Abstract
This article contributes to a deeper understanding of how the background and motivation of PhD students who are simultaneously employed at firms may influence their ability to bridge academia and industry during their education. These students pursue collaborative research projects, which are an understudied yet potentially important form of academic engagement with industry. Our qualitative study is based on interviews with fifteen firm-employed PhD students, selected from one Swedish university, in a field of engineering. Our analysis identifies three modes of entry for firm-employed PhD students – namely supervisor-initiated, master’s thesis-initiated, and employee-initiated projects. We propose that these modes of entry reflect the variation in students’ ability to play a dual boundary spanning role for both the university and the firm. Future research should address how PhD students play an active role in developing academic engagement with industry, as well as the outcomes of projects from these three modes of entry.
Keywords
Introduction
In recent years there has been much discussion about the various forms of university-industry interactions and how individual, organizational, and institutional contexts affect the activities performed and their outcomes (Alexandre et al., 2022; Ankrah & AL-Tabbaa, 2015; Bonaccorsi and Piccaluga, 1994; Cantner et al., 2024; D’Este and Patel, 2007; He et al., 2021; Miller et al., 2018; Perkmann and Walsh, 2008; Sarpong et al., 2025; Sjöö and Hellström, 2019; Villanueva-Felez et al., 2010). One set of these forms has been labeled academic engagement with industry, which is defined as knowledge-related interactions between academic researchers and non-academic organizations, and is differentiated from the commercialization of academic research through academic entrepreneurship or patents (Perkmann et al., 2013, 2021). Some have called this form of engagement the ‘hidden’ knowledge exchange mechanisms used by academics (Hughes and Kitson, 2012) that has not gotten sufficient attention. Furthermore, Perkmann et al. (2013) noted that it appeared to be, as compared to commercialization activities, more driven by the individual context and less by the organizational context. In this article, we narrow our foci to a particular form of academic engagement with industry, namely collaborative research projects involving PhD students.
Previous studies indicate that PhD students play important roles in linking university and industry, especially after graduation (Rossi et al., 2017; Thune, 2009). Many PhD students are employed by firms after graduation and thus serve as a vehicle of knowledge transfer between universities and firms. Thus, studies have paid attention to how collaborative research projects prepare PhD students for future employment in industry (e.g. Olsson and Bernhard, 2023). Furthermore, after completing their degree, the individuals—as firm employees—often maintain their relationship with academics and play an important role in bridging the different institutional logics of universities and firms (Sauerman and Stephan, 2013) in future research collaborations (McKelvey et al., 2003). However, research activities of PhD students play a central role in the production of knowledge at universities (Thune, 2009) and funding for collaborative PhD projects has been one of the various forms of institutional changes that have been made in the last decades to reform PhD education and promote collaborative research between universities and industry (Borrell-Damian et al., 2010; Harman, 2004; Thune, 2009). Thus, research suggests that PhD students increasingly take on the role of bridging academia and industry during their education and may of course continue to do so after they graduate.
Despite awareness of the increased importance of early career scholars like PhD students for academic engagement with industry, relatively few extant studies explore how the individual, organizational, and institutional context affect how these students are able to bridge the boundaries between a university and a firm. Early studies were mostly descriptive studies of participants in specialized industrial PhD programs (Borrell-Damian et al., 2010; Butcher and Jeffrey, 2007; Harman, 2004; Salminen-Karlsson and Wallgren, 2008; Wallgren and Dahlgren, 2005, 2007) and in fields where collaborative PhD projects are common (Thune, 2010), or else comparative studies where all PhD students in a particular context were surveyed, allowing for comparison across different modes of collaboration and with students who did not collaborate with industry at all (Behrens and Gray, 2001; Gluck et al., 1987; Mangematin, 2000). Taken together these studies have found early career academic engagement by PhD students to be a heterogeneous and contextual phenomenon, both in terms of student experiences and outcomes.
While descriptive studies, e.g. Assbring and Nuur (2017), Bröchner and Sezer (2020), Roolaht (2015), and Tavares et al. (2020a), continue to enrich our understanding of specific contexts, later studies have paid more attention to how and why activities and outcomes of early career academic engagement are systematically shaped by individual, organizational and institutional context. Salimi et al. (2015, 2016) investigated different governance modes of collaborative PhD projects and how they affect project performance. Furthermore, Plantec et al. (2023) focused on the link between research orientation and performance in collaborative PhD projects. In both studies, the individual characteristics of the PhD students, such as if they previously had been employed by the firm or the degree they had a taste for science, were found to have a significant moderating effect. This is in line with Tavares et al. (2020b), who argue that the success of collaborative PhD projects is shaped by the students’ ability to manage the relationship between the collaborators. Thus, the importance of the individual context, especially the individual antecedents of the PhD student, is acknowledged and confirmed but not studied in detail.
To address this gap the purpose of this paper is to move towards a deeper understanding of how the individual context influences the activities and outcomes of early career academic engagement of PhD students. We proceed in two steps. First, we empirically explore the individual antecedents of entering academic engagement as a PhD student, and second, we conceptualize how these antecedents are likely to influence the students’ ability to bridge academia and industry during their education. In this process we are guided by the following research question: How are the individual antecedents for entering academic engagement as PhD students likely to influence the students’ ability to bridge academia and industry?
The contributions of this paper are twofold. On the one hand, it increases our understanding of the individual antecedents through our empirical analysis. On the other hand, we develop a conceptual framework that can be used in future research to study more systematically than has been done before how individual antecedents, along with organizational and institutional context, shape activities and outcomes of early career academic engagement of PhD students.
Theoretical background and previous research
Our theoretical point of departure is the conceptualization of collaborative research projects as avenues for knowledge production where academic research is carried out in the context of application (Enders, 2005; Gibbons et al., 1994). Two types of organizations—universities and firms—are involved in the projects and even if their research activities are commonly understood to differ in terms of institutional logics, reflected in nature of work, characteristics of the workplace, characteristics of workers, and disclosure of results, the differences are often overstated (Sauerman and Stephan, 2013). Nevertheless, to accommodate for potential differences we conceptualize participation in collaborative research projects as a boundary spanning activity (Leifer and Delbecq, 1978) in both types of organizations. This means that collaborative research projects are here conceptualized as activities that take place outside the normal organizational boundaries of universities and firms, respectively. Thus, PhD students as boundary spanning individuals should function as exchange agents between the research project and each of the participating organizations. Following Salimi et al. (2016) we conceptualize collaborative PhD projects as collaborative research projects that involve a university, a firm and a PhD student. PhD students are therefore likely to play a boundary spanning role in collaborative PhD projects and their ability to perform this role and bridge academia and industry is likely to be influenced by individual antecedents for entering the project.
