Strangers in a strange land

Abstract

Technology transfer between the public sector and industry is often viewed as the key to the development and use of new knowledge. The U.S. federal government has pushed for increased use of government funded inventions and discoveries, from both government and university labs. However, professional conventions and organizational cultures can make it difficult for industry and academic researchers to work together effectively. This dissertation examines the role that institutions and academic disciplines have on the behavior and values of academic researchers.

The dissertation is comprised of three essays, each one exploring a different aspect of the relationship between academic researchers and technology transfer activities.

The first essay explores the differences between research scientists and engineers to see whether disciplinary conventions create a higher or lower propensity to be involved with industry. The results of the essay show that there are strong disciplinary differences between scientists and engineers. Engineers are more likely to spend time working with industry, to act as a resource for industry, to actively collaborate with industry, and to believe that funding decisions should consider the overall benefit to society that the research provides.

The second essay looks at the influence of three types of departmental research resources – human, financial, and physical – on individual researchers. The results show that different resources have different influences on industrial involvement activities. Human resources have a consistently positive influence on industry involvement; financial resources have a mixed influence, while physical resources have a consistently negative effect.

The final essay examines the influence of research colleagues within University Research Centers (URCs). Specifically, it examines whether researchers are more likely to be affiliated with URCs dominated by their own discipline. It also investigates whether working in a university research center dominated by engineers leads to different collaborative behavior for research scientists. The results show that the majority of researchers do not cross disciplinary boundaries to work in URCs. In addition, scientists that work in engineering-dominated URCs exhibit different industrial involvement behavior than researchers affiliated with non-engineering dominated URCs.