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“One foot in industry, the other in academia”: Why professional services want adjunct professors as employees?

Nataliya Galan (School of Business, Economics and IT, University West, Trollhättan, Sweden)

Baltic Journal of Management

ISSN: 1746-5265

Article publication date: 23 April 2018

Issue publication date: 13 September 2018

466

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to examine professional service firms’ (PSFs) motives and benefits related to their engagement in knowledge transfer interactions with universities via their employees also acting as adjunct professors (APs).

Design/methodology/approach

The study adopts a qualitative approach relying mainly on data collected via semi-structured interviews with both top managers and APs employed by five engineering consultancies operating in Sweden.

Findings

The findings suggest that, while seeking stability is the major determinant of engagement in relations with universities via APs, PSFs highpoint the significance of reciprocity and legitimacy motives. The most substantial benefits appear to be related to firms’ access to academic research, core competencies and human resource development as well as marketing outcomes. Benefits are found to be dynamic in character with higher-order benefits being generated by low-order over time.

Research limitations/implications

The findings rely on a small sample of PSFs and should be verified by future research with larger samples of PSFs operating in a broader range of industries and national contexts.

Practical implications

The study results may be of interest to managers of both firms and universities interested in establishing, formalising or broadening university-industry interactions.

Originality/value

The study advances the current knowledge on the rationales of service firms engaged in various university-industry knowledge transfer interactions by making empirical and conceptual contributions to the understanding of adjunct professorship as a particular form of such interactions.

Keywords

Acknowledgements

The author is very grateful to all participants in the study. Without their valuable contributions and insights, this study would never have been possible. The author would also like to acknowledge constructive comments from the participants at the Uddevalla Symposium XX (15-17 June 2017, Trollhättan, Sweden), where the earlier findings of this study were presented. The author gives special thanks to the editor as well as two anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments.

Citation

Galan, N. (2018), "“One foot in industry, the other in academia”: Why professional services want adjunct professors as employees?", Baltic Journal of Management, Vol. 13 No. 4, pp. 433-450. https://doi.org/10.1108/BJM-11-2017-0358

Publisher

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Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2018, Emerald Publishing Limited

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