Search results

The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between the participation in commercially- and socially-oriented Academics' Societal Engagement (ASE) activities, partnership choices, and funding preferences of academics working in public and private universities from Chile and Turkey. Chile represents a private-dominant higher education system (HES), while Turkey is public-dominant. This article presents the results of an international survey, the Academic Profession in Knowledge-based Society (APIKS), applied to academics from over 20 countries, including Chile and Turkey.

Through a quantitative analysis the authors analyse how the dominant institutional type influences ASE activities, partnership choices, and funding preferences.

Results from the analysis show that being part of a public or private university does not solely explain the activity type that academics engage with. Moreover, the rate of Chilean academics participating in ASE activities is more than twice that of Turkish academics regardless of the public-private distinction.

Further research about the academic life and ASE activities using a qualitative approach can complement this study. Applying further in-depth interviews to obtain more information from external partners can provide different perspectives and help to better understand the ASE activities. Additional analysis could compare external activities by higher education institution (HEI) type regarding vocational/technical centres since the Chilean and Turkish private HEIs included in this study received a mix of public-private funds and are considered not-for-profit, so extending this research to include for-profit private HEIs may be worthwhile for additional comparison.

More support and funding for the development of commercially-oriented ASE activities is recommended for Chile and Turkey's HES. In Turkey, a law-update in 2017 facilitates the establishment of technology transfer offices (TTOs) as companies within universities (Author, 2019). Though it is too early to know its effects, a positive contribution is anticipated. Centred Chile's private dominant HES, it would be appropriate for this type of system to also create different support structures to incentivise socially-oriented external activities and partnership opportunities. As done in other universities, the establishment of a community engagement office may provide professional guidance for partnership creations. Regardless of a country's HE public/private dominance, diverse sources of funding and support mechanisms can also be created to strengthen organisational and financial autonomy facilitating academics' participation in ASE activities. For example, universities can develop institutional policies to support academic establishment, lead or join in administration of non-governmental organisations, or form institutional media to deliver academics' viewpoints of social issues to the larger and non-academic audience. University managers should also empower the connection between academics and industry and business sector through different organisational structures such as Research Office, Science Park Incubators, Career Centre, while guiding and financially supporting academics' research commercialisation by their TTO experience and sources.

The literature has studied the public-private higher education distinction in vast aspects, however, no empirical studies have explored it concerning ASE. Chile and Turkey propose interesting cases since they represent opposite ends considering the public-private predominance of higher education systems. Turkey exhibits a heavy public predominance, whereas Chile has a significantly strong private system.

This article explores whether six broad categories of activities undertaken by Canadian business scholars’ academics: publications record, citations record, teaching load, administrative load, consulting activities, and knowledge spillovers transfer, are complementary, substitute, or independent, as well as the conditions under which complementarities, substitution and independence among these activities are likely to occur.

A multivariate probit model is estimated to take into account that business scholars have to consider simultaneously whether or not to undertake many different academic activities. Metrics from Google Scholar of scholars from 35 Canadian business schools, augmented by a survey data on factors explaining the productivity and impact performances of these faculty members, are used to explain the heterogeneities between the determinants of these activities.

Overall, the results reveal that there are complementarities between publications and citations, publications and knowledge spillovers transfer, citations and consulting, and between consulting and knowledge spillovers transfer. The results also suggest that there are substitution effects between publications and teaching, publications and administrative load, citations and teaching load, and teaching load and administrative load. Moreover, results show that public and private funding, business schools’ reputation, scholar’s relational resources, and business school size are among the most influential variables on the scholar’s portfolio of activities.

This study considers simultaneously the scholar’s whole portfolio of activities. Moreover, the determinants considered in this study to explain scholars’ engagement in different activities reconcile two conflicting perspectives: (1) the traditional self-managed approach of academics, and (2) the outcomes-focused approach of university management.

