Abstract:
University-industry research partnerships are crucial for promoting
university entrepreneurship. Faculty as key instigators play a critical role
in developing such partnerships. Previous studies demonstrate that
faculty engagement depends on a diverse set of factors. Drawing on
individual interviews with 76 faculty members from eight public and
private universities in Kazakhstan, this study explores factors affecting
faculty decisions to engage in industry research partnerships in a
developing country. Applying the personal engagement theory, we
found that despite perceiving industry partnerships as personally
meaningful and being driven by extrinsic and intrinsic motivations,
faculty engagement in industry research partnerships in Kazakhstan is
limited. The reasons for this are faculty members’ feelings of low safety
and availability caused by structural-, organisational- and individual-
level barriers and challenges. We also found that some of these barriers
and challenges can be more specific for developing countries that tend
to have immature economies, suffer from corruption, have limited
research capacity, and invest less in research activities.