When reviewing previous research on individual antecedents for entering collaborative PhD projects, we select the literature on academic engagement with industry as a point of departure and adapt it to our focus on early career engagement of PhD students, which is different from the traditional focus on established academics. Perkmann et al. (2021), who review recent research on academic engagement with industry, group individual antecedents into four categories: demographic attributes, prior career experience, interdependencies with other activities, and motivations. In the process of adapting these categories to our research question and previous research on collaborative PhD projects, we have re-organized them into two main categories: background and motivation.
Background of students entering collaborative PhD projects
The extensive literature on academic engagement has been summarized in two major review papers, namely Perkmann et al., (2013) and Perkmann et al., (2021). They conceptualize background of individual academics as important to influence their propensity to enter academic engagement with industry. When it comes to demographic attributes this literature has consistently found that academics are more likely to enter academic engagement with industry if they are male, senior in terms of academic rank, locally trained at the country level, and geographically mobile and less likely if they are foreign-born. However, the results have been more ambiguous with regards to age, academic age, and tenure. When it comes to previous career experience, academics that have previous commercialization and non-academic work experience have been found to be more likely to enter academic engagement, whereas results about the role of previous entrepreneurship experience were inconclusive. Finally, when it comes to interdependencies with other activities, academics that are productive in terms of publication count and publish in applied journals have been found to be more likely to enter academic engagement, while the influence of research quality and patenting has been inconclusive (Perkmann et al., 2021). While general demographic attributes, such as gender, age, location of birth and education, and previous career experiences also apply to PhD students, other elements, such as academic rank, geographical mobility, academic age, tenure, and interdependencies with other academic activities, are specific to academics.
Previous research on specifically PhD students participating in collaborative research projects with industry during their PhD education have not focused on how the background of the individual students influences their propensity to engage. Instead, some of this research has simply described the background of the students involved or focused on how students’ background influences the activities and outcomes of their PhD projects. For example, Thune (2010) described to what degree the students had prior connection to the university and the firm. Furthermore, Mosyjowski and Daly (2020) differentiated between direct pathway students that enter a PhD program directly after completing their undergraduate studies and returners, who have worked for five or more years before entering a PhD program. They found previous working experience to influence the sophistication of the students’ research, in terms of identifying research problem, addressing the problem, managing unexpected challenge, responding to criticism, and leading the project. Similarly, Salimi et al. (2016) found that the level of knowledge transfer between universities and firms was significantly higher in collaborative research projects if the PhD student was a former employee of the firm.
Motivation of students for entering collaborative PhD projects
The literature on academic engagement has also identified four types of motivations, important when studying the propensity of academics to enter academic engagement with industry. Three of them are concerned with expected benefits from the engagement with regards to access to resources, knowledge goals, and personal income, respectively (D’Este and Perkmann, 2011). However, for these three motivations, the relationship with the propensity to enter academic engagement has been inconclusive. The fourth type of motivations is concerned with expected cost in terms of the loss of freedom and has been found to negatively affect the propensity to enter academic engagement (Perkmann et al., 2021). Of the four motivations mentioned above, our interpretation is that only the expected benefits with regards to knowledge goals and personal income can be seen as truly generic and relevant to PhD students. Many of the expected benefits with regards to access to resources and expected cost in terms of the loss of freedom reported are likely to be somewhat specific to established academics, such as access to research infrastructure that is not available at the university and limitations on publishing demanded by firms. PhD students are less likely to be aware of these issues before starting their studies and, thus, they are less likely to affect their motivation. However, we reason as well that access to resources in terms of funding may motivate positively, while the potential lack of freedom to select one’s own research topic may demotivate, and that holds for both established academics and PhD students.
Few studies have directly studied students’ motivation for participating in collaborative PhD projects. Tavares et al. (2020a) studied students’ reasons and expectations for choosing an industrial doctorate and divided them into three themes: link between industry and academia, applied research, and employability and career prospects. Some researchers have investigated student’s career aspiration after they have started their PhD project, e.g. if they are motivated to work in academia or industry once they have finished their degree (Mangematin, 2000; Thune, 2009). Similarly, Plantec et al. (2023), in their study of how research orientation influences outcomes, used a dummy variable measuring students’ taste for science as a control variable. Plantec et al. (2023) based their variable on Roach and Sauermann (2010) who introduced the concepts of taste for science and taste for industry as students’ preferences for the institutional logics of universities and firms, respectively.
Ability of PhD students to bridge academia and industry during their education
The above points lead to our conceptualization of the ability of PhD students to bridge academia and industry. We conceptualize research activities in collaborative PhD projects as boundary spanning activities that take place outside the normal boundaries of universities and firms, respectively. Furthermore, we conceptualize PhD students as potential boundary spanners and their ability to bridge academia and industry during their education as the ability to perform boundary spanning roles in their collaborative PhD projects. Subsequently, we identify that there are two boundary spanning roles that could be performed by PhD students in such projects. On the one hand, the student could be a boundary spanner as a member of the university. On the other hand, the student could be a boundary spanner as a member of the firm. 1 For example, a student that is only enrolled or employed at the university has only the potential to perform a boundary spanning role on behalf of the university. However, a student that is both enrolled at the university and employed by the firm has the potential to perform a boundary spanning role on behalf of both the university and the firm. This means that the former has a more limited ability to bridge academia and industry than the latter and in that case someone else, e.g. the industrial supervisor, has to perform the boundary spanning role that is needed for the outcomes of the collaborative PhD project to influence the firm.
There is an extensive literature on boundary spanning which is the result of many decades of research. The original research in the context of technological innovation focused on information flows across boundaries, both within and between organizations (Katz and Tushman, 1979; Tushman, 1977; Tushman and Scanlan 1981). Boundary spanning roles were seen as a structural solution to information overload and environmental complexity, which helped organizations to attain and process external information to reduce uncertainty and adapt to change. Later work incorporated social network theory to understand how social capital and network position of the boundary spanner, both inside and outside the receiving organization, influenced his or her ability to effectively source and mobilize expertise for innovation (Mell et al., 2022; Tortoriello and Krackhardt, 2010).
In addition to the classic aspects of boundary spanning mentioned above, research on boundary spanning in the context of university-industry interaction, including academic engagement, has focused on the difficulties of accommodating the different institutional logics of universities and firms (Bruneel et al., 2010; de Wit-de Vries et al., 2019; Galan-Muros and Plewa, 2016). These difficulties and how to resolve them have been associated with the degree to which individuals identify themself in relation to the different institutional logics, which is also related to their motivations for entering academic engagement (D’Este and Perkmann, 2011; Lam, 2011).
