Perceived chances for promotion among women associate professors in computing: individual, departmental, and entrepreneurial factors

This article expands understanding of gender and advancement in academic science by going into a new dimension of inquiry: Focusing on women associate professors in computing, it assesses the relationship between perceived chances for promotion to full professor and indicators of entrepreneurship, as part of key sets of individual and departmental independent variables that are also addressed. Data from a national survey of women in academic computing indicate that time spent in entrepreneurial activity does not predict excellent/good (compared to fair/poor) chances for promotion perceived by these women faculty, nor does the quantity/quality of entrepreneurial activity that they report for their home units. Departmental reward structures reported as favoring entrepreneurial activity negatively predict perceived chances for promotion. Other key individual and departmental characteristics also predict chances for promotion: faculty members’ age, collaboration, family characteristics, departmental climate, and US (compared to Canadian) location. Findings from interviews with a small subset of respondents to the survey illuminate the survey findings on the role of entrepreneurial factors in perceived chances for advancement.     

The Impact of Gender and Department Climate on Job Satisfaction and Intentions to Quit for Faculty in Science and Engineering Fields

This study investigates whether gender and the perceptions of department climate affects faculty job satisfaction and intentions to quit (work outcomes) with surveys responses from 308 faculty members in science and engineering fields. The study finds that both gender and department climate are related to work outcomes and that two facets of department climate (affective and instrumental) mediate the relationship between gender and both job satisfaction and intention to quit. This finding suggests that universities can benefit from improving department climate, which then may improve the retention of both male and female faculty, but may have an even greater impact on improving job satisfaction and reducing intentions to quit of female faculty.     

海上人身伤亡损害赔偿标准类型化研究

将海上人身伤亡赔偿标准类型化,提出了不同类别海上人身伤亡民事赔偿的法定标准或学理标准。以法学解释论为手段,通过规范分析,就现行法上的海上人身伤亡赔偿标准进行合乎立法旨意的阐释和评析,同时还从立法论的视角出发,对海上人身伤亡赔偿标准的应然状态加以研究,提出了通过修法程序修正过时赔偿标准的学术建议。     

Participation, Performance, and Advancement of Women in Academic Science and Engineering: What is at Issue and Why

Using multi-staged methods developed in this research for coding/analysis of interview data, this article portrays women’s reported experiences of participation, performance, and advancement in academic science and engineering in a major technological institution. The methods and findings have implications for understanding the complexity underlying women’s participation and performance, and for practices and policies to support advancement of women faculty, particularly those in research universities.     

University-industry linkages in nanotechnology and biotechnology: evidence on collaborative patterns for new methods of inventing

The nanotechnology and biotechnology “revolutions” are so-called because their enabling technological breakthroughs were not simply inventions, but discoveries of entirely new methods of inventing. We hypothesize that university participants in either or both of these areas will exhibit greater collaboration with industry than researchers in other areas. We explore this hypothesis for 454 faculty members who conducted research that was patented during the period 1994–1999. Because our data include patents, publications, and funding at the individual level, we are able to examine the industry interaction of faculty who participated in the nanotechnology and biotechnology revolutions, as well as the interaction of faculty contributing to other areas of patentable science. We examine a variety of linkages, including sponsored research, consulting, publication with firm employees and measures of the potential for cross-campus collaboration. The results are striking in that they show significant differences in collaborative behavior across patent types and across the major program areas biological sciences, physical sciences and engineering. The results are consistent with a greater degree of tacit knowledge within the new methods of inventing. We also find significant differences in the embryonic nature and importance of patents across areas.     

‘A jack of all trades’: the role of PIs in the establishment and management of collaborative networks in scientific knowledge commercialisation

The commercialisation of scientific knowledge has become a primary objective for universities worldwide. Collaborative research projects are viewed as the key to achieving this objective, however, the role of Principal Investigators (PIs) within these complex multi-stakeholder research projects remains under researched. This paper explores how networks in the scientific knowledge collaboration process are initiated and maintained from a multi-stakeholder perspective. It is based on case study evidence from 82 stakeholders in 17 research collaboration projects in Irish and German universities, which provides for a holistic view of the process, as opposed to prior research which has tended to report findings based on the analysis of one or two stakeholders. It finds that PIs play a lead role in establishing and managing stakeholder networks. This finding is unanimous for all stakeholders, irrespective of research centre size, type and geographical location. Not unlike the entrepreneur, the PI has to be ‘a jack of all trades’, taking on the roles of project manager, negotiator, resource acquirer as well as, the traditional academic role of Ph.D. supervision and mentoring. The findings suggest that PIs are better placed than Technology Transfer Office managers to act as boundary spanners in bridging the gap between science and industry.     

