IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/pal/palcom/v7y2020i1d10.1057_s41599-020-00629-1.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Academic incentives for enhancing faculty engagement with decision-makers—considerations and recommendations from one School of Public Health

Author

Listed:
  • Nasreen S. Jessani

    (Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
    Stellenbosch University
    University of Johannesburg)

  • Akshara Valmeekanathan

    (Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health)

  • Carly M. Babcock

    (Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
    Maryland Department of Health)

  • Brenton Ling

    (Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
    Population Health Alliance)

Abstract

In academia, faculty are bound by three pillars of scholarship: Teaching, Research and Service. Academic promotion and tenure depend on metrics of assessment for these three pillars. However, what is and is not acceptable as “service” is often nebulous and left to the discretion of internal committees. With evolving requirements by funders to demonstrate wider impacts of research, we were keen to understand the financial and non-financial incentives for academic faculty to engage in knowledge translation and research utilization. Between November 2017–February 2018, 52 faculty from one School of Public Health (SPH) were interviewed. Data was analyzed using Atlas.Ti and furthermore with framework analysis. The appeal of incentives varied according to personal values, previous experiences, relevance of research to decision-making, individual capacities, and comfort ranging from instinctive support to reflexive resistance. Discussions around types of incentives elicited a plethora of ideas within 4 different categories: (a) Monetary Support, (b) Professional Recognition, (c) Academic Promotion, and (d) Capacity Enhancement. However, concerns included adverse incentives, disadvantaging suboptimally-equipped faculty, risk of existing efforts going unnoticed, vaguely defined evaluation metrics, and the impacts on promotion given that engagement activities often occur outside of the traditional grant cycle. With a shift in funder requests to demonstrate greater social return on their research investments, as well as renewed global attention to research, science and evidence for decision making, SPHs such as this one, are likely going to be concerned about the implications of an enhanced “service” pillar on the other two pillars: teaching and research. The role of incentives in enhancing academic engagement with policy and practice is therefore neither simple nor universally ideal. A tempered approach that considers the various professional aspirations of faculty, the capacities required, organisational culture of values around specific discovery sciences, funder conditions, as well as alignment with the institution’s mission is critical. Deliberations on incentives leads to a larger debate on how to we shift the culture of academia beyond incentives for individuals who are engagement-inclined to institutions that are engagement-ready, without imposing on or penalizing faculty who are choice-disengaged.

