects or not. We use a Swedish author disambiguated dataset consisting of 48.000 researchers and their WoS-publications during the period of 2008–2011 with citations until 2014 to investigate the relation between productivity and production of highly cited papers. As the analysis shows, quantity does make a difference.
This review explores contributions by science policy studies and the sociology of science to our understanding of the impact of governance on research content. Contributions are subsumed under two perspectives, namely an “impact of”—perspective that searches for effects of specific governance arrangements and an “impact on”—perspective that asks what factors contribute to the construction of research content and includes governance among them. Our review shows that little is known so far about the impact of governance on knowledge content. A research agenda does not necessarily need to include additional empirical phenomena but must address the macro-micro-macro link inherent to the question in its full complexity, and systematically exploit comparative approaches in order to establish causality. This requires interdisciplinary collaboration between science policy studies, the sociology of science, and bibliometrics, which all can contribute to the necessary analytical toolbox.
This paper analyzes science productivity for nine developing countries. Results show that these nations are reducing their science gap, with R&D investments and scientific impact growing at more than double the rate of the developed world. But this "catching up" hides a very uneven picture among these nations, especially on what they are able to generate in terms of impact and output relative to their levels of investment and available resources. Moreover, unlike what one might expect, it is clear that the size of the nations and the relative scale of their R&D investments are not the key drivers of efficiency.
The internationalization of the Polish academic profession is studied in a comparative quantitative European context. A micro-level (individual) approach which relies on primary data collected in a consistent, internationally comparable format is used (N = 17,211 cases). The individual academic is the unit of analysis, rather than a national higher education system or an individual institution. Our study shows that research productivity of Polish academics (following European patterns) is strongly correlated with international collaboration: the average productivity of Polish academics involved in international collaboration (“internationalists”) is consistently higher than the rate of Polish “locals” in all academic fields. Polish academics are less internationalized in research than the European average but the research productivity of Polish “internationalists” is much higher than the productivity of Polish “locals”. The impact of international collaboration on average productivity is much higher in Poland than in the European countries studied, with important policy implications.
The emergence of open innovation theory and practice, alongside the evolution to a quadruple helix system of innovation, has led to a need for universities to rethink their models of engagement with industry and wider society. One important element in this system is the entrepreneurial academics; however, there is a lack of research considering the motivations of entrepreneurial academics, who differ from academic entrepreneurs, to engage in knowledge transfer in line with open innovation policy. This research offers practical insights on whether new models of engagement, increasingly offered by universities, really address the policy drivers for open innovation. Furthermore, this research explores whether these activities might motivate entrepreneurial academics to participate. Preliminary findings identify that many supposedly new collaboration activities do not really motivate entrepreneurial academics. This may have important implications on the ability of universities to become truly open and to encourage their academics to become engaged in collaboration and impact.
The choice of university faculty to engage in academic entrepreneurship—the establishment and management of a university spinoff company—is a critical component of university economic development efforts. Replicating Hayter (J Technol Transf 36:340–352, 2011), this study investigates motivations and definitions of success among academic entrepreneurs, how they evolve, and why. The results show that academic entrepreneurs are motivated by a number of distinct, yet interrelated reasons and that spinoffs are viewed as a vehicle to pursue SBIR awards and consulting opportunities that can, in turn, enhance their traditional academic teaching and research responsibilities. Several academic entrepreneurs have enjoyed commercialization success yet, as a group, near-term commercialization goals and financial motivations have become relatively less important. While these findings have important implications for policy, they also signal a new conceptualization of university spinoffs as a low-growth contract research firm and provide empirical support for the emerging theory of public entrepreneurship.
This paper focuses on a generational change taking place in the Polish academic profession: a change in behaviors and attitudes between two groups of academics. One was socialized to academia under the communist regime (1945– 1989) and the other entered the profession in the post-1989 transition period. Academics of all age groups are beginning to learn how tough the competition for research funding is, but young academics ('academics under 40'), being the target of recent policy initiatives, need to learn faster. Current reforms present a clear preferred image for a new generation of Polish academics: highly motivated, embedded in international research networks, publishing mostly internationally, and heavily involved in the competition for academic recognition and research funding. In the long run, without such a radical approach, any international competition between young Polish academics (with a low research orientation and high teaching hours) and their young Western European colleagues (with a high research orientation and low teaching hours) seems inconceivable, as our data on the average academic productivity clearly demonstrate. The quantitative background of this paper comes from 3704 returned questionnaires and the qualitative background from 60 semi-structured in-depth interviews. The paper takes a European comparative approach and contrasts Poland with 10 Western European countries (using 17,211 returned questionnaires).