Figure 1 presents a visualization of our conceptualization of how individual antecedents may influence the ability of PhD students to bridge academia and industry during their education. On top we have the individual antecedents, which we have divided into background and motivation, following the literature review above. Background refers to demographic characteristics, previous connections the students have to the university and the firm, as well as their previous working experience. Motivations to enter collaborative PhD projects are likely to reflect to what degree the students identify with the institutional logics of universities and firms respectively. These two individual antecedents influence the ability to bridge academia and industry. In Figure 1, this is pictured as the ability to connect two organizations—a university and a firm—that operate according to different institutional logics, as is reflected by their different shapes. The connection is done by bridging their respective organizational boundaries. We suggest that the students’ ability to bridge each boundary may differ, which in turn, is likely to influence the degree to which the outcome of each collaborative project is relevant for each organization, and also the degree to which the outcomes are being adopted by each organization. Initial conceptual framework for understanding how individual antecedents (background and motivation) for entering collaborative PhD projects are likely to influence PhD students’ ability to bridge academia and industry during their education.
Methods
Our methodological approach is to combine empirical analysis of individual antecedents for entering collaborative PhD projects with conceptual development of how these antecedents are likely to influence the PhD students’ ability to bridge academia and industry during their education. Thus, following our empirical exploration of the individual antecedents for entering collaborative PhD projects we further develop the framework presented in Figure 1 to answer our research question.
Our empirical analysis is based on qualitative data at the individual level about firm-employed PhD students, set in the organizational and institutional context of engineering at a single Swedish university. Firm-employed PhD students are concurrently enrolled in a PhD program and employed by a firm and their doctoral thesis is based on a collaborative research project involving the university and the firm. Previous research have shown that the organizational and institutional context of collaborative research projects can vary across industries, technologies, academic fields, universities, and nations (Bekkers & Freitas, 2008; Giannopoulou et al., 2019; Meyer-Krahmer & Schmoch, 1998) and given our focus on the individual context we selected a single field of study at a single university in a single country to reduce the variability in terms of organizational and institutional context. A qualitative embedded case study approach was chosen due to the exploratory nature of our research question (Eisenhardt 1989, 2021; Yin 2014), and purposive sampling was utilized to select relevant informants for this study.
We follow the procedure suggested for validity and reflection on qualitative research, as proposed by (Goffin et al., 2019). Both inductive and deductive approaches influence the research design and analysis, as we moved back and forth between theory and empirical investigation in an iterative way, which allowed for simultaneous reading and development of theory and data to take place (Eisenhardt, 2021; Neergaard and Ulhøi, 2007).
Motivating the choice of the empirical setting
Sweden has multiple types of PhD students, formally identified at the national level. The most common are PhD students employed by the university, followed by PhD students without employment. Firm-employed PhD students are defined by Statistics Sweden (2017:160) as “externally employed third-cycle student, i.e. a third-cycle student employed by a company (and paid by the company) and who pursues third-cycle studies as part of this paid employment”. Their numbers have been growing in recent decades. Since 2002, when the first firm-employed PhD students were registered in the national statistics, there has been a steady increase, from 189 individuals in 2006 to 1049 individuals in 2024 (UKÄ, 2025). In 2024, they account for 5% of all Sweden’s PhD students. However, they are most common in engineering and related technological fields, where 12% of the PhD students are employed by firms (UKÄ, 2025). In addition, there exist several public policy initiatives – a competitive grant system – specifically designed to support such PhD students, which requires a combination of funds from the public as well as private sector. The organizational context for these individuals relates both to the university and the firms involved, and a formal agreement between the two organizations is often required, before the PhD student can be employed.
At the studied university, 18% of all PhD students within engineering and technological fields were employed by firms when the empirical study was conducted. Our interviews suggest that the students are working within an academic context that is familiar with this form of academic engagement with industry. For example, the university has standardized criteria, including minimum study tempo (>50%), supervision set-up (two or more researchers at the university and one from the firm) and teaching (max 20%, which can be replaced with work at the firm). Moreover, it is expected that all PhD students physically move back and forth between the university and the employing firm, enabling them to interact and develop their own networks within both organizations (Berg and McKelvey 2020). The students, therefore, have an opportunity to play a dual boundary spanning role for both the university and the firm, which allows us to obtain a deeper understanding of the different roles PhD students can taking in bridging academia and industry during their education.
On the industry side, six firms are involved in this study, and they have different characteristics and approaches to dealing with firm-employed PhD students (Berg and McKelvey 2024). The firms have been given fictive names in this paper, and are referred to as Firm A, Firm B, Firm C, Firm D, Firm E and Firm F. Previous literature indicate that diversity can exist in organizational agreements (Thune 2009) and legal status of PhD students (Borrell-Damian et al., 2010). However, we have selected so that no variation exists in such dimensions. These students all have contractual agreements with the university, firm as well as with the organization that provides external grants.
With regards to what activities firm-employed PhD students do during their education, it is clear that although they are employed by firms, they primarily focus on work tasks that are related to academic research to complete their PhD thesis yet focusing on problems of interest to the firms. Similar for all PhD students are that they write an independent thesis, take 75 HEC of course credits, attend meetings (supervision, staff or technical meetings), have informal talks and discussions with colleagues at the firm and university, write and publish academic papers and attend academic conferences. The firm-employed PhD students are individuals that use 90-100% of their time on their PhD education, spend 0-10% on teaching activities, and are only obliged to spend a small fraction of their time on firm specific work tasks unrelated to their PhD project (Berg and McKelvey 2024).
Data collection
Data collection included interviewing and the collection of archival data. The primary data sources are interviews (Creswell 2014), where interviews have been conducted from the student’s perspective. It was also necessary to collect archival data. The webpage of and annual reports from The University were consulted, along with a few additional webpages related to funding organizations, collaborating firms and CV databases. A literature review was conducted for crafting instruments and protocols (Eisenhardt 1989), specifically with the aim of constructing an interview guide. Pilot interviews were used in tandem with the development of interview questions, to test and revise the interview guide (Dubé and Paré, 2003; Miles and Huberman, 1994).