The Sustainability of University-Industry Research Collaboration: An Empirical Assessment

The concept of university-industry collaboration is an important social experiment in the nation's innovation system. This study examines the sustainability of this collaborative experience by focusing on the actual give-and-take outcomes between university faculty members and industrial firms. Based on two separate but similar surveys conducted in 1997, one for faculty members and another for industry technology managers, the study reports that participants in research collaboration appear to realize significant benefits, some expected and others unexpected. The most significant benefit realized by firms is an increased access to new university research and discoveries, and the most significant benefits by faculty members is complementing their own academic research by securing funds for graduate students and lab equipment, and by seeking insights into their own research. Reflecting on their collaborative experience, an overwhelming majority of these participants say that in the future they would expand or at least sustain the present level of collaboration.     

How Do Female and Male Faculty Members Construct Job Satisfaction? The Roles of Perceived Institutional Leadership and Mentoring and their Mediating Processes

In this study we examine how a sample of 248 male and female professors at a Midwestern private research university construct their academic job satisfaction. Our findings indicate that both women and men perceive that their job satisfaction is influenced by the institutional leadership and mentoring they receive, but only as mediated by the two key academic processes of access to internal academic resources (including research-supportive workloads) and internal relational supports from a collegial and inclusive immediate work environment. Gender differences emerged in the strengths of the perceived paths leading to satisfaction: women’s job satisfaction derived more from their perceptions of the internal relational supports than the academic resources they received, whereas men’s job satisfaction resulted equally from their perceptions of internal academic resources and internal relational supports received. Implications for leadership and institutional practices are drawn from the findings.     

‘A Lot of Them Thought I wouldn’t Last There’: African Women and Career Advancement in Academic Scientific Careers

This paper examines the relevance of cultural diversity in studies of women in scientific professions. It is based on a qualitative study of 18 African women in academic scientific careers and representing several English-speaking countries. I investigate how women who seek and gain entry into academic scientific careers are positioned in the academic hierarchy and whether their rate of progress is impeded by exclusionary practices in their professional fields. I also examine whether other interacting circumstances such as development issues, colonial legacies, and the influence of patriarchal states and cultures create somewhat different types of constraints and options for women in academic settings. I address these concerns by investigating the following issues: (1) early career experiences (academic, political, and economic concerns, (2) response from important others (professional colleagues, administrators, and students, (3) reflections on career barriers (faculty rank, research productivity, and perceptions of job satisfaction).JEL Classification: J16, J24     

Disentangling effort and performance: a renewed look at gender differences in commercializing medical school research

Recently, questions about gender gaps in science have extended to academic technology transfer. Using systematic data on US medical school faculty, we capture both behavior and performance, examining the hypothesis that women are less likely than men to commercialize their research findings. We pooled faculty invention data from ten departments in three Academic Health Centers from 1991 to 1998??a period when patenting had become prevalent and other researchers note that a gender gap was pronounced. Rather than focusing on patenting, we capture the first step in the commercialization process, as well as the subsequent successful licensing of faculty inventions to a company. We find no significant gender differences in the likelihood of reporting inventions or successfully commercializing them. We do find differences in the number of inventions reported, however, with women disclosing fewer inventions than their male counterparts. Our results demonstrate that gender effects are highly conditioned by employment context and resources. We attribute differences in our findings with regards to gender to the use of outcome measures that capture both behavior and performance, and the inclusion of a more extensive set of control variables.     

Gender differences in research productivity among criminal justice and criminology scholars

Prior research suggests gaps in productivity by gender in the fields of criminal justice and criminology as well as other academic disciplines. Utilizing survey data from a sample of ASC and ACJS members, this study examined the overall extent of disparity in publishing between female and male academics. It also examined the impact of background, departmental, professional, work load characteristics, and other academic factors on publishing. While males published more than females, the disparity was reduced once other relevant variables, such as career length, time devoted to research, rank, and teaching in a program offering a masters or doctorate, were considered. Finally, the factors that influence productivity among male scholars were found to have a similar effect on female scholarship.     

