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University–industry collaboration from a relationship marketing perspective: an empirical analysis in a Spanish University

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Abstract

Building relationships between universities and industry bodies is of prime importance for creating value for universities’ stakeholders. This paper focuses on relationships in relation to undergraduate internship programmes in the Social Sciences. Using the relationship marketing approach, we analyze this type of collaboration of firms with a large public Spanish University. We build and test a structural equations model whose results show that communication is a key building block of relationships, having a positive effect on satisfaction with the relationship, trust and functionality of conflict, and that trust and commitment increase the level of collaboration of firms with universities.

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Acknowledgments

The present paper has been produced in the context of the R + D National Plan SEJ2007-68105-C02- 01/ECON of the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science and with ERDF funding.

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Correspondence to Marta Frasquet.

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Frasquet, M., Calderón, H. & Cervera, A. University–industry collaboration from a relationship marketing perspective: an empirical analysis in a Spanish University. High Educ 64, 85–98 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-011-9482-3

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