University Technology Transfer offices: the search for identity to build legimacy

Conor O'Kane (), Vincent Mangematin (), Will Geoghegan () and Ciara Fitzgerald ()
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Conor O'Kane: Department of Management - University of Otago [Dunedin, Nouvelle-Zélande]
Vincent Mangematin: MTS - Management Technologique et Strategique - EESC-GEM Grenoble Ecole de Management
Will Geoghegan: Whitman School of Management - Syracuse University
Ciara Fitzgerald: UCC - University College Cork

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Abstract: Technology transfer offices (TTOs) are of strategic importance to universities committed to the commercialization of academic knowledge. Within the university, TTOs' relationship with academics and management is single agent-multiple principal. When two principals exist in an agency relationship, conflicting expectations can naturally arise. We explore how TTOs build legitimacy by shaping identity with university academics and management. In undertaking this research we draw on 63 interviews with TTO executives across 22 universities in the Ireland, New Zealand and the United States. We find that TTOs use identity-conformance and identity-manipulation to shape a dual identity, one scientific and the other business, with academics and management respectively. We show how this combination of identity strategies is ineffective for legitimizing the TTO. We propose that TTOs' identity shaping strategies are incomplete and need to incorporate a wholly distinctive identity to complement and reinforce preliminary legitimacy claims made through conformance and manipulation. We discuss the potential implications of these findings for scholars, TTO executives and university management.

Keywords: Technology transfer office; legitimacy; identity; strategy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cse
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (48)

Published in Research Policy, 2015, 44 (2), pp.421-437. ⟨10.1016/j.respol.2014.08.003⟩

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-01072998

DOI: 10.1016/j.respol.2014.08.003

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