The importance of organizational culture and climate for the involvement of Swiss academic research units in knowledge sharing with private companies

Abstract

The culture of open science that has governed communication and behaviour in academic organizations for a long time, above all in universities, has undergone changes in the light of the increasing importance of third mission activities, such as knowledge and technology transfer and commercialization of academic inventions. However, not all academic organizations have embraced this change and we still do not have a full understanding, how different organizational missions, internal incentives, and regulations of knowledge sharing activities relate to the performance und importance of different mechanisms of knowledge sharing. This contribution addresses this gap by drawing on a new data set of more than 900 institutes at Swiss academic organizations. We find that the mission and self-conception of an organization matters at the immediate level of the institute, as well as at the more remote level of the university or organization. What matters more depends on the mechanism of knowledge sharing in