This study examines the linkages and factors influencing relationships between universities and companies in Thailand’s automotive cluster and seeks applicable models and ways to improve the linkages among government, universities, national research institutions and firms in order to enhance innovation and competitiveness in the industry. Based on the ideas of the knowledge economy and a “triple helix model” of relationships among government-industry-university, this study uses multiple data collection methods, including questionnaires and in-depth interviews, with descriptive analysis to investigate the relationship among government, university and industry in Thailand’s automotive cluster in Samutprakarn province which emerged in 1990s to become a leading industrial sector of the country that the government has emphasized on. Findings from this research show universities, as important players in the knowledgebased cluster, have three major schemes to serve the cluster, in collaboration with government, organization/institute and industry. Those are 1) to produce graduates highly relevant to the need of related sectors and 2) to conduct basic and applied research, and 3) to collaborate with organization/institute and industry to create new technology/innovations. However, there are challenges for any university to substantially support the cluster. These challenges are 1) universities do not produce highly qualified and industrially relevant graduates, 2) universities do not understand and accommodate the nature of industry, 3) universities do not have sufficient resources, 4) universities are not recognized as a critical player in economy, and 5) universities do not seriously cooperate among themselves and with other related sectors. To deal with the challenges above and to enhance universities’ competitiveness/ relevance in the automotive industry, my study recommends that universities could be improved by establishing a track record, culture and strategic plan to enhance trust and mutual recognition from the Thai automotive cluster. It is this trust and recognition that could lead to collaboration and eventually transform the automotive cluster into a knowledge-based and competitive cluster. In the longer-term, universities that adopt a mission to serve industry should be developed to become an effective component of the ‘triple helix’ or an entrepreneurial university by 1) committing themselves towards collaboration with industry and other players for mutual benefit and industrial growth, 2) understanding the demands and culture of industry, 3) developing niche technology and translating this into patents/licensing, 4) providing consultancy and collaborating with industry and government through an entrepreneurial spirit, 5) supporting business incubation services and spin-offs, 6) enhancing continuity of cooperative and entrepreneurship education, 7) recruiting and developing industrially-experienced and research-active staff, and 8) accommodating competitive facilities for R&D. In addition, a governmental intermediate organization (such as Thailand Automotive Institute) should be identified as the central organization in improving competitiveness of the cluster that should be given greater autonomy and flexibility to support the coopetition of different players with greater efficiency and effectiveness.

It has recently become rather common for life science faculty to own a private company related to university research, an extreme form of entrepreneurial activity. Yet our understanding of how this changes the experiences of the entrepreneurial scientists and administrators is limited. This thesis, based primarily on in-depth interviews with three entrepreneurial biotechnology faculty, their graduate students and employees, their department heads, and university-level administrators, reveals how scientists and administrators are responding to conflicts and others' perceptions of conflict arising from their entrepreneurial activity. The faculty and administrators organize these conflicts into five categories: issues which they consider to be genuine conflicts but do not act upon; issues which they consider to be genuine conflicts and do act upon; issues which they do not consider to pose genuine conflicts but which they act upon because others perceive those issues to be conflicts; issues which they consider to be conflicts but which none of the principals expect to be experienced at their particular university; and issues which they do not consider to raise genuine conflicts whether experienced at their university or elsewhere. This thesis also shows how entrepreneurial faculty are incorporating business into their teaching and are altering their interactions with academic peers and graduate students all due to their entrepreneurial activity. / Master of Science

It has been an important issue on how to get universities to better contribute to the innovation process, especially in the knowledge-based economy. This paper aims to explore the control mechanism in the university-industry partnership through the framework of transaction cost theory. I conduct an empirical study of the collaborative process by providing the research-based evidence that focuses on the perspectives of two sets of faculties in a research university and a biotech company. The optimal control mechanisms will be suggested in the context of the uncertainties and ineffective communications in the R&D joint research projects.

Industrially supported projects, which are an important part of industrial design education, have been carried on with an increasing pace in universities in Turkey for a long time. This thesis develops strategies to improve collaborative projects with industry in industrial design education, by examining how collaboration member benefit from each other&rsquo / s and which problems do they encounter with collaboration / and to find out what the needs and expectations of all members are through a case study of graduation projects. As a case study, the graduation project course in the Department of Industrial Design at Middle East Technical University in 2005 spring semester was chosen, where collaboration with industry has been regularly held since 2002. Results of questionnaires with all collaboration members namely the students, educators and company representatives were evaluated in order to develop strategies. As a conclusion, implications to facilitate further developments of university- industry collaboration projects and academic schemes are reached.

