Drivers for University Research Performance: Investigating the Researchers’ Dynamics

Abstract

Universities provide the foundations for a nation's social, cultural, economic and technological progress. Beside the academic programmes offered by the universities that build the human capital, research activities are the other pillar of academia that help to drive a nation's progress. Andersson (2010) identified research environment and researchers dynamics as the key factors that impact the quality of research in universities. The aim of this paper is to investigate the researchers' dynamics resulting in excellent research performance by a university, and hence to derive lessons regarding university research performance. Specifically, the paper explores researchers' profiles in terms of their achievements over the past five years, their attributes, behaviour and attitude. This was achieved by using a case study approach (Eisenhardt, 1989 andYin, 1994). The identified top commercialisation producer among the universities in Malaysia, namely Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM), was selected for the case study. This paper highlights the findings.

The Influence of Personal and Organizational Factors on Researchers’ Attitudes towards Sustainable Research Productivity in Saudi Universities

“…Universities provide the foundations for the nation, society, culture, technology, and economy. The academic programmes offered by academic institutions help to build human capital and research activities [1]. According to Hladchenko [2], knowledge is the most important component for a nation to progress.…”

Open Innovation in Universities: The Relationship Between Innovation and Commercialisation

“…To accommodate and support these needs, strategic objectives and flexible policies are a strong priority for university's third mission of gaining commercial advantages (Ab. Aziz et al ., ). Specifically, public universities increasingly require senior managers with strategic leadership skills (Siegel et al ., ).…”

“…However, there is little progress in the research commercialisation rate (Govindaraju et al ., ; Ab. Aziz et al ., ) with 95% of university research outcomes failing to be commercialised (OECD, ). The public university system in Malaysia has adopted the Western university research model.…”

“…Although there have been studies of organisational research and innovation in Malaysia (Govindaraju et al ., ; Tan and Nasurdin, ; Ab. Aziz et al ., ; Ismail, ; Azmi and Alavi, ), very little research has examined the influence of open innovation on commercialisation success between universities and industry.…”

“…Aziz et al . () on the commercialisation practices of a public research focused university in Malaysia indicated that several mechanisms were in place to improve commercialisation success. However, the study found that a lack of participation between university researchers and industry actors was due to many barriers including teaching loads and administrative duties.…”