The temporal process was as follows. After completing the research design and data management guidelines, one author contacted the university in August of 2017 and the administrators at The University confirmed that there were in total 24 firm-employed PhD students enrolled in PhD education in the subfield of engineering studied, at the university at that time. Two of the 24 firm-employed PhD students were females, while 22 were males. All 24 students were approached and invited to participate in the study, following ethics guidelines related to informed consent. More specifically, the invitation contained a summary of the research project and detailed out how the participants will be affected by their involvement in the data collection for the study. In total, 15 persons accepted the invitation. For those who did not respond, additional reminders of the invitation were sent out in an attempt to include as many informants as possible to assure theoretical saturation (Eisenhardt 1989). Two of the students (one female and one male) responded that they were not interested in participating in the study, and seven (one female and six males) did not answer. Thus, in total 15 male students have been interviewed in this study.
Before every interview, the interview guide was distributed to the students by email, along with two other points of information: (1) The interview was to be recorded, along with information about the research project and data management; and (2) the informant’s name, firm, and university affiliation would be anonymous. More specifically, information about data management included the option to opt out at any time without punishments (Mumford et al., 2021), the recorded interview would be deleted directly after the transcription was made and the informant would get to read and approve the transcript. With regards to anonymity, all data concerning informants’ name, firm, and university affiliation was always anonymized during transcription processes, data storing and analysis. Furthermore, all conference, or article manuscripts of the research was sent to the informants to showcase how their data had been used. The interview guide covered four broad topics, and thus including question related to the firm-employed PhD students’ motivation and background, what being a firm-employed PhD students entail, how they experience the interaction with the university and firms, as well as how they perceive their contribution to the university and firm during their PhD education. Grasping what being a firm-employed PhD student entails was time-consuming during the first interviews, allowing less time to be devoted to discussing their background, collaboration experience and contributions. To account for all these topics, nine of the students needed to be interviewed twice, especially students that were interviewed early on during the research process. For these students, the technicalities of anonymity and recording were again discussed and handled, this time at the beginning of the interview. Thus, a second round of interviews for six of the students was not necessary, since all topics had already been covered in the first interview.
Overview of interviews with firm-employed PhD students.
aNames are fictive.
bThis interview was conducted on Skype.
Hence, a total of 24 interviews were conducted, which can be summarized to 26 hours and 7 minutes of interview data.
The data analysis was conducted in an iterative way by the three authors. Two of the authors worked together and interacted on a regular basis, approximately once a month, from the early start of this research in 2016 when the research was designed, up until 2025 when this paper was written. The third author became more involved in interpreting results for this specific paper from 2019 on to the present.
The data analysis proceeded in two steps. First, we analyzed the background and motivation of the students, and second, we compared the outcomes of the first step to identify categories that had the potential to differentiate students’ ability to bridge academia and industry during their education.
Analysis of background and motivation
The analysis of the student’s background aimed at identifying different characteristics, such as previous university or industry experience from the interviews and the archival data. Although conducted in an iterative way, i.e. moving back and forth between theory and empirical data, this analysis was of descriptive nature and therefore the results of the analysis were compiled into tables.
The analysis of students’ motivations was done through a thematic approach and required coding of the interviews, trough an iterative process. Due to the large amount of interview data, authors agreed to conduct the analysis of the students’ motivation using a data processing tool. Since all three authors had previous experience of using Nvivo for qualitative analysis, the choice fell on that particular tool. This analysis involved all three authors and proceeded in the following way. First, the transcripts of the interviews were imported to the Nvivo software. Once the transcripts were imported, each interview was analyzed and coded with informant-centric phrasing to emphasize the experience of the individual informant (1st order codes). Phrases or chunks of text were coded instead of line-by-line coding. The Nvivo codes were labeled in either Swedish or English depending on the language of the transcript to keep the individual voice as alive as possible (Saldaña 2016; Tracy 2010). All three authors are fluent in Swedish and English, which help maintain coding consistency while minimizing translational errors or other misinterpretation due to language barriers. Using Nvivo enabled the authors to easily go back and forth between interview data and codes, which was helpful in handling overlapping motivations and validating codes across researchers.
Next, these codes were grouped into higher level codes for every individual, hence aggregating the lengthy informant-centric codes into short-named 2nd level codes. Up to this point, all coding was driven by the empirical data. To take the analysis further, existing theory was consulted and compared with the empirical driven 2nd order codes. Some of the empirical 2nd order codes aligned with motivations already identified in existing literature, while other codes appeared to complement this literature.
Finally, the 2nd order codes of all 15 students were grouped in order to construct 3rd order codes, or themes, of the students’ motivation. Figure 1 visualizes the coding structure for analyzing individual motivations for becoming firm-employed PhD students. The first-order codes are visualized on the left-hand side in Figure 1, while the second-order codes are in the middle and the third-order codes are to the far right. The first-order codes are purely based on the empirical material. The second-order and third-order codes may be empirical or inspired by previous research. A grey background denotes items that are purely derived from the empirical material, and the white background shows more concept related items. An overview of the coding structure is displayed in Figure 2. Overview of the coding structure for firm-employed PhD students’ motivations.
Comparative analysis
The second step of the data analysis aimed at identifying categories of background and motivation that could potentially differentiate students’ ability to bridge academia and industry during their education. This was done through a comparative analysis of background and motivation across the firm-employed PhD students and resulted in a conceptualization of three modes of entry: Supervisor-initiated projects, MS thesis-initiated projects, and Employee-initiated projects. For each of these modes the background and motivation of the included firm-employed PhD students was compiled and summarized in tables. Based on these results and existing literature we extended our initial conceptual framework presented at the end of the theory section, which we subsequently used to answer our research question.
Limitations
Above sections describe our methodological approach. Although motivated for this study, the methodology has some limitations. First, this case study is carried out in a context of a single university in one country and a specific field, which have implications for the generalizability of our results. The findings could potentially be applicable to other fields of engineering, other universities, and other countries, however, to determine the generalizability of these findings to other settings, the proposed conceptualization should be tested in fields other than engineering and should include a larger set of individuals—for instance, all firm-employed PhD students in Sweden or across multiple countries. Second, our sampling approach resulted in that only male informants have been included in the study. Including female informant could potentially have rendered different data and results. Third, retrospective self-reporting is less reliable than real-time data collection, and the informants may have over- or underestimated their past experiences and behaviors. Hence, we recognize the limitations of our qualitative research, based on in-depth case study of one form of academic engagement within engineering at one university. However, we believe our conceptualization can open some interesting avenues for further research aiming for more generalizable results across different organizational and institutional contexts.
Results
In this section we present the results of our study. First, we describe and summarize our analysis of the background and the motivation of the fifteen firm-employed PhD students included in the study. Second, we identify three conceptual, but empirically inspired, modes of entry that we expect to influence the ability of the students to bridge academia and industry during their PhD education. Finally, we extend the initial conceptual framework developed in the theory section and use it to answer our research question.