This chapter examines the contributions that economists have made to the study of science and the types of contributions the profession is positioned to make in the future. Special emphasis is placed on the public nature of knowledge and characteristics of the reward structure that encourage the production and sharing of knowledge. The role that cognitive and noncognitive resources play in discovery is discussed as well as the costs of resources used in research. Different models for the funding of research are presented. The chapter also discusses scientific labor markets and the extreme difficulty encountered in forecasting the demand for and supply of scientists. The chapter closes with a discussion of the relationship of scientific research to economic growth and suggestions for future research.
This study investigates the influence of academic entrepreneurship on traditional academic duties carried out in a resource-constrained environment, particularly focusing on whether there is synergy or rivalry between these two activities. Using qualitative evidence, we discover that there are funding, resource, knowledge and skill and networking synergies between academic entrepreneurship and traditional academic duties. These synergies are found to be extremely important in overcoming resource barriers to conduct teaching and research. Academic entrepreneurs manage their engagement in multiple activities through symbiotic relationships with other academics. While academic entrepreneurs are the initiators who secure entrepreneurial opportunities, other academics support them as they capitalise on these opportunities. The importance of encouraging academic entrepreneurship as a strategy to overcome resource barriers to traditional academic duties is emphasised. Implications and future research avenues are highlighted.
Some universities are successfully involved in creating and developing new high-growth technology businesses while others struggle to do so. Clearly, the characteristics of the university and its environment are important, but explain only part of this variation. We explore how universities can promote new research-based businesses by suggesting that the nature of the support supplied depends on the demands of the spin-off firms. Adopting a demand side perspective, we seek to understand the challenges faced by new technology businesses and hence identify how universities can assist their start-up and development. From the academic entrepreneurship literature, we derive how universities can supply support for the development of firm competencies either directly or indirectly. The paper nuances the common conception of a university as one uniform entity in relation to spin-offs, and assesses the literature including all levels within the university, from central university administration, TTO, department, research group, scientist, and students.
Productivity is the quintessential indicator of efficiency in any production system. It seems it has become a norm in bibliometrics to define research productivity as the number of publications per researcher, distinguishing it from impact. In this work we operationalize the economic concept of productivity for the specific context of research activity and show the limits of the commonly accepted definition. We propose then a measurable form of research productivity through the indicator "Fractional Scientific Strength (FSS)", in keeping with the microeconomic theory of production. We present the methodology for measure of FSS at various levels of analysis: individual, field, discipline, department, institution, region and nation. Finally, we compare the ranking lists of Italian universities by the two definitions of research productivity.
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a concept which is gaining in popularity and is being included in the strategies of more and more companies. Social and environmental concerns, as well as cooperation with stakeholders which is also linked to the concept of sustainable development, are becoming part of the mission statements of numerous companies. The question arises, however, whether CSR is merely a strategic concept, or if is it accompanied by specific actions. The aim of this article is to answer the following questions: What does CSR really mean in hard economic times? Is cooperation between business and stakeholders just a declaration included in company strategies as an element of CSR, or is it actual practice implemented in everyday activities? What barriers exist for such cooperation? The above issues will be discussed on the basis of the relationship between business and academia in respect of stakeholders and the social dimensions of CSR.
The paper is devoted to four sections. First section describe the corporate social responsibility which refers to the economic, legal, ethical and philanthropic expectations which society has for companies, and which indicates the activities of companies which fulfil these expectations of stakeholders. Universities are one of business’ stakeholder within the social responsibility approach, the external and secondary stakeholder, who are not critical to the company's survival. Second section discusses the case study method as a teaching method where the collaboration between universities and business is require to prepare and conduct this method during education process. The university-business collaboration in this field gives an opportunity to fulfil the postulate of social responsibility by the impact on the quality of education. Next part of the paper analyses the case study of university-business collaboration in preparing case studies for educational purposes in Poland. Specific problems are discuss to indicate the constrains of collaboration between business and universities. Last section consists of conclusions and discussions. The main point of discussion is that on the declarative level, corporate social responsibility is a common element in companies' business strategies, but on the operational level the collaboration with stakeholders as a part of CSR does not easily transform into practical actions.
