Follow the Leader or the Pack? Regulatory Focus and Academic Entrepreneurial Intentions

Abstract

Drawing on the academic entrepreneurship and regulatory focus theory literature, and applying a multilevel perspective, this paper examines why university academics intend to engage in formal (spin‐off or start‐up companies and licensing university research) or informal (collaborative research, contract research, continuous professional development, and contract consulting) commercialization activities and the role local contextual factors, in particular leaders and work‐group colleagues (peers), play in their commercialization choices. Based on a survey of 395 science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) academics working in 14 Scottish universities, the research findings suggest that an individual's chronic regulatory focus has a direct effect on their formal and informal commercialization intent. The results reveal that the stronger an individual's chronic promotion focus the stronger their formal and informal commercialization intentions and a stronger individual chronic prevention focus leads to weaker intentions to engage in informal commercialization. In addition, when contextual interaction effects are considered, leaders and workplace colleagues have different influences on commercialization intent. On the one hand, promotion‐focused leaders can strengthen and prevention‐focused leaders can under certain circumstances weaken a promotion‐focused academic's formal commercialization intent. On the other hand, the level of workplace colleague engagement, acting as a reference point, strengthens not only promotion‐focused academics’ intent to engage in formal commercialization activities, but also prevention‐focused academics’ corresponding informal commercialization intent. As such, universities should consider the appointment of leaders who are strong role models and have a track record in formal and/or informal commercialization activities and also consider the importance workplace colleagues have on moderating an academic's intention to engage in different forms of commercialization activities.

Logics, Leaders, Lab Coats: A Multi‐Level Study on How Institutional Logics are Linked to Entrepreneurial Intentions in Academia

“…Furthermore, our study qualifies existing theory on the role of leaders for academic entrepreneurship (e.g., Bercovitz and Feldman, ; Brettel et al, ; Johnson et al, ; Krabel and Schacht, ). Prior research has established that academic leaders are crucial for science commercialization, as they may inspire their researchers to engage in academic entrepreneurship.…”

“…Second, this study identifies organizational‐level institutional logics as contextual conditions that shape leaders’ influences and additionally serve as contingencies for these influences. In doing so, the present study expands our knowledge of the role of leaders in fostering entrepreneurship in academia (Bercovitz and Feldman, ; Johnson et al, ) and other settings (Phan et al, ). Third, by providing theory and evidence of a complex interplay of influences that emanate from different contextual levels, our study informs research in the field of academic entrepreneurship and in other fields on how our understanding of phenomena of interest can be enriched by multi‐level theorizing (Hitt et al, ; Kim et al, ).…”

“…Because supervisors have a high status, they are credible sources of information about what is appreciated and can be achieved in that organizational context (Settoon and Adkins, 1997;Weiss, 1977). Thus, leaders with entrepreneurial track records will serve as entrepreneurial role models for their subordinate researchers (Johnson et al, 2017;Van Auken et al, 2006).…”

Academic Engagement: A Review of the Literature 2011-2019

“…Previous entrepreneurship experience (founding a company) has a more ambiguous effect. Johnson et al (2017) find that it has no effect on academic engagement -in their words "informal commercialisation" -intention amongst STEM academics in Scottish universities. Using a different measure for entrepreneurship, Barbieri et al (2018) determine that in Italy co-publishing with their own firm reduces academics' copublications with other firms.…”

“…Introducing the psychological construct of regulatory focus, Johnson et al (2017) in their Scottish study suggest that an academic's intention to engage is positively impacted by their chronic promotion focus (an individual "plays to win"), and negatively affected by their chronic prevention focus (an individual seeks to avoid failure). This result may point to the nature of academic engagements as a supplementary activity in an academic's portfolio.…”