Background of firm-employed PhD students
Background of the firm-employed PhD students.
aAll firm-employed PhD students are male.
bIndividuals who were already employed by a firm before starting the firm-employed PhD position are not considered in this category, since their employment is interpreted to be more important than whether they conducted their MSc thesis at the current firm or not.
From Table 2 we see that all the students are male and almost all of them (12 of 15) are locally trained as they have a MSc degree from the university. Of the remaining three that are not locally trained (Hank, James and Kevin), two have a MSc degree from another Swedish university and one has a MSc degree from an European university.
Less than half (6 of 15) of the firm-employed PhD students have previous work experience from industry. The students who have work experience from industry (Charlie, Edward, Fabio, Kevin, Marcus and Oliver), all had more than five years of experience, and all except Fabio became firm-employed PhD students at the firm they were previously employed at. Three students (Daniel, Gabriel and Ivar), not having a previous work experience from industry, have done their MSc thesis at the University in collaboration with the firm they now are employed at as PhD students. Having already interacted with firms when doing a MSc thesis can be interpreted as a previous engagement experience, especially when it involves the university and the firm that collaborate during their PhD studies. In addition, one student (Marcus), has experience of research collaborations involving The University and Firm B. In these collaborations, however, Marcus was employed at Firm B and represented the firm. Since previous engagement experience concerns the experience academics have in engaging with industry, and not the experience firm employees have in collaborating with universities, we do not interpret Marcus as having previous engagement experience.
As the highest degree of education of the students when entering academic engagement is at the MSc level, we expect them to have limited work experience from universities compared to both early career and experienced academics with a PhD degree. However, three of the firm-employed students (James, Kevin and Marcus) have been exposed to academic research environments more than other students. James worked part-time as a research assistant during his education at The University, Kevin previously worked at a foreign university, and Marcus collaborated with The University during his employment at Firm D. Thus, our interpretation is that James, Kevin and Marcus have limited work experience from universities, however at a higher level compared to the other students in this study who lack this kind of experience.
Nine of the firm-employed PhD students were master students right before they started their firm-employed PhD student projects. The remaining six students were employed by firms before their current position, of which five of them (Charlie, Edward, Kevin, Marcus and Oliver) worked at the same firm as they now pursue their PhD project. However, Fabio worked at Firm C before starting his firm-employed PhD student position at Firm B. Thus, our interpretation is that individuals that enters into this form of academic engagement either start directly after they graduate their masters or worked in industry in between their master and PhD education.
Finally, seven of the firm-employed PhD students had been involved in initiating their own PhD project in some way. While three of the students (Daniel, Gabriel and Ivar) have been able to be involved in initiating the project by pursuing a Master thesis project with the same firm and university, another four students (Edward, Kevin, Marcus and Oliver) have been involved in initiation as firm employees. Our interpretation is that individuals can be more or less active in creating their own firm-employed PhD project, which in turn potentially also could influence firm-employed PhD students’ ability to conduct and deliver output related to science and innovation during their education.
To summarize, the fifteen firm-employed PhD students included in this study have backgrounds that are both similar and different. With regards to prior connection to the university and the firm (Thune 2010), twelve of the firm-employed PhD students have completed their MSc degree at The university and seven of them continued directly into their firm-employed PhD project right after graduating. These latter firm-employed PhD students can be categorized as direct pathway students, while the six firm-employed PhD students that have work experience from industry can be categorized as returners as they have worked for five or more years before entering a PhD program (Mosyjowski and Daly, 2020). According to Salimi et al. (2016), the level of knowledge transfer between universities and firms should be higher in firm-employed PhD projects for five of the returners, as the firm-employed PhD students were former employees of the firm. In addition to antecedents found in previous literature, our empirical analysis show that firm-employed PhD students may be more or less involved in the initiation of their own firm-employed PhD project.
Motivation of firm-employed PhD students
More than half of the firm-employed PhD students (9 of 15) express in one way or another that they aimed to satisfy personal curiosity and interests through becoming firm-employed PhD students. For example, Kevin explains that At that time, I was very interested in learning more about machine learning, I’ve been reading up on it but didn’t really have time for it because I had to deliver a lot with regards to the products.
Other firm-employed PhD students emphasize that the PhD project needs to be interesting to them, for example by focusing on interesting topics and future technology. As Gabriel explains “to be a firm-employed PhD student was not so important, for me it was more about finding the right project” and Lucas notes that Yes, it was important [the research project], I had not applied for whatever position, it had to be something related to what I wanted to work on and what I was knowledgeable about. So, I didn’t apply for a firm-employed PhD position for the sake of the position itself.
One third of the firm-employed students (5 of 15) express in different ways how they chose to become firm-employed PhD students to achieve knowledge related goals. These firm-employed PhD students express how they were driven by a knowledge gap which was important to close both for them as individuals as well as for the firm. For example, Marcus explains that: I realized the usefulness in educating myself further. So, it was basically on our initiative and based on our own knowledge gaps that became a trigger point to pursue PhD education, and not the firm identifying a specific area that they needed to develop competence within.
While Edward explains the gap to be significant also for the firm: We identified this gap and that’s why we created this project and then I was involved pretty early in the phase because we found this gap to be significant and we realized we could work on this with a research interest as well.
One firm-employed PhD students expressed that one of the motivations for becoming a firm-employed PhD student was that it would be an opportunity to push civilization forward. This motivation mainly emphasizes the importance of research for society as compared to engaging with third-party organizations because it makes a different for society, and we interpret it as a pro-social motivation.
More than half of the firm-employed PhD students (8 of 15) see value in combining the academic and industrial perspective during their PhD education, which we have categorized as valuable to combine academic and industrial perspective. For example, James explains that I want to stay in research but at the same time, I mean, I have always been curious what is outside such as companies and so I ended up in our understanding the industrial PhD is exactly something in-between so you manage to see both sides and after four-five years you manage to have more information about both sides and you have more knowledge and I think that was exactly what I needed.
Nick expresses it in a shorter way by stating that a firm-employed PhD position is the “best of both worlds”. Thus, our interpretation is that these firm-employed PhD students appreciate the combination of research and the application of research, because they are curious about technology development within fields that are science-based. Thus, although some of the firm-employed PhD students did not originally intend to conduct PhD education, they did so anyway because the project topic matched their personal curiosity and interests and required them to develop research skills and knowledge.