The modern literature explaining the under-representation of women in science often relate to the shortage of women 'in the pipeline'. The pipeline flows from one stage to another, and the flow of women diminishes over the stages. Speaking of the stages of career during which women scientists 'leak' the most, the commercialisation of science as one of the ultimate stages should be taken into consideration. The primary objective of this paper is to discuss barriers to the commercialisation of scientific knowledge by women. The collected extensive literature allows to pinpoint the reason why scientific career or success fail to provide a springboard for the practical use of knowledge. Analysed research, indicate only some of the barriers, meanwhile this paper collects most of 'experienced' obstacles and shows them in 'leaking pipeline' context. Barriers originate in at least two sources: women themselves and external factors beyond women's control.
The increase of entrepreneurial activity within academia has raised concerns that the research orientation of universities might become ‘contaminated’ by the application-oriented needs of industry. Empirical evidence on this concern is scarce and ambiguous. We examine whether entrepreneurial and scientific performance in academia can be reconciled. Our empirical findings (KU Leuven, Belgium) suggest that both activities do not hamper each other; engagement in entrepreneurial activities coincides with increased publication outputs, without affecting the nature of the publications involved. As resources increase, this interaction becomes more significant, pointing towards a Matthew-effect.We finally suggest that balancing both activities further depends on the institutional policies deployed.
Haggling over rights to potential inventions can be a major roadblock to successful university–industry (UI) collaborations. Yet such collaborations are critical for innovation in science-based industries. This study examines the roles of universities’ intellectual property (IP) policies and of shared governance for trust formation between academe and industry. The study also examines how UI champions moderate this process and how trust between university and industry partners affects UI collaboration outcomes. The analysis of survey data of 105 recent UI collaborations in the U.S. biotechnology industry indicates that the flexibility and transparency of university IP policies and shared governance by UI partners are both positively related to trust formation. The activities of UI champions amplify the positive effects of shared governance and at the same time reduce the importance of university IP policies for trust formation between UI partners. The amount of trust between partners is positively related to knowledge transfer and innovation performance. The findings suggest that despite widely reported industry concerns over the control of IP, UI research partners can develop a trustful environment and thereby plant the seeds for a successful collaboration. In order to enhance trust, companies should not only consider university IP policies, but also need to actively engage in shared governance with university partners. UI collaboration champions can help shift the attention of company managers from formal rules set by university IP policies toward shared project planning, coordination, and implementation with university partners.
The results presented in this report were from a study commissioned by the European Commission (EC). Surveys were sent out to all registered European HEIs in 33 countries in 2011. In total, 6,280 responses were received from European academics and HEI management. From Ireland (forming the basis for this report) 113 responses from academics (72) and HEI management (41) were received. The study measured the perceptions of these two groups in respect to their own cooperation efforts and those of their HEI respectively.
The results presented in this report were from a study commissioned by the European Commission (EC). Surveys were sent out to all registered European HEIs in 33 countries in 2011. In total, 6,280 responses were received from European academics and HEI management (HEI managers and HEI professionals working with industry) whilst from Germany, 521 responses from academics (240) and HEI management (281) were received. The study measured the perceptions of these two groups in respect to their own cooperation efforts and those of their HEI respectively.
We argue that the current focus of the academic entrepreneurship literature, which is mostly on patent-based activities such as spinouts and licensing, should be widened to also include other informal commercial and non-commercial activities that are entrepreneurial in nature. We define as entrepreneurial any activity that occurs beyond the traditional academic roles of teaching and/or research, is innovative, carries an element of risk, and leads to financial rewards for the individual academic or his/her institution. These financial rewards can occur directly or indirectly via an increase in reputation, prestige, influence or societal benefits. Informal activities are particularly common in disciplines such as the social sciences, the creative arts and the humanities and are often overlooked by TTOs and by the academic literature. Our aim is to fill this gap by empirically analysing the determinants of academic engagement in a wider range of activities than those that are typically considered. Our findings have implications for the practice of academic entrepreneurship, and for the effectiveness of university efforts to promote entrepreneurial activities via the formal IP system and through TTOs. Our analysis is based on a recently completed survey of UK academics, providing micro-data on over 22,000 academics in the sciences, social sciences, arts and humanities. The data are complemented using institution-level information on financial and logistical support for entrepreneurial activities.
