Stuck in the middle? Human resource management at the interface of academia and industry

Abstract

At the interface of academia and industry, university commercialisation offices are distinctive firms that act as a conduit between two highly dissimilar sectors and their HR practices remain underexplored. We examine the human resource management (HRM) in two commercialisation offices of research-based universities in Australia and New Zealand, distinguishing key features of HRM in these offices and the HR challenges they are currently facing. Based on qualitative data from 65 interviews, we adopt an HR architecture ideal types model to analyse differences between the two cases’ HRM and employee perceptions of HR effectiveness. Our results indicate that while both cases are facing similar HR challenges, each has implemented company-specific HR practices that resulted in different employee perceptions. Our findings contribute to the literature by furthering the understanding of the ways in which HR creates value for the firm through examining discrepancies between managerial HR intentions and employee perceptions on HR.

Keywords:

• Strategic human resource management
• HR architectures
• University research commercialisation
• technology transfer
• employee perceptions

Acknowledgement

We are grateful to Dr. Andi Pekarek, whose comments greatly improved this manuscript.