Top

The Annals of Regional Science

Published in:

01-04-2013 | Special Issue Paper

University mission creep? Comparing EU and US faculty views of university involvement in regional economic development and commercialization

Authors: Harvey Goldstein, Edward M. Bergman, Gunther Maier

Published in: The Annals of Regional Science | Issue 2/2013

Activate our intelligent search to find suitable subject content or patents.

search-config

AI-assisted search

Off

Abstract

The attitudes of university faculty towards the expansion of universities’ missions to include assisting regional economic development and technology development by knowledge commercialization are analysed. Based upon surveys of faculty in the EU and in the United States, as well as secondary data on the institutional characteristics of universities and their regional economic conditions, we find that faculty are significantly more supportive of their universities assisting regional economic development compared to knowledge commercialization that attitudes between the US and EU faculty are remarkably similar, and that individual factors, including academic discipline, are more powerful explanators of the variation in attitudes compared to institutional characteristics or regional economic conditions.

previous article From innovation to commercialization through networks and agglomerations: analysis of sources of innovation, innovation capabilities and performance of Dutch SMEs

next article Attributes influencing self-employment propensity in urban and rural Sweden

Dont have a licence yet? Then find out more about our products and how to get one now:

Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik"

Online-Abonnement

Mit Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" erhalten Sie Zugriff auf:

über 102.000 Bücher
über 537 Zeitschriften

aus folgenden Fachgebieten:

Automobil + Motoren
Bauwesen + Immobilien
Business IT + Informatik
Elektrotechnik + Elektronik
Energie + Nachhaltigkeit
Finance + Banking
Management + Führung
Marketing + Vertrieb
Maschinenbau + Werkstoffe
Versicherung + Risiko

Jetzt Wissensvorsprung sichern!

inform now

Springer Professional "Technik"

Online-Abonnement

Mit Springer Professional "Technik" erhalten Sie Zugriff auf:

über 67.000 Bücher
über 390 Zeitschriften

aus folgenden Fachgebieten:

Automobil + Motoren
Bauwesen + Immobilien
Business IT + Informatik
Elektrotechnik + Elektronik
Energie + Nachhaltigkeit
Maschinenbau + Werkstoffe

Jetzt Wissensvorsprung sichern!

inform now

A re-sorting of functions may result in a clearer division of labour among universities, with some oriented more to internationally competitive basic research and others to locally or industrially oriented applied research (LERU 2006). The term “mission creep” has also been used to describe the tendency for institutions of higher education that wish to offer more advanced degrees or disciplines, begin or expand research programs, or accrete new functions that help serve local and national interests, all of which exceed the institution’s original charter.

On the other hand, universities in Baltic countries have been given sole responsibility for basic research in an effort to rid their research and innovation systems of previous Soviet-style, top-down research systems dominated by ideologically driven academies of science, a model that may still survive in other EU-10 countries.

See Agrawal (2001), Phan and Siegel (2006) and Perkmann and Walsh (2007) for recent, comparative literature reviews and syntheses.

No non-response bias was found after comparing the sample respondents to the full study population along several descriptors including rank, discipline, gender, type of university, and region of the United States

Unlike all other EU countries, the French system of university web-pages proved extraordinarily difficult to identify academics or their e-mail addresses. We therefore sampled the French universities and disciplines of authors listed within the ISI database. This probably introduces a slight bias towards greater research and less teaching or for journal- versus book-based publications. We subsequently learned others had similar experiences in attempts to survey French university academics.

The estimates of each of the fully specified models are available from the corresponding author upon request.

Agrawal A (2001) University-to-industry knowledge transfer: literature review and unanswered questions. Int J Manag Rev 3(4):285–302CrossRef

Association of University Technology Managers (2006) FY 2006 Licensing Activity Survey www.autmsurvey.org

Blumenthal D, Campbell EG, Causino N, Louis KS (1996) Participation of life-science faculty in research relationships with industry. N Engl J Med 335:1734–1739CrossRef

Bok D (2003) Universities in the marketplace: the commercialization of higher education. Princeton University Press, NJ

Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching (2006) www.carnegiefoundation.org/classification

CHEPS (2006) The extent and impact of higher education governance reform across Europe: part four. University of Twente, Netherlands, Governance Reform Survey Results. Center for Higher Education Policy Studies

Clark B (1998) The entrepreneurial university:demand and response. Tert Educ Manag 4(1):5–16CrossRef

Clark B (2001) The entrepreneurial university: new foundations for collegiality, autonomy, and achievement. High Educ Manag 13(2):9–24

Colyvas J, Powell WW (2006) Roads to institutionalization. In: Straw B (ed) Research in organizational behavior, vol 27. Elsevier, Amsterdam

