مجله مدیریت مالی چند ملیتی – Journal of Multinational Financial Management

Technological core facilities (TCFs) are technological platforms defined as “technological building blocks, that act as a foundation on top of which an array of firms, organized in a set of interdependent firms, develop a set of inter-related products, technologies and services” (Gawer, 2009). More specifically, academic technological core facilities (ATCFs) are up-to-date instrumentation associated with competences, available to academics and to industrials in order to perform scientific research (Peerbaye & Mangematin, ۲۰۰۵). ATCF differs from a classical laboratory in that its equipment must be made accessible to both academic and industrial communities. In a knowledge-driven economy (Powell & Snellman, 2004), ATCFs have become central devices for the research and transfer activities.

To date, the literature on TCFs has focused on three major issues. The first of these seeks to develop TCF typologies based on the characteristics of their business portfolios. The second issue incorporates the time dimension to try to account for the trajectories of public and private TCFs and their complementary nature. These two approaches are organized, more or less explicitly, around the scientific and technological life cycles of research activities (Paradeise, Peerbaye, Aggeri, Branciard, & Le Masson, 2010). The final issue focuses on the sustainability conditions of TCFs. It enlarges the scope of analysis by striving to link the “scientific and technological life cycle” of projects, market segments, and “business models” with the study of conditions for sustainability (Peerbaye & Mangematin, 2005).

However, as underlined by Perkmann et al. (2013), research on academic engagement has rarely addressed the role of institutional environment demands. Such demands are potentially divergent because they are based not only on public values (higher education teaching, world-class research) but also on new principles linked to budgetary restrictions (commercial activity, profitability). The two main objectives of this paper are to identify precisely the different institutional demands at play and potential tensions they could give rise to, and the different TCF response procedures illustrating the institutional work of the TCFs managers. The research focuses on biotechnology TCFs with government-funded equipment, located on a university site. In this domain, a research– industry relationship is the most common one (Ebers & Powell, 2007;.Powell, White, Koput, & Owen-Smith, 2005). With a qualitative analysis ten institutional demands are identified, some of them with potential conflicts. Three ways of institutional work given by academic TCFs in Brittany Region (France) are underlined and suggest research avenues for differentiating factors which will allow us to predict the different response strategies.