This thesis examines the barriers, especially intellectual property rights concerned that inhibit industry academia collaboration. By analyzing Swedish firms in the engineering industry, I explore the influence of IPR barrier on firms’ benefits, short- and long-term respectively from university-industry interaction. Three hypotheses are suggested to investigate the relationship between IPR barriers, firm categories, short-term benefits and long-term benefits. The results illustrate different firms’ reactions to IPR barriers. According to the analysis, advanced firms are more likely to report IPR barriers. Moreover, they tend to benefit more in the long run. However, the short-term benefits from UI collaboration seem to have no significant relationship with IPR barriers. There is hence no proof in the data that IPR barriers are a significant hinder for firms to benefit from university-industry interaction.

Academia and industry both report benefits to forming and maintaining collaborative research partnerships. As organizations come together to participate in these partnerships, each brings their own set of operational norms and strategic goals. Some of these norms and goals are complementary, but others can be conflicting. University-industry research partnerships (UIRPs) in particular are susceptible to conflicts for at least four major reasons: 1) there are strategic differences in the purposes of industry and academia that can result in misalignment of goals and unrealistic expectations; 2) each organization has different operational norms and discord can arise from misunderstandings among participants; 3) many UIRPs function as virtual teams and are susceptible to miscommunication that arises when face-to-face communications are missing; and, 4) UIRPs are knowledge-based organizations meaning that their primary purpose is to translate research into applicable technology that is a largely intangible process and therefore, difficult to manage. The conflicts that can arise from these misalignments, misunderstandings, miscommunications, and mismanagement can deteriorate trust and can become detrimental to a partnership. Trust has been cited as being a factor in adequately addressing conflict and reducing the potentially detrimental effects of each characteristic. This makes the need to proactively cultivate trusting relationships in UIRPs critical. The purpose of this study was to empirically investigate the role of trust in university-industry research partnership performance. The study was designed as a convergent parallel mixed methods research design utilizing an online questionnaire administered to boundary role spanning academic and industry UIRP participants for the quantitative study and interviews of the academic-industry leadership teams for the qualitative study. Following independent analyses of each study, an integrative discussion of the results of both studies more holistically described the role of trust in UIRPs. The research results enhance our understanding of the role of trust in UIRPs and suggest empirically-based guidelines for managing trust and sustaining positive, long-term UIRP performance. / Ph. D.

This research develops a theoretical framework explaining how University-Industry Linkages (UILs) affect the performance of tourism clusters in Thailand. Significant external and internal factors affecting Thai tourism industry are examined. The research questions are significant given the importance of successful tourism cluster through University-Industry Linkages (UIL). These questions recognized tourism clusters, the role of university, the linkages between university and industry, influential factors are contextual, and as a result, the author explores four tourism clusters in Thailand and using multiple case studies explains the nature and character of tourism cluster and University-Industry Linkages (UILs) between tourism cluster and its universities. The findings demonstrated that UILs, strategic entrepreneurship and leadership play key role to successful tourism cluster in developing countries.

This thesis reports a research study to measure the impact of industrial sponsorship on student, academia, and industry. The thesis provides a review of the literature in the field of engineering education, university-industry collaboration and student sponsorship. It describes the design of the study and methods of data collection and data analysis. It then presents a discussion of the impact of sponsorship. The research project was conducted at Loughborough University from 2006-2009. It has captured existing practice across sponsored and non-sponsored programmes within the Engineering Faculty at Loughborough University together with a small number of national and international sponsorship schemes. Data were collected from the undergraduate engineering students, graduates, sponsoring/non sponsoring companies, and the academic staff of engineering departments using questionnaires, interviews and documentary analysis. This study highlights the values and issues of the relationship between employers and students during their undergraduate study from the perspective of students, employers and academic staff. It takes a mixed-method approach to assess the attitudes and perception of individuals from these parties and identify the barriers which limit further engagement in order to propose guidelines for further improvements. The results show that the majority of the stakeholders valued industrial sponsorship as a way of developing the quality of undergraduate degrees and generating enough of the high quality engineers that the industry needs. There was close agreement on these matters between the parties involved. Overall the findings of the research showed that the parties main expectations of sponsorship schemes were largely met by the reality of sponsorship. Greater awareness of the details of sponsorship schemes, including how they work and what is involved, would make employers more likely to offer sponsorship and encourage more students to apply for sponsorship. Conclusions are drawn on the benefits that sponsorship offers, the incentives for these stakeholders, the role of sponsorship in building a relationship between students and their future employers, its contribution to the attainment of learning outcomes, the degree of sponsorship attractiveness to the investigated companies, the obstructions which limit partnership and recommendations for further developments.

