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 chapter adopts an institutional perspective to understand how organizational characteristics affect research scientists’ entrepreneurial intentions. We study the impact of university culture and climate on entrepreneurial intentions, thereby specifically focusing on intentions to spin off a company. 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’ spin-off intentions. 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 intentions. This study has implications for both academics and practitioners, including university managers and policy makers.
A revised version of this article was accepted for publication in The Journal of Technology Transfer; DOI 10.1007/s10961-014-9333-3.
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Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank the interviewed technology transfer officers for their participation, as well as all respondents who completed the online survey. The first author also gratefully acknowledges the financial support provided by Research Foundation Flanders (FWO) in undertaking this research. We would further like to thank the organizers and participants of the T2S Conference in Bergamo, November 2013, for their feedback on this chapter.
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Huyghe, A., Knockaert, M. (2016). The Relationship Between University Culture and Climate and Research Scientists’ Spin-off Intentions. In: Audretsch, D., Lehmann, E., Meoli, M., Vismara, S. (eds) University Evolution, Entrepreneurial Activity and Regional Competitiveness. International Studies in Entrepreneurship, vol 32. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-17713-7_1
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