Suggested Citation

  • Nasreen S. Jessani & Akshara Valmeekanathan & Carly M. Babcock & Brenton Ling, 2020. "Academic incentives for enhancing faculty engagement with decision-makers—considerations and recommendations from one School of Public Health," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 7(1), pages 1-13, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:pal:palcom:v:7:y:2020:i:1:d:10.1057_s41599-020-00629-1
    DOI: 10.1057/s41599-020-00629-1
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1057/s41599-020-00629-1
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1057/s41599-020-00629-1?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Friedman, Joseph & Silberman, Jonathan, 2003. "University Technology Transfer: Do Incentives, Management, and Location Matter?," The Journal of Technology Transfer, Springer, vol. 28(1), pages 17-30, January.
    2. McAneney, H. & McCann, J.F. & Prior, L. & Wilde, J. & Kee, F., 2010. "Translating evidence into practice: A shared priority in public health?," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 70(10), pages 1492-1500, May.
    3. Kothari, Anita & Wathen, C. Nadine, 2013. "A critical second look at integrated knowledge translation," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 109(2), pages 187-191.
    4. Longest Jr., B.B. & Huber, G.A., 2010. "Schools of Public Health and the Health of the Public: Enhancing the Capabilities of Faculty to Be Influential in Policymaking," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 100(1), pages 49-53.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Nasirov, Shukhrat & Joshi, Amol M., 2023. "Minding the communications gap: How can universities signal the availability and value of their scientific knowledge to commercial organizations?," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 52(9).
    2. Neighbors, Harold W. & Mattingly, Delvon T. & Johnson, Janay & Morse, Kayla, 2023. "The contribution of research to racial health equity? Blame and responsibility in navigating the status quo of anti-black systemic racism," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 316(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Saul Lach & Mark Schankerman, 2008. "Incentives and invention in universities," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 39(2), pages 403-433, June.
    2. Battaglia, Daniele & Landoni, Paolo & Rizzitelli, Francesco, 2017. "Organizational structures for external growth of University Technology Transfer Offices: An explorative analysis," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 123(C), pages 45-56.
    3. Federico Caviggioli & Alessandra Colombelli & Antonio De Marco & Giuseppe Scellato & Elisa Ughetto, 2023. "Co-evolution patterns of university patenting and technological specialization in European regions," The Journal of Technology Transfer, Springer, vol. 48(1), pages 216-239, February.
    4. Munari, Federico & Sobrero, Maurizio & Toschi, Laura, 2018. "The university as a venture capitalist? Gap funding instruments for technology transfer," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 127(C), pages 70-84.
    5. Mario BENASSI & Matteo LANDONI & Francesco RENTOCCHINI, 2017. "University Management Practices and Academic Spin-offs," Departmental Working Papers 2017-11, Department of Economics, Management and Quantitative Methods at Università degli Studi di Milano.
    6. Rippa, Pierluigi & Secundo, Giustina, 2019. "Digital academic entrepreneurship: The potential of digital technologies on academic entrepreneurship," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 146(C), pages 900-911.
    7. Sugandhavanija, Pornpimol & Sukchai, Sukruedee & Ketjoy, Nipon & Klongboonjit, Sakol, 2011. "Determination of effective university–industry joint research for photovoltaic technology transfer (UIJRPTT) in Thailand," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 36(2), pages 600-607.
    8. O’Kane, Conor & Mangematin, Vincent & Geoghegan, Will & Fitzgerald, Ciara, 2015. "University technology transfer offices: The search for identity to build legitimacy," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 44(2), pages 421-437.
    9. Aldo Geuna & Alessandro Muscio, 2008. "The governance of University knowledge transfer," SPRU Working Paper Series 173, SPRU - Science Policy Research Unit, University of Sussex Business School.
    10. Lai, Wen-Hsiang, 2011. "Willingness-to-engage in technology transfer in industry–university collaborations," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 64(11), pages 1218-1223.
    11. Odysseas Cartalos & Stelios Rozakis & Dominiki Tsiouki, 2018. "A method to assess and support exploitation projects of university researchers," The Journal of Technology Transfer, Springer, vol. 43(4), pages 986-1006, August.
    12. Bernd Wurth & Niall G. MacKenzie & Susan Howick, 2024. "Not seeing the forest for the trees? A systems approach to the entrepreneurial university," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 63(2), pages 1-24, August.
    13. G. Derrick, 2015. "Integration versus separation: structure and strategies of the technology transfer office (TTO) in medical research organizations," The Journal of Technology Transfer, Springer, vol. 40(1), pages 105-122, February.
    14. Yung-Chi Shen, 2017. "Identifying the key barriers and their interrelationships impeding the university technology transfer in Taiwan: a multi-stakeholder perspective," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 51(6), pages 2865-2884, November.
    15. Antonio Adrián Arciénaga Morales & Janni Nielsen & Hernán Alberto Bacarini & Silvia Irene Martinelli & Sergio Takeo Kofuji & Juan Francisco García Díaz, 2018. "Technology and Innovation Management in Higher Education—Cases from Latin America and Europe," Administrative Sciences, MDPI, vol. 8(2), pages 1-34, April.
    16. Nicola Baldini & Rosa Grimaldi & Maurizio Sobrero, 2007. "To patent or not to patent? A survey of Italian inventors on motivations, incentives, and obstacles to university patenting," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 70(2), pages 333-354, February.
    17. Delphine Labbé & Atiya Mahmood & William C. Miller & W. Ben Mortenson, 2020. "Examining the Impact of Knowledge Mobilization Strategies to Inform Urban Stakeholders on Accessibility: A Mixed-Methods study," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 17(5), pages 1-16, February.
    18. Hiroyuki Okamuro & Junichi Nishimura, 2013. "Impact of university intellectual property policy on the performance of university-industry research collaboration," The Journal of Technology Transfer, Springer, vol. 38(3), pages 273-301, June.
    19. Wood, Matthew S., 2011. "A process model of academic entrepreneurship," Business Horizons, Elsevier, vol. 54(2), pages 153-161.
    20. Alexander Leischnig & Anja Geigenmüller, 2020. "Examining alliance management capabilities in university-industry collaboration," The Journal of Technology Transfer, Springer, vol. 45(1), pages 9-30, February.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pal:palcom:v:7:y:2020:i:1:d:10.1057_s41599-020-00629-1. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.nature.com/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.