City Research Online

Abstract

Over the past decades, universities have increasingly become involved in entrepreneurial activities. Despite efforts to embrace their ‘third mission’, universities still demonstrate great heterogeneity in terms of their involvement in academic entrepreneurship. This papers adopts an institutional perspective to understand how organizational characteristics affect research scientists’ entrepreneurial intentions. Specifically, we study the impact of university culture and climate on entrepreneurial intentions, including intentions to spin off a company, to engage in patenting or licensing and to interact with industry through contract research or consulting. Using a sample of 437 research scientists from Swedish and German universities, our results reveal that the extent to which universities articulate entrepreneurship as a fundamental element of their mission fosters research scientists’ intentions to engage in spin-off creation and intellectual property rights, but not industry-science interaction. Furthermore, the presence of university role models positively affects research scientists’ propensity to engage in entrepreneurial activities, both directly and indirectly through entrepreneurial self-efficacy. Finally, research scientists working at universities which explicitly reward people for ‘third mission’ related output show higher levels of spin-off and patenting or licensing intentions. This study has implications for both academics and practitioners, including university managers and policy makers.

Publication Type:	Article
Additional Information:	This is a post-peer-review, pre-copyedit version of an article published in journal of Technology Transfer. The final authenticated version is available online at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10961-014-9333-3.
Publisher Keywords:	Entrepreneurial intentions – Academic entrepreneurship - Organizational culture – Organizational climate – Institutional theory
Departments:	Bayes Business School > Management
SWORD Depositor:	Symplectic Administrator

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