How Academic Scientists Shift Their Role Identities: The Institutional Logics Perspective

• In Event: New Directions in Organizational Theory and Methodology

Abstract

University-Industry Collaboration has received considerable attention in terms of how academic scientists react when they engage in commercialization activities. By adopting institutional logics theory and role identity perspective, we investigate how academic scientists construct and enact the multiple logics they countered (i.e., academic logic vs commercial logic). We interviewed 34 participants from a Sino-British University in China. We show that academic scientists make sense of the commercial logic by re-constructing their role identity. We also elaborate that it is the re-interpretation of the degree of incompatibility among the two logics through a variety of social interactions at different physical spaces that contribute to role identity reconstruction. Our findings contribute to institutional logics theory, role identity, and academic entrepreneurship.

Authors

• Ye Jiang, Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University
  Presenting Author

• Xiaojun Zhang, Xi’an Jiaotong Liverpool University
  Non-Presenting Author