Knowledge transfer profiles of public research organisations: the role of fields of knowledge specialisation

The Nature of Academic Entrepreneurship in the UK: Widening the Focus on Entrepreneurial Activities

Eva M de la Torre, Maryam Ghorbankhani, Federica Rossi and Marti Sagarra

Science and Public Policy, 2021, vol. 48, issue 6, 860-876

Abstract: While public research organisations (PROs) are increasingly expected to transfer knowledge to businesses and other stakeholders, their engagement in knowledge transfer (KT) activities is still under-researched. Better understanding of PROs’ KT engagement, including how it is shaped by PROs’ organisational characteristics, could lead to better tailored policies in support to PROs’ effort to transfer knowledge. We develop a conceptual framework linking PROs’ specialisation in different fields of knowledge to their profiles of KT engagement and validate it empirically using a six-year panel data set of 33 PROs in the UK. We use multidimensional scaling and cluster analysis techniques to identify three distinct KT profiles, which are stable over time, and strongly associated with the PROs’ knowledge field specialisation. We argue that these profiles may depend on the different market readiness and user specificity of knowledge outputs arising from different fields of knowledge and derive implications for theory, policy, and practice.

Keywords: public research organisations (PROs); multidimensional scaling; knowledge transfer; knowledge bases; market readiness; user specificity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/scipol/scab061 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:scippl:v:48:y:2021:i:6:p:860-876.

Access Statistics for this article

Science and Public Policy is currently edited by Nicoletta Corrocher, Jeong-Dong Lee, Mireille Matt and Nicholas Vonortas

More articles in Science and Public Policy from Oxford University Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().