Academic library consortia activity has become an integral part of academic libraries’ operations. Consortia have come to assert considerable bargaining power over publishers and have provided libraries with considerable economic advantage. They interact with publishers both as consumers of publishers’ products, with much stronger bargaining power than individual libraries hold, and, increasingly, as rival publishers themselves. Are consortia changing the relationship between academic libraries and publishers? Is the role of academic library consortia placing academic libraries in a position that should and will attract the attention of competition policy regulators? Competition policy prohibits buying and selling cartels that can negatively impact the free market on which the Canadian economic system, like other Western economies, depends. Competition policy as part of economic policy is, however, only relevant where we are concerned with aspects of the market economy. Traditionally, public goods for the greater social and cultural benefit of society are not considered part of the market economic system. If the activities of academic library consortia are part of that public good perspective, competition policy may not be a relevant concern. Using evidence gained from in-depth interviews from a national sample of university librarians and from interviews with the relevant federal government policy makers, this research establishes whether library consortia are viewed as participating in the market economy of Canada or not. Are consortia viewed by librarians and government as serving a public good role of providing information for a greater social and cultural benefit or are they seen from a market-economic perspective of changing power relations with publishers? Findings show government has little in-depth understanding of academic library consortia activity, but would most likely consider such activity predominantly from a market economic perspective. University librarians view consortia from a public good perspective but also as having an important future role in library operations and in changing the existing scholarly publishing paradigm. One-third of librarian respondents felt that future consortia could compete with publishers by becoming publishers and through initiatives such as open source institutional repositories. Librarians also felt that consortia have had a positive effect on librarians’ professional roles through the facilitation of knowledge building and collaboration opportunities outside of the home institution.

This paper explores variation in the events or activities Education doctoral students describe as contributing to their feeling of being an academic or belonging to an academic community as well as difficulties they experience. The results (drawing principally on students in a Canadian research‐intensive university though with some in a UK university) demonstrate a rich variation in multiple formative activities that are experienced as contributing to a developing identity as an academic, with many lying outside formal and semi‐formal aspects of the doctorate. Yet, at the same time students report tensions in the very sorts of activities they often find significant and positive in the development of their identity. We see this analysis as offering much‐needed insights into the formative role of cumulative day‐to‐day activities in the development of academic identity.

Roles of academic libraries have recently been regularly discussed among Library and Information Science (LIS) scientists and practitioners. A shift of roles induced by various factors forces academic libraries to reconsider their operational guidelines and plan future scenarios. This article provides an analysis of the framing of roles assumed by academic libraries and identifies key factors and agents that influence the process. Research consisted of an analysis of official strategic documents of Lithuanian state-owned universities that are of great importance to the strategic development of academic libraries and the anchoring of their roles. Applying Laclau and Mouffe’s (2001) discourse theory and the concepts of new institutionalism as a theoretical approach, key factors and agents influential to the role of academic libraries were identified. Modernity, market, and quality as three interrelated discourses highlight the proposition that modernity is inseparable from the development of information technologies and infrastructure and that various professional networks in the library environment act as powerful institutional agents. Practices of market law application in universities have influence on the institutional logic of libraries which increasingly relies on the criteria of efficiency and rationality.

Several frameworks have been developed to map and document scientific societal interaction and impact, each reflecting the specific forms of impact and interaction that characterize different academic fields. The ReAct taxonomy was developed to register data about “productive interactions” and provide an overview of research activities within the social sciences and humanities (SSH). The purpose of the present research is to examine whether the SSH-oriented taxonomy is relevant to the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) disciplines when clarifying societal interactions and impact, and whether the taxonomy adds value to the traditional STEM impact indicators such as citation scores and H-index.

The research question was investigated through qualitative interviews with nine STEM researchers. During the interviews, the ReAct taxonomy and visual research profiles based on the ReAct categories were used to encourage and ensure in-depth discussions. The visual research profiles were based on publicly available material on the research activities of the interviewees.

The study provided an insight into how STEM researchers assessed the importance of mapping societal interactions as a background for describing research impact, including which indicators are useful for expressing societal relevance and impact. With regard to the differences between STEM and SSH, the study identified a high degree of cohesion and uniformity in the importance of indicators. Differences were more closely related to the purpose of mapping and impact assessment than between scientific fields. The importance of amalgamation and synergy between academic and societal activities was also emphasised and clarified.

The findings highlight the importance of mapping societal activities and impact, and that societal indicators should be seen as inspiring guidelines depending on purpose and use. A significant contribution is the identification of both uniformity and diversity between the main fields of SSH and STEM, as well as the connection between the choice of indicators and the purpose of mapping, e.g. for impact measurement, profiling, or career development.

The work sheds light on STEM researchers' views on research mapping, visualisation and impact assessment, including similarities and differences between STEM and SSH research.

This study aims to examine the perceived role of libraries and contributions to the internationalization of higher education and identify the available library services for international students and faculty.

This descriptive research used a survey method to study the different activities and practices of the internationalization of academic libraries.

The results of this study reveal that academic libraries support the teaching, learning and research needs of international students and faculty members, provide library instruction for international students to acquire information literacy skills and promote the rationale and goals of the institution's internationalization activities. Many respondents are engaged in staff development with internationalization dimensions and international library benchmarking and research paper presentation at international conferences with institutional support.

