Each month, the open access team of the University of Groningen Library (UB) puts a recent open access article by UG authors in the spotlight. This publication is highlighted via social media and the library’s newsletter and website.

The article in the spotlight for the month of October 2024 is titled Academics and entrepreneurs: Enablers of hybrid identity centrality among university researchers, written by Inna Majoor-Kozlinska (University of Groningen, Faculty of Economics and Business), Ulla Hytti and Pekka Stenholm (both from the University of Turku). 

Abstract

As universities evolve through mission expansion and grapple with the increasing need to bridge academic work with practical relevance, researchers are finding themselves in the complex terrain of simultaneously embracing their entrepreneurial and academic identities. This study investigates the factors enabling hybrid identity centrality—a conscious recognition of being both an academic and entrepreneurial individual—among university researchers. Drawing on a sample of 312 researchers from two multifaculty universities, the findings show that researchers’ perception of a university’s entrepreneurship strategy implementation and their society—industry orientation significantly influence the likelihood of hybrid identity centrality. Notably, the society-industry orientation moderates the relationship between entrepreneurship strategy implementation and the adoption of a hybrid identity. The study contributes to the research on the complementarity of academic and entrepreneurial identities and adds novel insights to the organizational research on academic entrepreneurship by suggesting that entrepreneurship strategy alone may not suffice in promoting hybrid identity.

We asked the authors a few questions about the article.

This article includes a video abstract in which you talk about the article. What benefits does a video abstract offer? 

Firstly, video abstracts are a great way to attract a broader audience to scientific studies. This way, non-experts can easily understand and benefit from scientific research. The only condition is to use more simple language, ''translating'' from the scientific language into the language that, for example, your grandma could understand (we are still on the learning path for that). Secondly, video abstracts usually attract more attention than just text, hence, they can notably increase the paper's visibility and reach. For example, since July 2024, our paper has been viewed over 750 times. Thirdly, it is a way for some readers to save time on reading a paper and quickly grasping what it is about. In short, this can help decide if they want to explore the full paper. Above all, filming the video abstract at a professional studio in the Harmonie building was a memorable and exciting experience worth repeating.

What implications does the increasing emphasis on entrepreneurial identity among researchers have for their responsibilities as contributors to public knowledge and societal well-being? 

In the current conditions of limited resources and growing uncertainty (funding cuts, changes in the government policies and geo-political instability), researchers' responsibility towards society increases, especially in publicly funded universities. The idea of ''giving back'' and doing research that is relevant for the well-being of either vulnerable groups of society or economically significant groups (like entrepreneurs) resonate with us very strongly. The main implications of this increasing emphasis on developing entrepreneurial identity among researchers, we believe, is taking stock of our own research, what was done, for whom and how it can be useful, and designing new studies with that relevance in mind (potentially, in collaboration with practitioners). Our study of researchers' identities shows that individual orientation towards society and/or industry is key to being what is called ''an entrepreneurial academic''. We suggest that this identity state is beneficial for any field, be it physics, history or accounting. 

How do you manage to combine academic and entrepreneurial activities in your work? 

We identify as entrepreneurship researchers and have always been fascinated by similarities as well as differences between the research process and the entrepreneurial process. Coming up with a novel research idea that links to a societal problem, attraction of funding, idea implementation, giving back to the funders, sharing with students, and delivering on the promise for target audiences, e.g. entrepreneurs, teachers or managers - these are just some examples of key steps that academics, including us, take which make us so similar to entrepreneurs. We firmly believe that being enterprising is part of the job description and life for many people, especially for highly-skilled professionals.

What can university management do to address identity tensions? What could be the role of the Open Science Programme in solving such tensions? 

Based on our study, the message to the university management is that the strategy to promote entrepreneurship should resonate with researchers themselves. Therefore, nurturing individual motivations towards entrepreneurial activities and providing support for such activities, e.g. through training and incentives (like the Ben Feringa Impact Awards), can be helpful for addressing the identity tensions. The managers may also want to take entrepreneurial goals into account when hiring researchers. The Open Science Programme, in turn, may indirectly help nurturing talented researchers from contexts where institutions or individuals cannot afford journal subscriptions (e.g. some post-Soviet countries, Eastern Europe), thus reducing inequalities in scientific knowledge access.

Could you reflect on your experiences with open access and open science in general? 

The experience of publishing in open access has been simple and smooth. We are glad that this initiative started and are convinced in its timely implementation. Not only does open access make research freely available to anyone connected to the internet but also fosters exchange of knowledge across disciplines and countries, thus potentially contributing to faster scientific progress. 

Useful links

• Ben Feringa Impact Award

• Open Science at the UG

Citation

Majoor-Kozlinska, I., Hytti, U., & Stenholm, P. (2024). Academics and entrepreneurs: Enablers of hybrid identity centrality among university researchers. Journal of Small Business Management, 62(6), 3191–3225. https://doi.org/10.1080/00472778.2024.2366959

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