BUILDING ENDURING UNIVERSITY-INDUSTRY RELATIONSHIPS: SHAPING AND DEPLOYING A FUNDING WHIRLPOOL IS TIME WELL SPENT.

Abstract

Sponsored in part by the National Science Foundation, this paper investigates specific strategies utilized by faculty and administrators to build enduring research partnerships with for-profit firms. Following the literature and utilizing theories of professionalization, we focus on interpersonal relationships as important well springs of funding opportunities and explore the strategies (if any) faculty utilize to maintain and extend their autonomy as well as the strategies (if any) administrators use to manage faculty's relationships with firms. We conducted lengthy, probing in person interviews of 49 faculty and administrators and discovered their efforts to sustain research funding by developing complex webs of connections that provide access to individuals, knowledge, know-how, materials, equipment, and resources. These exchanges disregard any academic boundaries that might exist, spanning the traditional research realms of federal agencies, corporate foundations, and philanthropic institutions, and stretching to embrace the commercial marketplace with its venture capitalists, production managers, and corporate buyers. Our findings suggest that both faculty and administrators utilize strategies to build and leverage funding whirlpools to sustain research groups and industrial partnerships. As predicted by theories of professionalization, faculty develop webs of relationships that diminish administrative control and administrators create connections that divert faculty activities to benefit the institution. This paper describes the existence, formation, and strength of