Davies JL (2001) The emergence of entrepreneurial cultures in European universities. High Educ Manag 13(2):25–43

Etzkowitz H, Webster A, Gebhardt C, Terra BRC (2000) The future of the university and the university of the future: evolution of ivory tower to entrepreneurial paradigm. Res Policy 29:313–330CrossRef

Feldman M, Desrochers P (2004) Truth for its own sake: academic culture and technology transfer at Johns Hopkins University. Minerva 42:105–126CrossRef

Goldfarb B, Henrekson M (2003) Bottom-up versus top-down policies towards the commercialization of university intellectual property. Res Policy 32:639CrossRef

Goldstein H (2010a) The ‘entrepreneurial turn’ and regional economic development mission of universities. Ann Reg Sci 43:83–109CrossRef

Goldstein H (2010b) To what extent Is academic entrepreneurship taken-for-granted within research universities? High Educ Policy 23:1–15CrossRef

Herbst M (2004) Governance and management of research universities: funding and budgeting as instruments of change. Center for Science and Technology Studies, Bern

Kenney M, Goe WR (2004) Comparison of electrical engineering and computer science at UC Berkeley and Stanford. Res Policy 33:691–707CrossRef

Lee YS (1996) Technology transfer and the research university: a search for the boundaries of university-industry collaboration. Res Policy 25:843–863CrossRef

LERU (2006) Universities and innovation: the challenge for Europe. League of European Research Universities

Litan RE, Mitchell L, Reedy EJ (2007) Commercializing university innovations: a better way. NBER working paper. National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge

Louis KS, Jones LM, Anderson MS, Blumenthal D, Campbell EG (2001) Entrepreneurship, secrecy, and productivity: a comparison of clinical and non-clinical life sciences faculty. J Technol Transf 26:233–245CrossRef

Merton RL (1957) Social theory and social structure. The Free Press, New York

Mowery DR, Nelson R, Sampat B, Ziedonis A (2001) The growth of patenting and licensing by US universities: an assessment of the effects of the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980. Res Policy 30:99–119CrossRef

Murray F (2006) The oncomouse that roared: resistance and accommodation to patenting in academic science. Unpublished manuscript

Owen-Smith J, Powell WW (2001) Careers and contradictions: faculty responses to the transformation of knowledge and its uses in the life sciences. Res Sociol Work 10:109–140CrossRef

Perkmann M, Walsh K (2007) University-industry relationships and open innovation: towards a research agenda. Int J Manag Rev 9(4):259–280CrossRef

Phan PH, Siegel DS (2006) The effectiveness of university technology transfer: lessons learned from quantitative and qualititative research in the US and the UK working papers in economics, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy

Rothaermel FT, Agung SD, Jiang L (2007) University entrepreneurship: a taxonomy of the literature. Ind Corp Change 16(4):691–791CrossRef

Shanghai Jiao Tong University (2007) 2007 Academic ranking of world universities. http://www.arwu.org/rank/2007/ranking2007.htm

Siegel DS, Waldman DA, Atwater LE, Link AN (2004) Toward a model of the effective transfer of scientific knowledge from academicians to practitioners: qualitative evidence from the commercialization of university technologies. J Eng Technol Manag 21(1–2):115–142CrossRef

Stokes DE (1997) Pasteur’s quadrant: basic science and technological innovation. Brookings Institution Press, Washington

Stuart T, Ding WW (2006) When do scientists become entrepreneurs? The social structural antecedents of commercial activity in the academic life sciences. Am J Sociol 112(1):97–144CrossRef

Thursby JG, Kemp S (2002) Growth and productive efficiency of university intellectual property licensing. Res Policy 31:109–124CrossRef

Ward D (1992) Serving the state: the Wisconsin idea revisited. Educ Rec (Spring) 73(2):12–17

Title: University mission creep? Comparing EU and US faculty views of university involvement in regional economic development and commercialization
Authors: Harvey Goldstein
Edward M. Bergman
Gunther Maier
Publication date: 01-04-2013
Publisher: Springer-Verlag
Published in: The Annals of Regional Science / Issue 2/2013
Print ISSN: 0570-1864
Electronic ISSN: 1432-0592
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00168-012-0513-5

Springer Professional

Abstract

Please log in to get access to your license.

Dont have a licence yet? Then find out more about our products and how to get one now:

Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik"

Springer Professional "Technik"

Other articles of this Issue 2/2013

Economic growth in Brazil: a spatial filtering approach

Introduction: commercialization of knowledge in a regional context: new perspectives

Education and the location of work: a continued economic role for central cities?

Attributes influencing self-employment propensity in urban and rural Sweden

Industrial location and interpretation of zero counts

Bridging knowledge to commercialization: the good, the bad, and the challenging