The central purpose of this study was to compare the attitudes of faculty in applied sciences to the attitudes of faculty in liberal arts and other selected fields to determine if they differ significantly from each other in their perceptions of the effects of university-industry alliances on campus governance and operations. Secondary purposes were (a) to appraise the debate on alliances and the effects of alliances on academic values and (b) to contribute to the literature concerning alliances and their potential for improving higher education.

A pergunta de pesquisa está centrada em avaliar o impacto sobre a produtividade científica dos pesquisadores universitários envolvidos em projetos financiados pelos fundos do Petróleo. Foram reunidos dados sobre o desempenho de 784 pesquisadores brasileiros, agrupados em dois grupos, financiados e não financiados pela Petrobrás/ANP. As evidências obtidas revelam que o impacto da interação Universidade-Petrobrás sobre a produtividade científica dos pesquisadores pertencentes a amostra depende da modalidade de parceria estabelecido no financiamento do projeto de pesquisa. Em termos quantitativos, a interação indireta com a Petrobrás/ANP (ou seja, via CT-Petro) acarreta impacto positivo sobre o número de artigos publicados no ISI, a interação direta (ou seja, via Cenpes e/ou informada no Censo de Grupos de Pesquisa do CNPq) não produz efeito estatisticamente significativo sobre a produtividade acadêmica. Complementarmente, em termos qualitativos a análise não identificou a presença de alterações na trajetória de produtividade decorrente da interação com a Petrobrás/ANP. Adicionalmente, as estimações revelaram uma relação quadrática entre a idade e o número de artigos publicados no ISI, que apresenta um pico em torno dos 56 anos, corroborando a hipótese de existência de um ciclo de vida para o pesquisador. Estimações separadas pelas grandes áreas científicas revelam, contudo que este impacto não é uniforme. Uma possível explicação para esses resultados encontra-se nos diferentes estágios de desenvolvimento dessas áreas, bem como da dependência dessas áreas para com os recursos transferidos pela Petrobrás/ANP. O impacto é positivo em Engenharia, uma área mais fortemente influenciada pela Petrobrás, ou pela dependência de sua oferta de recursos, ou ainda pela importância de sua temática de pesquisa. Já em áreas mais consolidadas e menos dependentes da oferta de recursos e demanda por pesquisa da Petrobrás, a interação não apresenta efeitos estatisticamente significantes sobre o número de artigos publicados. / The research question focuses on assessing the impact on the scientific productivity of academic researchers involved in projects financed by the Oil Funds. We built a database on the performance of 784 Brazilian researchers, grouped into two groups, funded and not funded by Petrobrás/ANP. The evidences show that the impact of University-Petrobrás interaction on the scientific productivity of researchers from the sample depends on the kind of partnership established in the financing of the research project. In quantitative terms, the indirect interaction with Petrobrás/ANP (that is, by CT-Petro) brings positive impact on the number of articles published in the ISI, and the direct interaction (that is, by CENPES and/or Census of Research Groups/CNPq) does not produce statistically significant effect on the academic productivity. In addition, in qualitative terms the statistical model did not identify the presence of changes in the trajectory of productivity due to interaction with Petrobrás/ANP. Additionally, the estimates showed a quadratic relationship between age and number of articles published in the ISI, which has a peak around 56 years old, supporting the hypothesis of a life cycle for the researcher. Estimates separated by groups of areas of science reveal, however, that this impact is not uniform. One possible explanation for these results lies in the different stages of development in these areas, as well as the dependence of these areas to the resources transferred by Petrobrás/ANP. The impact is positive in Engineering, an area strongly influenced by Petrobrás, or its dependence on its supply of resources, or the importance of its thematic research. In areas more consolidated and less dependent on resource availability and demand for research from Petrobrás, the interaction shows no statistically significant effects on the number of published articles.