Public and Private Sector Consulting and Academic Research

We study public and private sector consulting activities of academic scientists. Such activities attract attention in the context of knowledge and technology transfer (KTT) and university-industry interactions (UII). In a... [ view full abstract ]

We study public and private sector consulting activities of academic scientists. Such activities attract attention in the context of knowledge and technology transfer (KTT) and university-industry interactions (UII). In a sample of 983 German researchers, we distinguish between researchers’ personal, institutional, scientific, and commercial attributes that help to explain much of the variation in consulting activities. We find that private sector consulting co-occurs with other channels of knowledge and technology transfer like patenting, and co-authoring with industry researchers. While previous research suggested that consulting activities might come at the cost of reduced research performance, our analysis does not confirm this concern. We conclude that while in some disciplines ex-ante research performance and consulting are indeed negatively correlated, research outcomes in terms of publication may not necessarily suffer. Our results, however, suggest that higher engagement in consulting, especially for the private sector, increases the probability of exit from academe.