Choice of Structure, Business Model and Portfolio: Organizational Models of Knowledge Transfer Offices in British Universities
| Date | 01 October 2017 |
| Author | Abhijit Sengupta,Amit S. Ray |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8551.12224 |
| Published date | 01 October 2017 |
British Journal of Management, Vol. 28, 687–710 (2017)
DOI: 10.1111/1467-8551.12224
Choice of Structure, Business Model
and Portfolio: Organizational Models
of Knowledge Transfer Oces in
British Universities
Abhijit Sengupta and Amit S. Ray1
Essex Business School, University of Essex, UK, and 1Centre for International Trade and Development,
Jawaharlal Nehru University, India
Corresponding author email: asengua@essex.ac.uk
This paper addresses the gap in the knowledge transfer literature around how universi-
ties choose specific organizational models for their knowledge transfer oces (KTOs).
Organization theory points towards strong interlinkages betweenstrategy, structure and
processes in organizations. This motivates an exploration of similar links within the or-
ganizational setup of KTOs. In doing so, the paper provides a unified theoretical frame-
work around a university’s choice of structure, business model and strategic preferences
for their KTOs linked to university-specificcontextual factors. A qualitative approach is
used wherein fourvery distinct British universities are examined as individual case studies.
The authors find that strategic aims of the universityaround practitioner engagement, the
quantity of applied research and researchspecialization are key factors in determining the
organizational characteristics of the KTO. The theoretical framework derived from the
cases makes two key contributions to the university knowledge transfer literature. First,
it links the university-level contextual factors to the local model of knowledge transfer.
Second, it allows us to develop a set of generic models of knowledge transfer,which can
potentially guide universities to develop their own specific models.
Introduction
University research and its subsequent impact on
industry have been the focus of discussion in both
academic and policy-making circles for a long
This project was funded by the JNU-Essex Development
Fund (JEDF) administered by University of Essex, UK,
and Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), India. The au-
thors would like to thank all respondents from the uni-
versities of Oxford,Durham, Cranfield and Essex. Special
thanks go to Dr Janice Pittis and Ville Karhusaari from
the Research and Enterprise Oce atEssex for their con-
stant support. We are grateful to all participants of the
ESRC sponsored Impact workshopheld at University of
Essex for very helpful comments and feedback. Finally,
we would like to thank the anonymous referees whose
helpful suggestions led to significant improvements in the
paper.
time (Acs, Audretschand Feldman, 1992; Berman,
1990; Lee and Bozeman, 2005). Universities are
no longer considered to be just ‘ivory towers’,
solely for the creation of new knowledge and ed-
ucation, but are increasingly viewed as key players
in the process of dissemination of this knowledge
in forms useful to practitioners (Thursby and
Thursby, 2002). Universities are increasingly con-
sidered to be ‘entrepreneurial’ (Etzkowitz et al.,
2000; Guerrero and Urbano, 2012; Guerrero
et al., 2016), and are seen to play a key role in
driving entrepreneurship alongside innovation
(Guerrero and Urbano, 2014). This connection
between the traditional knowledge-creation func-
tion and the more recent knowledge exploitation
function, often labelled ‘knowledge transfer’
(KT), has encouraged a growing bodyof literature
© 2017 British Academy of Management. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4
2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA, 02148, USA.
688 A. Sengupta and A. S. Ray
examining its antecedents, impacts, role, motiva-
tion and engagement of key players (researchers,
firms, universities). In contrast, relatively little
attention has been paid to the organizational
aspects of KT,the locally implemented framework
within which it is carried out, and the choice
made about various aspects of this framework by
university managers and the Knowledge Transfer
Oce’s (KTO) relationship with researchers
(Huyghe et al., 2016; Perkmann et al., 2013).
Universities as organizations have evolved
in their entrepreneurial outlook and developed
relevant internal processes to support their in-
creasingly important KT activities (Ambos et al.,
2008; Phan and Siegel, 2006). Generally, such
activities have been funnelled through dedicated
administrative units linkedto the university, acting
as a conduit between university researchers and
the external world. These administrative units,
often referred to as the KTO, have grown in
importance and are increasingly seen as crucial in-
gredients within the KT process of any university
(Huyghe et al., 2016; Siegel, Veugelers and Wright,
2007).
Prior research examined the link between
KT outcomes and KTOs from various perspec-
tives, such as researchers’ incentives (Lach and
Schankerman, 2004; Link and Siegel, 2005), man-
agerial incentives (Belenzon and Schankerman,
2009) and eciency of KTOs (Chapple et al.,
2005). However, systematic studies on KTOs
themselves, their organizational characteristics,
scope and role, are fewer and significantly nar-
rower in focus (mostly limited to policies on man-
aging disclosures, patenting, licensing and spinout
activities). At the same time, these studies have
viewed KTOs from a unidirectional perspective,
where givencharacteristics of a KTO are examined
for impact on specific outcomes (for researchers,
universities, industries or the economy). It has,
however, been established that KTOs arealso will-
ing to explore new models and paradigms of KT
(Martin, 2012; Sharifi, Liu and Ismail, 2013), and
the changes they themselves undergo should not be
overlooked.
Knowledge Transfer Oces do not function in
isolation from the rest of the university and are
governed by the same overarching principles and
strategies of the parent organization. Hence, it is
expected that the KT processes, the KTO’s struc-
ture, its preferred modes of interaction and its re-
lationship with the rest of the organization will
be conditioned by the university’s own context,
history and characteristics.In fact, KTOs coevolve
with the parent organizationover time, i.e. changes
to the university are reflected in the KTO as well.
This in turn has implications on the impact gen-
eration and entrepreneurial processes being chan-
nelled through the KTO, thus modifying the KT
interface (Lockett et al., 2005).
It is well established that entrepreneurial uni-
versities should embrace the need for change
in response to the emerging external business
environment (Siegel and Wright, 2015; Siegel,
Veugelers and Wright, 2007). The need for a
university to have a dynamic and entrepreneurial
outlook is increasingly seen as crucial, given
that the overall economic climate has been in a
constant state of flux in recent years (Etzkowitz
et al., 2000; Guerrero et al., 2016; Miller, McAdam
and McAdam, 2014). Knowledge Transfer Of-
fices play the role of a coordinator, champion
and the ‘institutional entrepreneur’ in the KT
process (Siegel, Veugelers and Wright, 2007), and
hence the overarching changes in the university
are mirrored in them (Sharifi, Liu and Ismail,
2013).
This paper examines how the organizational
characteristics of KTOs are shaped by the lo-
cal contextual characteristics of the university in
which they are situated. It explores the links be-
tween the university context, particularly organi-
zational strategy and nature of research carried
out, with how its KTO is structured and managed.
Taking an inductive approach, this study extends
the theoretical understanding of how universities
and their KTOs shape a local model of KT, based
on their specific needs. This is supported through
a set of qualitative case studies,which explore a set
of specific models of KT in the UK and their links
with university specific factors.
Organizational literature has indicated that
interlinkages exist between overall strategy and
structure (Cummings and Worley, 2015) and that
centralization, specialization and dierentiation
are key factors behind the success of innovative or-
ganizations (Damanpour,1991; Wolfe, 1994). This
leads us to focus on three aspects of a KTO’s activi-
ties within an entrepreneurial university. First is its
structure, i.e.the nature of its relationship with in-
ternal stakeholders within the university. That the
structure of a KTO is crucial in determining KT
outcomes has been established (Bercovitz et al.,
2001), but how structureitself isdetermined within
© 2017 British Academy of Management.
To continue reading
Request your trial