A theoretical framework for the evaluation of university‐industry relationships

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to build up a theoretical framework to study university‐industry interorganisational relations (U‐1 IOR) and formulate hypotheses which will be tested on empirical data in a future research phase. Then, a taxonomy for university‐industy relationships is proposed. Finally, the problem of evaluating relationships between universities and industries by defining the concept of ‘relationship performance’ is addressed.

Industry–University Interactions in a Peripheral European Region: An Empirical Study of Valencian Firms

“…As many authors note (Bonaccorsi and Piccaluga, 1994;Faulkner and Senker, 1995;Schartinger et al, 2001), interactions can be classified in relation to their resource deployment, time length, and formalization agreements. Informal contacts did not score as high as expected.…”

“…Nevertheless, if we consider that in the majority of cooperative partnerships, one of the crucial features is the motivation to learn from one's partner, thus acquiring knowledge that in the majority of cases will complement one's own (Gonard, 1999) this result is somewhat worrying. According to the theory of absorptive capacity (Cohen and Levinthal, 1990), in order to be able to absorb the scientific knowledge transferred by universities, firms need to have a strong internal R&D (Fundación Cotec, 1999), but it has also been shown that partnerships with universities cannot replace internal investment in basic R&D (Bonaccorsi and Piccaluga, 1994;Acosta and Modrego, 1998;Ham and Mowery, 1998).…”

“…Universities are unique in terms of their potential. They are not only a source of knowledge and technology, they provide graduates and faculty that can become employees and consultants (Bonaccorsi and Piccaluga, 1994;Mansfield and Lee, 1996). While much of the inter-organisational literature focuses on collaboration between two or more industrial firms, we concentrate on collaboration between industrial firms and universities.…”

Knowledge transfer activities in social sciences and humanities: Explaining the interactions of research groups with non-academic agents

“…Bonaccorsi and Piccaluga (1994) Research Council (AHRC) conducts a research project on cultural engagement and KT, and proposes eight channels of KT including performances, exhibitions, consultations, e-engagement, to measure the outcomes from KT in the sphere of cultural activities (AHRC, 2009b). A more recent UK study proposes a conceptual framework grouping three categories of academic entrepreneurial activities (i.e.…”

Informal collaborations between social sciences and humanities researchers and non-academic partners

“…Similarly to Bonaccorsi and Piccaluga (1994), we characterize informality by the absence of any legal agreement of any form underpinning a collaboration between an academic institution (public research organization or university) and a non-academic partner (firms, government agencies, non-profit organizations, etc.). In contrast with previous studies, however, we establish a mutually exclusive differentiation between formal and informal collaborations: we define a collaboration between a researcher and a partner as informal when this has not been formalized at all through any legal instrument of any type or form involving the academic organization.…”