Despite the growing interest in university–industry interactions, there has been little systematic assessment of the university scientists who work with private companies. This study uses a national survey of tenured and tenure-track scientists in the US to identify personal and professional characteristics that affect whether university scientists interact with private companies and, if so, the ways in which they interact. We account for a broad range of professional and personal predictors of scientists’ interactions with the private sector, including funding sources, institutional affiliations, tenure status, support of students, scientific values, and demographic attributes. The motivation for this broad-based analysis is similar to that which has motivated studies of the “entrepreneurial university” demonstrating how a slew of factors including unique histories, traditions, and organizational structures shape universities’ approaches to knowledge exchanges and technology transfers with industry [Bercovitz, J.E.L., Feldman, M.P., Feller, I., Burton, R.M., 2001. Organizational structure as a determinant of academic patent and licensing behavior: an exploratory study of Duke, Johns Hopkins, and Pennsylvania State Universities. Journal of Technology Transfer 26, 21–35; O’Shea, R.P., Allen, T.J., Chevalier, A., Roche, F., 2005. Entrepreneurial orientation, technology transfer and spinoff performance of U.S. universities. Research Policy 34 (7), 994–1009]. Similarly, we start with the premise that there is substantial individual-level variation amongst university scientists that governs whether and how they may interact with private companies.
The aim of this study is to contribute to the debate on the relationship between scientific mobility and international collaboration.
This case study deals with leading Chinese researchers in the field of plant molecular life sciences who returned to their
home country. A correlation analysis of their mobility history, publication output, and international co-publication data,
shows the relationship between scientific output, levels of international collaboration and various individual characteristics
of returned researchers. The outcome of the analysis suggests that while host countries may loose human capital when Chinese
scientists return home, the so-called “return brain drain”, they may also gain in terms of scientific linkages within this
rapidly emerging and globalizing research field.
In this chapter, we make the case that capacity development initiatives aimed at generating greater entrepreneurial behaviours among academic scientists remain under-explored in the literature. We suggest that external government-funded programmes, in the form of macro-level grand challenges, that foster greater entrepreneurial engagement and commercial orientation among the science community have been under-examined in comparison to other key meso- and micro-level determinants and challenges such as scientists’ motives/incentives, professional role identity, social environment, support structures and their individual attributes and competencies. We clarify the notion of entrepreneurial behaviour and how it relates to academic entrepreneurship. The chapter closes with an example of an ongoing publicly funded capacity development programme underway in New Zealand (NZ) titled ‘Building NZ’s Innovation Capacity’.
The aim of the article is to explore the impact of excellence as a powerful policy idea in the context of recent and contemporary developments in three selected Central and Eastern European countries, namely, the Czech Republic, Poland and Ukraine. More specifically, we explore how excellence as a ‘global script’ was translated by policy makers into local contexts with institutionalized practices. It shows that the translation of the idea of excellence involved the rise of a series of novel policy measures such as long-term strategic funding and the establishment of various pertinent schemes (e.g. flagship universities, centres of excellence). By doing so, the analysis – which is comparative by nature – focuses on exploring major differences and similarities in the conceptualization and implementation of the idea of excellence in the three local contexts of science.
This article explores the emerging institutionalization of collaborative university–industry networks in Russia. The Russian government has attempted to use a top-down public policy scheme to stimulate and promote network-building in the R&D sector. In order to understand the initial organizational responses that universities and companies select while structuring collaborations, the article utilizes conceptual perspectives from institutional theory, especially drawing on arguments from strategic choice, network-building, and network failure studies.
The Czech Republic considers the development of science and research as one of its priorities. To ensure the quality of results and the efficiency of public support, the best R&D results are considered to be: in particular articles in impact and selected peer-reviewed scientific journals, patents and similarly protected results (patent applications, granted patents, industrial designs) and licenses and applied outputs. The aim of the study is to analyze the state of innovation activities in relation to European Union countries. For this purpose, the analysis of selected indicators will be used: the proportion of R&D expenditure in relation to GDP and patent activity in the country. The processing of this issue was based on a literature research of professional literature articles on this topic from international databases (e.g. Eurostat). The analysis showed that Germany, the Nordic countries of Europe and France were among the countries with good results in the observed indicators of innovation activity in the EU. On the basis of the case study it was found, that profits from the commercialization of inventions are usually shared between the originator, the research department at which the invention was created and the headquarters of the University.
