Research partnerships between business researchers and industry

We study the strategic behaviour of management researchers when establishing research partnerships with industry. To this end we developed a framework distinguishing ‘strategic planned’ and ‘opportunitydriven’ behaviour in the process of establishing and managing research partnerships. We also explore how researchers deal with influence of firms on their research. Specifically, we focus on the tension between autonomy of researchers and influence from an industry research partner in setting research directions and producing scientifically reliable and publishable knowledge. The main conclusion from the analysis of the strategic behaviour of management researchers is that researchers in our sample have a high need for sharing resources with industry and at the same time they are autonomous when setting research directions in joint projects with industry. One of the major observations in this study is that researchers have to give up their autonomy to a certain extent when accepting the terms of collaboration with industry, but they have a high need for autonomy when deciding about research directions and execution of research. Even though they need to seek external funding, it is their choice to enter a specific relationship with industry and accept restrictions on their autonomy. We present data and an analysis of the strategic behaviour of researchers in different phases of research partnerships.