Creating, Maintaining and Dismantling a Hybrid Space for Sustainability Research: Exploring the practices of academic engagement in a university-industry centre. Dang, R., McKelvey, M., & Zaring, O. In DRUID 2019 Conference Proceedings, Copenhagen, Denmark, 2019. DRUID Scociety.
Creating, Maintaining and Dismantling a Hybrid Space for Sustainability Research: Exploring the practices of academic engagement in a university-industry centre [link]Paper  abstract   bibtex   
Drawing on a four-year qualitative field study, we explore the practise of academic engagement as institutionalized in a university-industry centre. We define this as a hybrid space, designed to allow interactions between commercial and academic logics. Our analysis identifies two phases: The first phase is creating the centre, through developing a formal organizational structure, which relies on pre-existing knowledge networks. The second phase is maintaining and dismantling the centre, which is constituted through micro-level activities. Difficulties arise with hybridizing the logics. We interpret that placing too much focus on ‘becoming an entrepreneurial university’ through a formal organizational structure can take too much time away from the on-going activities. The ‘commercial logic’ is interpreted differently by each industrial partner, which causes difficulties in deciding about research, due to the uncertain nature of science per se. We describe a new type of ‘societal engagement logic’, in this case related to sustainability.
@inproceedings{dang_creating_2019,
	address = {Copenhagen, Denmark},
	title = {Creating, {Maintaining} and {Dismantling} a {Hybrid} {Space} for {Sustainability} {Research}: {Exploring} the practices of academic engagement in a university-industry centre},
	url = {https://conference.druid.dk/Druid/submissions.xhtml},
	abstract = {Drawing on a four-year qualitative field study, we explore the practise of academic engagement as institutionalized in a university-industry centre. We define this as a hybrid space, designed to allow interactions between commercial and academic logics. Our analysis identifies two phases: The first phase is creating the centre, through developing a formal organizational structure, which relies on pre-existing knowledge networks. The second phase is maintaining and dismantling the centre, which is constituted through micro-level activities. Difficulties arise with hybridizing the logics. We interpret that placing too much focus on ‘becoming an entrepreneurial university’ through a formal organizational structure can take too much time away from the on-going activities. The ‘commercial logic’ is interpreted differently by each industrial partner, which causes difficulties in deciding about research, due to the uncertain nature of science per se. We describe a new type of ‘societal engagement logic’, in this case related to sustainability.},
	booktitle = {{DRUID} 2019 {Conference} {Proceedings}},
	publisher = {DRUID Scociety},
	author = {Dang, Rani and McKelvey, Maureen and Zaring, Olof},
	year = {2019},
}

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