Template-type: ReDIF-Paper 1.0
Author-Name:  Fudickar, Roman
Author-Email: fudickar@dice.hhu.de
Author-Name:   Hottenrott, Hanna
Author-Email: hottenrott@dice.hhu.de
Author-Name:  Lawson, Cornelia
Author-Email: c.lawson@cbr.cam.ac.uk
Author-Workplace-Name: University of Turin
Author-Workplace-Homepage: http://www.est.unito.it/
Title: What’s the price of consulting? Effects of public and private sector consulting on academic research.
Abstract: Academic consulting is recognised as an important and effective means of knowledge
transfer with the public and private sectors. These interactions with external sectors offer
opportunities for research application but also raise concerns over their potentially negative
consequences for academic research and its dissemination. For a sample of social, natural
and engineering science academics in Germany, we find consulting to be widespread,
undertaken by academics at all seniority levels and in all disciplines, with academics in the
social sciences more likely to provide advice to the public sector and those in engineering to
the private sector. Controlling for the selection into consulting, we then investigate its effect
on research performance. While previous research suggested that consulting activities might
come at the cost of reduced research output, our analysis does not confirm this concern. The
results, however, suggest that stronger engagement in consulting increases the probability to
cease publishing research altogether. This may point to a flight of consulting-active
academics from active research. Moreover, public sector consulting comes with lower
average citations which may suggest a move towards context-specific publications that
attract fewer citations. We draw lessons for research institutions and policy about the
promotion of academic consulting.
Length: 36 pages
Creation-Date: 2016-03
File-URL: http://www.est.unito.it/do/home.pl/Download?doc=/allegati/wp2016dip/wp_3_2016.pdf
File-Format: Application/PDF
Handle: RePEc:uto:labeco:201602