Three firm-employed PhD students perceived that their employability would be higher after finalizing a PhD degree as a firm-employed PhD student, as compared to finishing it as a university-employed PhD student. As firm-employed PhD students they expected that they would more easily qualify for and get jobs in industry, compared to university-employed students who whose options might be limited to jobs at universities. We categorize this as perceived increased employability after PhD.
Two of the firm-employed PhD students mention they wanted to become a firm-employed PhD student to get a more interesting job in industry. For instance, Oliver expressed that I started focusing on becoming a project leader, but after a while I got tired of it and thought it would be better to return to the more technical aspects. And therefore, I tried to organize so I could become a PhD student
In this context, getting a more interesting job is not related to qualifying for a job in academia, as reported by previous research, but rather to qualify for more interesting jobs in industry, expressed by Charlie as “I realized it was really many PhDs in those parts of R&D”. Thus, our interpretation is that the firm-employed students perceive a PhD degree to be necessary to qualify for specific type of jobs in industry that require advanced engineering knowledge.
Finally, one firm-employed PhD students was motivated to become a firm-employed PhD student because the timing was good. Marcus explains that Then, in 2014 our CEO announced [Firm B] won’t be working on taking this route further until 2023 and then I thought it would be a good time to pursue a PhD, because it won’t happen anything within this area during the coming 4 years, until [Firm B] is going to develop it [their product], so I might as well develop this competence while there is time for it.
We have categorized this as good timing to pursue PhD education.
One firm-employed PhD students (Daniel) mentioned that he found it rewarding that people in industry care about what he is doing. This is similar to a category identified by previous research as receiving recognition for peers, i.e. other academics, but here the focus is on recognition from industry instead. Thus, we categorize it as receiving recognition from industry.
Another firm-employed PhD students (Edward) expressed that “getting paid to study” motivated him to start a firm-employed PhD position, and similarly, one student (Fabio) described that that fact that “Firm B offers a unique program for PhD students” was important when choosing to become a firm-employed PhD student. Here, we interpret the former statement to be close to the category of increasing personal income and the latter to be close to the category accessing resources, both already identified in the literature. Note however that getting paid to study and increasing income might not be the same thing, as Fabio does not clearly express that he is receiving a higher salary than he had in his previous employment. Instead, this reflects that Fabio values the opportunity of being paid while pursuing his PhD studies as such.
To summarize relative to our research question, the firm-employed PhD students included in this study could be grouped into two of Tavares et al. (2020a) themes, namely being motivated to pursue firm-employed PhD student projects due to the link between industry and academia, and employability and career prospects. Thus, firm-employed PhD students perceive value in combining academic and industrial perspectives, which is in line with that they have a taste for science (Plantec et al., 2023; Roach and Sauermann, 2010). With regards to employability and career prospects, the firm-employed PhD students indirectly express their career aspirations (Mangematin, 2000; Thune, 2009) through motivations mostly favoring career paths in industry, such as in certain parts of a R&D department.
Three modes of entry for firm-employed PhD students
Having analyzed the students’ background and motivation for starting a firm-employed PhD position, we now identify three modes of entry that are likely to influence their ability to bridge academia and industry during their PhD education. These modes of entry are empirically inspired but conceptual in the sense that they represent ideal types that help us to identify meaningful categories of ability without claiming that all students fit them perfectly.
We found that firm-employed PhD students must formally apply for a position that specifies them as jointly employed by a firm and enrolled at The University. A PhD position was a contract involving four years of study related to courses and research, and up to 20% (1 year) additional work could be spent on departmental duties, like teaching. Moreover, these specific PhD positions were all funded through a nationally based competitive grant system. The supervisors, academic and industrial, were usually the applicants and students were not accepted or enrolled until the project had been granted with a budget combining funds from the financier, the firm, and the university. Hence, it was only possible for a student to enter a firm-employed PhD position if there existed a firm-employed PhD project that had successfully applied for funds.
More than half of the students (8 of 15) were not involved in the initiation of the PhD project at all. In this case, the PhD project was initiated and specified by the academic and industrial supervisors and the students responded when the PhD position was advertised. For example, Charlie explains that “they announced a PhD position and I applied for it and yes, I got it”.
Three of the students, Daniel, Gabriel and Ivar, were partly involved in the initiation of their own PhD project through conducting their master thesis in collaboration with the firm that became their employer. Thus, although not initiating the project themselves, they were included early in the process and had ongoing discussions with their respective supervisors when specifying the project. For example, Ivar explains that. When I was doing our master thesis I was talking to people over lunch or a cup of coffee and so on. Our master thesis supervisor [at the firm], his colleague is now our supervisor in the PhD project, and we talked at several occasions about many things and then he came and asked me if I would be interested in it, so that’s how I got introduced.
Four of the students (Edward, Kevin, Marcus and Oliver) played a major role in initiating their own PhD projects. They use their professional networks at the firm where they were employed to formulate project topics, assign supervisors, and apply for funding. For example, Oliver explains that I tried to organize so I could become a PhD student. I started by talking with our boss at that time, and said to her that I was interested of this and then she helped me. I also talked to other colleagues to formulate what area I should do research within, we formulated a project proposal and sent it in to Grant Public A and finally got the grant accepted
To explore if the ability of firm-employed PhD students to bridge academia and industry was likely to differ systematically depending on the students’ involvement in initiating their own PhD project we compared background and motivation across three modes of entry into a firm-employed PhD position, which we label as Supervisor-initiated projects, MSc thesis-initiated projects, and Employee-initiated projects.
Supervisor-initiated projects
We define a Supervisor-initiated project as a firm-employed PhD project that is initiated entirely by the academic and industrial supervisors, and the PhD student is recruited based on applications once the project has been funded. This is the most common mode of entry in our study (8 of 15). In this case the PhD student is joining the academic engagement with industry by an university employee (the academic supervisor), whose joint research with the firm is supported by the recruitment of a PhD student.
Background and motivation of firm employed PhD students entering through Supervisor-initiated projects. The numbers in parentheses refer to the number of students out of the total of eight students that entered through this mode.
MSc thesis-initiated projects
We define a MSc thesis-initiated project as a firm-employed PhD project that has primarily been initiated by a collaborative MSc thesis work involving The university, the firm and the PhD student. Specifically, the student progresses from the MSc level to the PhD level as the PhD project is a continuation of the research already started in the MSc project. The student has either had the intention of writing a MSc thesis to become a firm-employed PhD student, or the MSc project has evolved into a firm-employed PhD project through discussions amongst the student and supervisors involved. This is the entry mode of three students in our study.
In this case the PhD students are entering a progression of an existing academic engagement between a university and a firm that they have previously been a part of.
