Engaging excellence? Effects of faculty quality on university engagement with industry

Abstract

We investigate how universities' research quality shapes their engagement with industry. Previous research has predominantly found a positive relationship between academics' research quality and their commercialization activities. Here we use industry involvement measures that are broader than commercialization and indicate actual collaboration, i.e. collaborative research, contract research and consulting. We hypothesize that the relationship between faculty quality and industry engagement differs across disciplines, depending on complementarities between industrial and academic work, and resource requirements. Using a dataset covering all UK universities, we find that in technology-oriented disciplines, departmental faculty quality is positively related to industry involvement. In the medical and biological sciences we find a positive effect of departmental faculty quality but establish that this does not apply to star scientists. In the social sciences, we find some support for a negative relationship between faculty quality and particularly the more applied forms of industry involvement. The implication for science policy makers and university managers is that differential approaches to promoting university-industry relationships are required.

The importance of pro-social behaviour for the breadth and depth of knowledge transfer activities: An analysis of Italian academic scientists

“…Interestingly, when KT breadth and depth are investigated separately, the coefficient of Research Funding is positive and strongly significant at standard confidence levels for the depth of KT activities only. This result indicates a significant complementarity between the ability to raise public funds for research and the intensity of external engagement, providing further support for similar findings in the recent literature relating faculty quality to industry involvement in technology-oriented disciplines (Perkmann and Walsh, 2009;Perkmann et al, 2011). Working in an engineering field exhibits a positive and significant correlation with all variables (AEI as well as the breadth and depth of KT activities).…”

Evolving missions and university entrepreneurship: academic spin-offs and graduate start-ups in the entrepreneurial society

“…Notably, universities with different organizational heritage play different roles, reflecting diverse institutional priorities, cultures and governance structures, and also a different mix of discipline areas and research intensity (Perkmann et al 2011;Hewitt-Dundas 2012;Abreu and Grinevich 2013;Abreu et al 2016). They are influenced by the university strategies and reward systems (Huyghe and Knockaert 2015); but also by the disciplinary composition and the research quality of their staff (Abreu et al 2016).…”

Efeitos da qualidade da pesquisa acadêmica sobre a distância geográfica das interações universidade-empresa

“…Por essa razão, é possível que haja algum efeito de proximidade entre os grupos de pesquisa de maior qualidade acadêmica, o que justifica a inserção do termo quadrático no modelo empírico. (Bekkers & Freitas, 2008;Meyer-Krahmer & Schmoch, 1998), setores econômicos (Abramovsky et al, 2007;Schartinger et al;2001) e tipos de interações (Perkmann et al, 2011;Deste & Patel, 2007). A Tabela 3 apresenta as estatísticas descritivas das variáveis analisadas.…”