Do External Funding Sources Affect Research Productivity?: A Departmental-Level Analysis of Seven Former Imperial Japanese Universities

This study examines the research productivity of departments in seven former imperial universities of Japan. We categorize the departments into five academic fields: engineering, health sciences (i.e., medicine, dentistry and pharmaceutical), economics, science, and agriculture. Then, the impact of fundamental and external research funds is examined to see whether they positively affect research productivity—measured by the number of papers accepted in peer-reviewed, international academic journals. Additionally, we investigate whether such external funding sources affect productivity in each of the five fields differently, noting any variation between them. The estimation results reveal that, first, the increase of fundamental and external funds per faculty member is positively correlated with research productivity in the fields of engineering and health sciences. Second, considering the results of further investigation into the effects of external funding, research funding by the public sector can increase productivity in each of the five academic fields. Third, the results pertaining to private research funds show that research funding provided by firms can increase productivity in engineering and health sciences. However, for economics, the increase in external funding from firms is negatively correlated with research productivity. This result might be because the purpose of industry–university collaboration differs according to the academic field. Regarding economics, the output from the resulting collaboration might not result in the production of an academic paper, but rather make policy recommendations or provide consulting using quantitative analysis. This study is the first attempt by any Japanese university to analyze research productivity across several departments. The empirical results show that depending on the discipline, the same resources of research funding impact research productivity differently. Nowadays, the Japanese central government has been about the business of reforming resource allocation systems of universities by evaluating their research performance, basing them more on the quantitative indicators such as the key performance indicators (KPI). However, a key result of this study implies that when a relative evaluation of universities is applied, each university’s situation must be more carefully considered, especially in terms of what kinds of academic departments it has, and which specialties or segments it features

Do External Funding Sources Affect Research Productivity?: A Departmental-Level Analysis of Seven Former Imperial Japanese Universities

This study examines the research productivity of departments in seven former imperial universities of Japan. We categorize the departments into five academic fields: engineering, health sciences (i.e., medicine, dentistry and pharmaceutical), economics, science, and agriculture. Then, the impact of fundamental and external research funds is examined to see whether they positively affect research productivity—measured by the number of papers accepted in peer-reviewed, international academic journals. Additionally, we investigate whether such external funding sources affect productivity in each of the five fields differently, noting any variation between them. The estimation results reveal that, first, the increase of fundamental and external funds per faculty member is positively correlated with research productivity in the fields of engineering and health sciences. Second, considering the results of further investigation into the effects of external funding, research funding by the public sector can increase productivity in each of the five academic fields. Third, the results pertaining to private research funds show that research funding provided by firms can increase productivity in engineering and health sciences. However, for economics, the increase in external funding from firms is negatively correlated with research productivity. This result might be because the purpose of industry–university collaboration differs according to the academic field. Regarding economics, the output from the resulting collaboration might not result in the production of an academic paper, but rather make policy recommendations or provide consulting using quantitative analysis. This study is the first attempt by any Japanese university to analyze research productivity across several departments. The empirical results show that depending on the discipline, the same resources of research funding impact research productivity differently. Nowadays, the Japanese central government has been about the business of reforming resource allocation systems of universities by evaluating their research performance, basing them more on the quantitative indicators such as the key performance indicators (KPI). However, a key result of this study implies that when a relative evaluation of universities is applied, each university’s situation must be more carefully considered, especially in terms of what kinds of academic departments it has, and which specialties or segments it features

Organizing the innovation process : complementarities in innovation networking

This paper contributes to the developing literature on complementarities in organizational design. We test for the existence of complementarities in the use of external networking between stages of the innovation process in a sample of UK and German manufacturing plants. Our evidence suggests some differences between the UK and Germany in terms of the optimal combination of innovation activities in which to implement external networking. Broadly, there is more evidence of complementarities in the case of Germany, with the exception of the product engineering stage. By contrast, the UK exhibits generally strong evidence of substitutability in external networking in different stages, except between the identification of new products and product design and development stages. These findings suggest that previous studies indicating strong complementarity between internal and external knowledge sources have provided only part of the picture of the strategic dilemmas facing firms

Organizing the innovation process : complementarities in innovation networking

This paper contributes to the developing literature on complementarities in organizational design. We test for the existence of complementarities in the use of external networking between stages of the innovation process in a sample of UK and German manufacturing plants. Our evidence suggests some differences between the UK and Germany in terms of the optimal combination of innovation activities in which to implement external networking. Broadly, there is more evidence of complementarities in the case of Germany, with the exception of the product engineering stage. By contrast, the UK exhibits generally strong evidence of substitutability in external networking in different stages, except between the identification of new products and product design and development stages. These findings suggest that previous studies indicating strong complementarity between internal and external knowledge sources have provided only part of the picture of the strategic dilemmas facing firms

The Double-Edged Sword of Industry Collaboration: Evidence from Engineering Academics in the UK

This paper studies the impact of university-industry collaboration on academic research output. We report findings from a unique longitudinal dataset on all the researchers in all the engineering departments of 40 major universities in the UK for the last 20 years. We introduce a new measure of industry collaboration based on the fraction of research grants that include industry partners. Our results show that productivity increases with the intensity of industry collaboration, but only up to a certain point. Above a certain threshold, research productivity declines. Our results are robust to several econometric estimation methods, measures of research output, and for various subsamples of academics

Is innovation always beneficial? A meta-analysis of the relationship between innovation and performance in SMEs

The performance implications of innovation in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have attracted considerable interest among academics and practitioners. However, empirical research on the innovation–performance relationship in SMEs shows controversial results. This meta-analysis synthesizes empirical findings in order to obtain evidence whether and especially under which circumstances smaller, resource-scarce firms benefit from innovation. We find that innovation–performance relationship is context dependent. Factors such as the age of the firm, the type of innovation, and the cultural context affect the impact of innovation on firm performance to a large extent

The Impact of Industry Collaboration on Academic Research Output: A Dynamic Panel Data Analysis

The aim of this paper is to analyse the impact of university knowledge and technology transfer activities on academic research output. Specifically, we study whether researchers with collaborative links with the private sector publish less than their peers without such links, once controlling for other sources of heterogeneity. We report findings from a longitudinal dataset on researchers from two engineering departments in the UK between 1985 until 2006. Our results indicate that researchers with industrial links publish significantly more than their peers. Academic productivity, though, is higher for low levels of industry involvement as compared to high levels

Building Blocks for Control System Software

Software implementation of control laws for industrial systems seem straightforward, but is not. The computer code stemming from the control laws is mostly not more than 10 to 30% of the total. A building-block approach for embedded control system development is advocated to enable a fast and efficient software design process.\ud We have developed the CTJ library, Communicating Threads for Java¿,\ud resulting in fundamental elements for creating building blocks to implement communication using channels. Due to the simulate-ability, our building block method is suitable for a concurrent engineering design approach. Furthermore, via a stepwise refinement process, using verification by simulation, the implementation trajectory can be done efficiently

Managing Supplier Integration into Product Development: A Literature Review and Conceptual Model

Industrial clusters, Regional agglomerations, Technological learning, Technological capability, Knowledge spillovers, Regional innovation systems