What Can Scholars do to Better Trade-off Between Their Core Functions and Their Transfer Activities?

Abstract

This article examines the extent to which Canadian business scholars’ activities are complements or substitutes. It also attempts to explore the heterogeneities in the determinants of these activities. A Multivariate Probit model is estimated to take into account the fact that, in practice, business scholars have to consider simultaneously whether or not to undertake many different academic activities. Overall, the results reveal that there are complementarities between publications and citations, publications and knowledge spillovers transfer, citations and consulting, and between consulting and knowledge spillovers transfer. The results also suggest that there are substitution effects between publications and teaching, publications and administrative load, citations and teaching load, and teaching load and administrative load. As for the extent to which explanatory variables explain the various business scholars’ activities, results show that public funding is significant and positively associated with publications, citations, and knowledge spillovers transfer. Likewise, private funding and a scholar’s strategies are significant and positively associated with consulting and knowledge spillovers transfer, whilst they are significant and negatively associated with teaching load and administrative load. Results also show that business schools’ reputation is significant and positively related to publications and citations, while it is significant and negatively related to teaching load.