The results of this study could benefit the profession and library managers by deepening the managers' understanding of the role of libraries in the internationalization of Philippine higher education.

This study will be of interest and value to library and school administrators interested in developing or expanding internationalization activities that positively respond to the redefinition of the role of libraries and librarians in globalization.

The purpose of this paper is to report on research that examined the potential affects of academic library consortia activity on the scholarly publishing cycle.

Semi‐structured interviews of 30 university librarians from across Canada and representatives from six federal government agencies involved in university funding, copyright and competition policy, were used to examine consortia activity in the broad context of the scholarly publishing cycle from the competing perspectives of the market economy and the public good. The principles of competition and copyright were used to define the theoretical premise of the research.

University librarians primarily see consortia activity as supporting academic libraries' public good role of providing access to information as equitably and as barrier‐free as possible. They saw consortia as more than just buying clubs, but also as a means for libraries to share resources and expertise. Federal government agency representatives saw consortia activity firmly anchored in the market economy, levelling the playing field between libraries and publishers, and providing libraries opportunities to leverage their budgets.

This research was unique to the Canadian situation of federal funding of universities and only a sampling of university librarians was feasible.

The results show a need to educate librarians and government funding bodies and policy makers as to the goals and outcomes of consortia activity.

At the time of the defence of the thesis this work had not been done before.

Academic entrepreneurship is seen as a pathway for universities to create value from their knowledge. However, there has been a lack of clarity about what activities constitute academic entrepreneurship, the different type of entrepreneurial academics and how their perceptions of their environment relate to their engagement.

Drawing on a large data set of 10,836 responses across 33 countries, the empirical study investigates European academics who undertake four academic entrepreneurship activities (spin-out creation, commercialisation of R&D results, joint R&D and consulting) to determine if they perceive the environment for academic entrepreneurship differently than those who undertake only some of the activities and those undertaking none at all.

The findings show that less than 1% of academics undertake exclusively spin-offs creation or R&D commercialisation; however, the majority also engage in other entrepreneurial activities such as joint R&D and consulting and even other education and management engagement activities with industry. In addition, entrepreneurial academics in Europe perceive significantly higher motivators and more developed supporting mechanisms for academic entrepreneurship. However, their perceptions of barriers are similar.

At a managerial and policy level, the study results call into question universities prioritising a narrow view of academic entrepreneurship which focusses only on spin-offs creation and R&D commercialisation. Instead, a broader view of academic entrepreneurship is recommended and appropriate mechanisms in place to enable academics to achieve research outcomes from their entrepreneurial activity.

This paper offers an important contribution on how the perception of the environment contributes to the development of entrepreneurial behaviour in individual academics.

This study aims to investigate how actors’ responses to competing logics (academic and business logics) in budgetary practices in a university setting in Tanzania were shaped by state pressure, market pressure and organizational characteristics (funding certainty and changes in university ownership) and how actors’ agency was exercised in enacting competing logics.

The data for this study were collected from interviews, observations, informal discussions and document review. The data analysis processes were guided by institutional logic concepts and the role of actors’ agency.

The findings demonstrate how academic logic traditionally subsisted in a university setting in which there was funding certainty. Changes in the university’s ownership resulted in funding uncertainty. Market and state pressure increased the intensity of funding uncertainty, which supported business logic. While market logic supported the emergence of business logic, state pressure altered the balance of the competing logics. University actors responded by selective coupling and compartmentalizing where both elements of academic and business logics were enacted. While managers prioritized business logic, academics prioritized academic logic. However, the role of agency was exercised in actors’ responses, subverting both academic and business logics.

Managers should appropriately enact both elements of competing logics to avoid marginalization of some of the core university activities. In addition, profitable business ideas should be considered, identified, planned and implemented successfully. Moreover, there is a need to change the historically contingent and culturally situated environment when enacting competing logics. Furthermore, the state influence on universities should be considered to prevent unnecessary uncertainties in budgetary practices.

The paper demonstrates how selective coupling and compartmentalizing strategies were used by actors to enact both elements of competing logics in budgetary practices in a university setting. It further shows how actors’ agency influenced and subverted competing logics. The paper, thus, responds to the recent calls to investigate the influence of institutional logics on control practices, and the role of actors in strategically handling different logics in developing countries (Damayanthi and Gooneratne, 2017; Argento et al., 2020; Anessi-Pessina et al., 2016; Grossi et al., 2020). It further suggests new analysis of academic and business logics in their context.