Background and motivation of firm employed PhD students entering through MSc thesis-initiated projects. The numbers in parentheses refer to the number of students out of the total of three students that entered through this mode.
Employee-initiated projects
We define an Employee-initiated project as a firm-employed PhD project that is primarily initiated by a firm employee, who then develops and specifies the project together with the academic and industrial supervisors, and subsequently becomes enrolled in a PhD program. Essentially, the employee remains a firm employee but also becomes a PhD student. This is the entry mode of four individuals in our study.
In this case the PhD students initiate and have an active role in forming their PhD project as employees of the collaborating firm.
Background and motivation of firm employed PhD students entering through Employee-initiated projects. The numbers in parentheses refer to the number of students out of the total of four students that entered through this mode.
Ability to bridge academia and industry
Following our comparative analysis of the three modes of entry the next step is to extend our initial conceptualization of how individual antecedents are likely to influence students’ ability to bridge academia and industry.
In the theory section we conceptualized PhD students as potential boundary spanners and their ability to bridge academia and industry as the ability to perform boundary spanning roles in their firm-employed PhD projects. Subsequently, we identified two boundary spanning roles that could be performed by PhD students in such projects. On the one hand, students can be boundary spanners on behalf of the university. On the other hand, students can be boundary spanners on behalf of the firm. Furthermore, we identified information flows across the boundaries and the reconciliation of different institutional logics of universities and firms as the core attributes of effective boundary spanning.
Based on the results of our comparative analysis and the core attributes of effective boundary spanning we merge background and motivation into three dimensions of individual antecedents: likelihood of existing relationships, likelihood of relevant experience, and likelihood of being motivated to reconcile differences in institutional logics. 2
We define likelihood of existing relationships as the likelihood that the students have existing study or work relationships with individuals that belong to either the university or the firm that collaborate through the PhD project. These relationships can be based on previous studies at the university, including collaborative MSc projects, and pervious work experience at the university or the firm.
We define likelihood of relevant work experience, as the likelihood that the students have work experience—other than from their MSc project— that is related to research or innovation. This experience can come from employment at a university or a firm but is not limited to experience from the university and firm involved in the firm-employed PhD project.
We define likelihood of being motivated to reconcile differences in institutional logics, as the likelihood that the students are motivated to communicate across boundaries to reconcile differences in institutional logics. This motivation can be expressed explicitly as a motivation that combines a taste for science and a taste for industry, such as perceiving the value of combining academic and industrial perspectives, or implicitly, as a set of motivations that reflect both a taste for science and a taste for industry.
We conceptualize that the three dimensions influence the attributes of effective boundary spanning in the following way. Relationships within the receiving organization and across the boundary are a necessary condition for boundary spanning. Without them no boundary spanning is possible. Many relationships offer more opportunities for information flows than few relationships and therefore reflects a stronger ability to span a boundary.
Relevant work experience facilitates communication inside the receiving organization. It creates a general understanding of relevant activities, e.g. research or innovation, as well as an awareness of the dominant logic of a particular setting, such as a university or a firm. Thus, more relevant work experience reflects a stronger ability to span a boundary.
Motivation to reconcile differences in institutional logics facilitates activities that increases information flows and mutual understanding across boundaries. Such activities include, but are not limited to, the initiation of new relationships across boundaries and communication across existing relationships. Thus, stronger motivation to reconcile differences in institutional logics reflects a stronger ability to span boundaries.
Differences in individual antecedents of firm employed PhD students across entry modes and the resulting differences in their ability to bridge academy and industry.
Starting with the likelihood of existing relationships we conceptualize that students entering through MSc thesis-initiated projects and Employee-initiated projects have a high likelihood of having existing relationships with both the university and the firm. MSc thesis-initiated projects are a continuation of a previous relationships, and we assume that students entering through Employee-initiated projects are likely to be reconnecting to the university they graduated from. However, we conceptualize that students entering through Supervisor-initiated projects have a lower likelihood of having existing relationships of this kind. Especially, we assume that these students are unlikely to have an existing relationship with the firm. While many of the students may be former students at the University, we expect that some are not, which lowers the likelihood of having existing relationships with the university compared to the other two modes.
When it comes to the likelihood of relevant work experiences, we conceptualize that students entering through Employee-initiated projects stand out. Being previously employed by the firm they obviously have a relevant work experience from firms. We also assume that they are more likely than students entering through other modes to have work experience in universities, which may be one of the reasons they pursue a PhD degree as employees. We conceptualize students entering through Supervisor-initiated projects and MSc thesis-initiated projects to be unlikely to have relevant work experience from neither firms nor universities, which reflects that we expect them to enter PhD studies close to their MSc graduation.
Finally, we conceptualize less differences across the different modes when it comes to the likelihood of being motivated to reconcile differences in institutional logics. As all students are entering a PhD program that is explicitly involves a collaboration with industry, we assume that the students are motivated to reconcile the differences between academia and industry. However, we conceptualize that students entering through Supervisor-initiated projects are both less aware of these differences because they lack relevant experience and having more heterogeneous motivations, which lowers the likelihood compared to the other two modes.
Based on the differences in the three dimensions of individual antecedents we derive differences in their ability to bridge academia and industry (Table 6). We make a distinction between the ability to bridge in such a way that the output is likely to benefit the firm and the university, respectively. The former is based on the ability to perform boundary spanning on behalf of the firm and the latter on the ability to perform boundary spanning of behalf of the university. The ability to perform both boundary spanning roles—to be dual boundary spanners—represents the strongest ability to bridge university and academia.
We conceptualize that students entering through Employee-initiated projects are mostly likely to have the ability to generate outcomes that benefit the firm and students entering through Supervisor-initiated projects are least likely to do so. This is based on differences in existing relationships and relevant experience. We conceptualize that the same ranking order applies for the ability to generate outcomes that benefit the university but expect less differences between the three modes. Thus, we expect students entering through Employee-initiated projects to have the strongest ability to perform a dual boundary spanning role and the students entering through Supervisor-initiated projects to have the weakest ability to do so.
When we consider the relative ability to generate outcomes for the firm and the university, respectively, within each mode of entry we expect it to differ across the three modes. We expect students entering through Supervisor-initiated projects to have a slightly stronger ability to generate outcomes for the university, compared to their ability to generate outcomes for the firm, while we expect this to be the other way around for Employee-initiated projects. However, we expect students entering through MSc thesis-initiated projects to have equal abilities to generate outcomes that benefit both organizations.