Boundary-spanning in emerging technology research: determinants of funding success for academic scientists

Emerging technologies, including nanotechnologies, are generally seen as those latest scientific innovations which have a potential impact on industry structure, and commercialization and economic potential. Work in this area of emerging technologies has distinct boundary spanning characteristics from the perspective of academic science. First, many emerging technologies involve collaboration of scientists across disciplinary boundaries. Second, because of the commercializability of many emerging technologies, scientists may interact more often with industry throughout the research and commercialization process. We ask, what are the boundary-spanning characteristics of scientists engaged in emerging technology research and how do those characteristics matter in obtaining funding in this area? We examine the characteristics of academic scientists in the United States who are employed in research intensive institutions and who are engaged in funded research in the area of emerging technologies. We address the factors that predict their grant success in areas of emerging technology. Findings reveal that interdisciplinary activities and industry orientation are both important in predicting funding in areas of emerging technology. Moreover, the findings imply that the emergence of new technologies may offer opportunities for women in low representation fields.     

How much does it cost to be a scientist?

We examine the academe–industry wage gap. Once self-selection and different personal characteristics of academic and industrial scientists have been taken into account the wage gap narrows from 28 to 13 %. The counterfactual wage faced by an academic scientist increases with time spent on development and decreases with time spent on research. This finding challenges the idea of a solely negative relationship between science and wages. We further find that preferences for science augment the relationship between research orientation and wages. Overall, the results have implications for policy makers that aim to increase development oriented research activities at universities, individual scientists thinking about whether to pursue a career in industry or academe, and managers trying to hire academic scientists.     

Entrepreneurship, Secrecy, and Productivity: A Comparison of Clinical and Non-Clinical Life Sciences Faculty

This paper addresses research in the life sciences, responsible for significant national expenditures for scientific investigations funded by both the federal government and industry. Our investigation examines faculty members' involvement with industry in entrepreneurial ways that is, involved in translating their research into potentially marketable knowledge or products. First, this study examines whether there are differences in entrepreneurial behaviour between clinical and non-clinical faculty in the life sciences with industry relationships, and, second, to discover any linkage between entrepreneurship and secrecy or productivity in different ways for clinical and non-clinical faculty. The study is based on survey responses of a national sample of 4,000 clinical and non-clinical life sciences faculty in 49 U.S. research universities. The results show non-clinical faculty as more involved at the back end. The more entrepreneurial end of commercialization while clinical faculty are involved at the back end. The more entrepreneurial faculty (non-clinical) are more likely to be secretive about their research. Clinical faculty are less likely to have been denied access to research results or products. Entrepreneurial faculty are not less productive in their faculty roles. This investigation is preliminary in that it addresses one large area of academic research but excludes fields with longer historical relationships with industry.     

Determinants and public policy implications of academic-industry knowledge transfer in life sciences: a review and a conceptual framework

There is a considerable interest of scholars in benefits and challenges arising from involvement of academic researchers and their institutions in knowledge transfer activities with the business sector. The emerging questions have resulted in a number of studies, yielding rich but mixed findings. The purpose of this paper is to systematically review this body of investigative work, with a particular emphasis on life sciences. Based on the systematic analysis and synthesis of 135 articles published between 1980 and 2014, we discuss the most interesting findings for each of the six identified principal academic-industry research topics: involvement predictors and motivators, role of incentives, institutional performance determinants, knowledge transfer institutionalization, relationship with scientific output and impact on open science. Whereas many studies reach consensus regarding the particular personal and contextual predictors of researchers’ knowledge transfer involvement, we also find substantial evidence that depending on empirical setting, variables such as scientific productivity and institutional technology transfer support policies can act both as enablers and inhibitors in the process. We find no straightforward evidence regarding the role of the size, age and structure of technology transfer offices in the knowledge transfer performance of academic institutions. We also show that most studies agree that engagement in knowledge transfer activities does not negatively affect the researchers’ scientific output. Yet, it is less clear to what extent university-industry interactions can be detrimental for the norms of open science. We draw several policy implications for academic settings and emphasize interesting avenues for further research in this field.     