This paper develops the notion of research ambidexterity (RA) in the context of the entrepreneurial universities. Two levels of research ambidexterity are elaborated – departmental and individual. The putative multilevel relationships between university's antecedents, departmental/individual research ambidexterity and commercial performance are examined. On the basis of a postal questionnaire survey, a dataset of 634 faculty members, 99 departments, and six universities is collected. The results of regressions suggest that both levels of RA facilitate departmental and individual commercial performance, respectively. Moreover, there exist multilevel positive relationships between perceived organizational flexibility, departmental RA, and individual RA and opportunity exploitation. The paper concludes that the development of RA in entrepreneurial universities should be considered as multilevel relationships between universities, departments and individuals.
Bibliometric studies often rely on field-normalized citation impact
indicators in order to make comparisons between scientific fields. We discuss
the connection between field normalization and the choice of a counting method
for handling publications with multiple co-authors. Our focus is on the choice
between full counting and fractional counting. Based on an extensive
theoretical and empirical analysis, we argue that properly field-normalized
results cannot be obtained when full counting is used. Fractional counting does
provide results that are properly field normalized. We therefore recommend the
use of fractional counting in bibliometric studies that require field
normalization, especially in studies at the level of countries and research
organizations. We also compare different variants of fractional counting. In
general, it seems best to use either the author-level or the address-level
variant of fractional counting.
This paper aims to highlight the changing and diversifying nature of academic work related to various forms of knowledge production and diffusion. Focusing on the changing research policy landscape in Sweden, three interrelated questions are investigated: what academics do in terms of commercialisation and public dissemination; how they perform these activities; and why they engage in these activities. Based on data from a recent survey with over 10,000 academics in Sweden, we identify and analyse 'high-performing' researchers, in the context of the commercialisation and public dissemination of their academic work. The quantitative analysis is supplemented by qualitative interviews with scientists at strong research environments in Sweden. We argue that there is a virtuous cycle connecting different academic activities in strong research environments research excellence and excellence in knowledge production on one hand, and knowledge diffusion activities, such as commercialisation and public dissemination, on the other hand.
The authors hope that this book will be valuable to students training to become the next generation of survey professionals, to survey researchers seeking guidance on current best practices in questionnaire evaluation and testing, and to survey methodologists designing research to advance the field and render the current chapters out of date. This chapter presents an overview of the field and of the chapters that follow.
A theory of the major mechanisms that sustain and reproduce systems of gender stratification is presented. The central support mechanism is the gender division of labor, within both the family and the wider society. Because of it, men gain superior resource and definitional power, which enable them to maintain the gender status quo regardless of women's wishes. Elite men create dominant social definitions that, together with the gender division of labor, contribute to gender differentiation. This results in women usually choosing that which they would otherwise be constrained to do, thereby legitimating the system and allowing men to refrain from exercising their coercive potential.
There is a growing world-wide trend toward greater collaboration between academia and industry, an activity encouraged by governments as a means of enhancing national competitiveness and wealth creation. Warwick Manufacturing Group (WMG) is well known for its extensive links with industry, and provided an excellent opportunity for a study of management practice within university–industry collaborative research projects. This paper evaluates the findings of six collaborative research projects. The objective was to identify factors which, if managed correctly, increase the probability of a collaboration being perceived as successful by both academic and industrial partners. The outcome was a good practice model for successful university–industry research collaborations.
In spite of feminist recognition that hierarchical organizations are an important location of male dominance, most feminists writing about organizations assume that organizational structure is gender neutral. This article argues that organizational structure is not gender neutral; on the contrary, assumptions about gender underlie the documents and contracts used to construct organizations and to provide the commonsense ground for theorizing about them. Their gendered nature is partly masked through obscuring the embodied nature of work. Abstract jobs and hierarchies, common concepts in organizational thinking, assume a disembodies and universal worker. This worker is actually a man; men's bodies, sexuality, and relationships to procreation and paid work are subsumed in the image of the worker. Images of men's bodies and masculinity pervade organizational processes, marginalizing women and contributing to the maintenance of gender segregation in organizations. The positing of gender-neutral and disembodied organizational structures and work relations is part of the larger strategy of control in industrial capitalist societies, which, at least partly, are built upon a deeply embedded substructure of gender difference.