In Figure 3 we have updated the conceptual framework presented in the end of the theory section. Updated conceptual framework for understanding how individual antecedents for entering collaborative PhD projects (entry modes) are likely to influence PhD students’ ability to bridge academia and industry during their education. The framework considers both the difference in ability across the three modes (lowest, in between, highest) and the relative difference in ability within each mode (University, Similar, Firm).
In two steps we have merged the individual antecedents from background and motivation into three entry modes: Supervisor-initiated projects, MS thesis-initiated projects, and Employee-initiated projects. These three entry modes represent differences in firm employed PhD students’ ability to bridge academia and industry, where students entering through Employee-initiated projects have the highest ability, students entering through Supervisor-initiated projects have the lowest ability, and the ability of students entering through MSc thesis-initiated projects is in between. Furthermore, there are differences within each mode with regards to the students’ relative ability to generate outcomes that benefit the firm and the university, respectively. Students entering Supervisor-initiated projects have stronger relative ability to benefit the university, students entering Employee-initiated projects have stronger relative ability to benefit the firm, and students entering MSc thesis-initiated projects have equal relative ability to benefit the firm and the university.
Discussion and conclusions
In this paper we ask how the individual antecedents for entering academic engagement as PhD students are likely to influence the students’ ability to bridge academia and industry. To answer this question, we analyze the background of fifteen individuals and their motivation for starting a firm-employed PhD position in a particular organizational and institutional context, namely in Engineering at a single Swedish university. By answering this question, we take a first step towards better understanding how individual context influences the activities and outcomes of early career academic engagement with industry by PhD students.
As an answer to our question, we propose three distinct modes of entry into academic engagement with industry as PhD students: Supervisor-initiated projects, MSc thesis-initiated projects, and Employee-initiated projects. We conceptualize how students’ ability to bridge academia and industry differ across these the three modes based on three dimensions of their individual antecedents: likelihood of existing relationships, likelihood of relevant work experience, and likelihood of being motivated to reconcile different institutional logics.
This study has three important implications for research on academic engagement with industry. First, the three distinct modes of entry are helpful for further research aimed at understanding how individual, organizational, and institutional context shape the activities and outcomes of early career academic engagement by PhD students. Previous research by Salimi et al. (2015) found that increased geographical and cognitive proximity between the university and the firm increases the likelihood of shared governance of collaborative PhD projects. Increased proximity reflects increased ability for boundary spanning, but Salimi et al. (2015) focused on the proximity between the academic and the industrial supervisors and paid only limited attention to the role of the ability of the PhD student. Our results indicate that PhD students, especially those that enter through MSc thesis-initiated projects or Employee-initiated projects, can also play an important role as dual boundary spanners and therefore have a significant influence on how the collaborative research activities are carried out, including their governance. Furthermore, Plantec et al. (2023) found PhD students’ taste for science and industry to play an important role in mediating the relationship between research orientation and outcomes of collaborative PhD projects. As these dimensions differ across our three modes of entry, we can expect them to shape outcomes of collaborative PhD projects. An interesting opportunity for further research would be to more thoroughly study how entry modes influence how academic engagement with industry by PhD students is conducted and how it affects outcomes. Of special interest would be to better understand how the ability of the students to bridge academia and industry influences the type of outcomes and to what degree they benefit the university and the firm and how the abilities of students and the abilities of supervisors interact to influence the outcomes of collaborative PhD projects and whom they benefit.
Second, our results further increase our understanding of the role that PhD students play in academic engagement with industry. While more than half of the students in our study enter academic engagement through Supervisor-initiated projects, i.e. they become involved only after the collaborative research project has been formed and received funding, about one fourth is entering through Employee-initiated projects, i.e. they are actively involved in initiating their own projects as employees of the firm where they later become firm-employed PhD students. In addition, a little less than one fourth are MSc thesis-initiated projects, i.e. the collaborative project of the firm-employed PhD student is formed by his MSc thesis work. While these ratios are based on a qualitative study, it indicates that potential PhD students may play a more important role in initiating and forming academic engagement of university employees than previously recognized, especially the engagement of employees at the university from which they graduated. Previous studies of academic engagement with industry (Perkmann et al., 2013, 2021) have focused on the characteristics of academic researchers and how they are related to their propensity to engage with industry. An interesting research avenue would be to further investigate the prevalence of PhD students’ role in initiating and forming academic engagement within industry on behalf of the university and to what degree the university continues these engagements beyond the students’ education.
Finally, our conceptual framework can be used to better understand how different forms of organizing collaborative PhD projects influence their potential to generate outcomes that benefit universities and industry, respectively. As noted by previous research there is a great variation in how universities and firms collaborate through PhD projects (Borrell-Damian et al., 2010; Butcher and Jeffrey, 2007; Harman, 2004; Thune, 2009; Wallgren and Dahlgren, 2007) and governance of collaborative PhD projects has been found to influence outcomes (Salimi et al., 2016). This study of firm-employed PhD students has led to the conceptualization of how collaborative PhD projects create opportunities for dual boundary spanning roles and how differences in the ability to perform each role affects the ability to generate outcomes that benefit different organizations. An opportunity for further research would be to use this conceptualization for comparative studies of different forms of collaborative PhD projects to better understand how their governance influences the mechanisms that are needed to generate relevant outcomes for the organizations involved.
Our findings also have implications for policy and industry. With regards to policy, future public funding mechanisms for this form of early career academic engagement could encourage designing collaborative PhD projects also with the students’ individual antecedents in mind, as they will influence the likelihood for the PhD project rendering outcomes relevant to both academia and industry. For industry, implications relate to seeing value in employees that are willing and able to formulate relevant collaborative projects with academia, as these individuals have the potential to further enhance firms’ capabilities for future research and development through university-industry interactions.
Footnotes
Acknowledgments
This work was financed by Swedish Research Council’s Distinguished Professorship Grant to Maureen McKelvey (VR DNR 2017-03360) and the Broman Foundation for Research and Entrepreneurship, School of Business, Economics and Law, University of Gothenburg (individual grants awarded to Karin Berg and Rögnvaldur Saemundsson).
Ethical considerations
Our institution did not require ethical approval at the time of data collection. Interviewee names were anonymized.
Author contributions
Karin Berg: Conceptualization, methodology, data collection, data analysis, writing, reviewing, and editing. Maureen McKelvey: Conceptualization, data analysis, writing, and reviewing. Rögnvaldur Saemundsson: Conceptualization, data analysis, writing, reviewing, and editing.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: this work was supported by the Swedish Research Council’s Distinguished Professorship; VR DNR 2017-03360 and the Broman Foundation for Research and Entrepreneurship.
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Data Availability Statement
Interview data is not publicly available.