Capitalismo académico en la nueva economía. Retos y decisiones

Social mechanisms and strategic action fields: The example of the emergence of the European Research Area

The point of departure of this article is Fligstein and McAdam’s A Theory of Fields. It is argued that their theoretical framework would be strengthened by a more systematic focus in social mechanism-based explanations since this would increase understanding of how new strategic action fields (SAFs) emerge. This argument is illustrated by exploring the emergence of the European Research Area (ERA) as a SAF. In identifying social mechanisms the article draws both on Fligstein and McAdam’s studies and on academic capitalism literature. The main conclusion is that the emergence of the ERA was brought about by multiple social mechanisms such as collective attribution of threat/opportunity, soc…

University trustees as channels between academe and industry: Toward an understanding of the executive science network

Abstract Policy makers in the United States (US) and the European Union (EU) see “autonomous” research universities as increasingly central to “world class” status, technology development and economic innovation. Trustees or regents (US) and external board members (EU) are seen as a marker of university autonomy. Examining university trustees may shed some light on the role of trustees/external board members play in research strategy, innovation and economic development. Given that a number of trustees of US research universities sit on the boards of directors of large corporations with research interests, we hypothesized that trustees may be an important channel connecting universities to …