Academic Inventiveness and Entrepreneurship: On the Importance of Start-up Companies in Commercializing Academic Patents

This article presents research that places the academic start-up phenomenon in the broader technology transfer context. Drawing on data on Finnish academic inventions, the paper illustrates that a considerable share of university-related patents are utilized in start up companies but that still most academic patents are utilized in established and predominantly large firms. Differences in utilization patterns are explored for different fields of science and technology.     

Academic outcomes among principal investigators,co-principal investigators,and non-PI researchers

Faculty at research universities are evaluated on a number of productivity measures including their ability to conduct research, teach, and engage in service. Research outcomes include publishing research results and acquiring grants and contracts to conduct additional research. While it is assumed that researchers who are awarded grants are more likely to publish research results, there is little research investigating the ways in which grants affect outcomes or how principal investigators differ from researchers who do not hold research grants or those who are co-principal investigators. This research seeks to understand if principal investigators are more or less productive than co-principal investigators and those who do not have grants, and if so, what explains that variation in productivity. It also examines whether women PIs are more or less productive than men PIs. This research uses longitudinal data drawn from an NSF funded survey of academic scientists in Carnegie-designated Research I universities in six fields: biology, chemistry, computer science, earth and atmospheric sciences, electrical engineering, and physics. From this national random sample of men and women scientists and engineers we investigate whether there is variation in the production of outcomes (e.g. publications, teaching, and training graduate students) among PIs, co-PIs, and other researchers. Findings show that productivity and outcomes vary significantly for PIs, co-PIs and by sex.     

International research collaboration among women engineers: frequency and perceived barriers,by regions

International research collaboration is on the rise—and at the same time, women face potential barriers. Based on responses to surveys conducted among groups of women engineers, this article addresses (1) women’s frequency of international research collaboration; (2) the barriers to collaboration reported for both self and for other women; and (3) the patterns among women students as well as professionals, by national regions. Findings of this study have implications for policies to broaden participation in the increasingly important arena of international research collaboration, based on women in engineering, the scientific field in which women are most underrepresented. This makes the case focal for the study of women, science, and policy.     

Knowledge transfer in academia: an exploratory study on the Not-Invented-Here Syndrome

Today??s society is often claimed to be the ??knowledge society??. Knowledge transfer plays a pivotal role in the whole economic system, influencing innovation management in its very core. This study deals with one of the barriers that might hamper knowledge transfer: The Not-Invented-Here Syndrome (NIH). Until now, this phenomenon was mainly analyzed in an industrial context. However, as the universities play an increasingly important role in the knowledge society, the time seems ripe to analyze this barrier of knowledge transfer in an academic context. This paper examines the influence of the research discipline, the scientific output, the attitude towards basic science and the project experience on NIH by analyzing a sample of 166 Austrian professors from the fields of physics and engineering. While we cannot find a significant impact of the first two aspects, we can demonstrate that the latter two do have a significant influence on NIH. Summing up, this study supports results from the existing literature on NIH and sheds light on new aspects providing deeper insights into the comprehension of this complex phenomenon.     

Scientists’ Participation in University Research Centers: What are the Gender Differences?

University-affiliated multidisciplinary research centers have grown in importance in academia. Most research to-date has focused on these centers from an institutional perspective, with recent work only beginning to explore the ways in which such centers affect the development of academic careers. Hence, little is known about how scientists who are center-affiliated differ from those who are not affiliated. Clearly, both selection and influence effects may be expected to operate in terms of research productivity, timing, and resources. A further puzzle is how center affiliation may differ between male and female scientists. In this study, we use a new, nationally representative dataset of scientists and engineers working in Carnegie Research Extensive universities to develop an understanding of how center-affiliated scientists differ from exclusively department-based academic scientists and engineers, and investigate the extent to which gender moderates the effects of centers. As expected, our national sample shows that women are younger, whiter, less likely to be tenured, and at a lower rank than their male colleagues. We find that women are as likely to join centers as men, and do so at a similar stage in their career. Most of the male–female differences observed in disciplinary settings are sustained in centers, but women appear to have greater research equality in them (compared to the departmental setting). In particular, men and women in centers spend the same amount of time writing grant proposals, conducting both grant-supported and unfunded research, and administering grants. This suggests that centers may constitute an institutional context in which some aspects of gender equity in science may be achieved.JEL Classification: C42, O32, Z13, E61