Academic Engagement at Canadian and Finnish Business Schools

Abstract

Academic engagement—research collaboration and informal networking between academic researchers and practitioners—has been shown to be much more common than commercialization activities and to give rise to new, both academically valuable and practically relevant insights and to contribute to innovation. Critics argue, however, that it compromises scientific rigor of business school research. To understand this relatively little studied phenomenon, we conducted a case study comparing the ‘standard’ North American arm’s length academic engagement mode represented by Canadian business schools with the ‘deviant’ collaboration mode dominant at Finnish business schools. Description of these two cases allowed us to conceptualize key dimensions of the national and institutional context shaping academic engagement in business schools as well as to identify microfoundations of such engagement. Implications for business school researchers, managers and public policy are suggested. Key words: academic engagement, business school research, innovation, rigor versus relevance