Gateway Study of Leadership: 2015 - 2016 Research

Abstract We explore business school professors’ decision-making processes, specifically their motivations for choosing academia over industry and being involved in industry during their professorships.

We gathered a cross-cultural research sample from Jones Graduate School of Business at Rice University in Houston, Texas and College of Administrative Sciences and Economics at Koç University in Istanbul, Turkey. We then analyze this sample through surveys and interviews for the rationales of professors to become an academic and concluded that Turkish and American professors value teaching, research, contribution to society and freedom to pursue their academic interests. We find that faculty from our sample exhibited an industry participation rate in excess of 70%, compared to a 17-18% general participation rate (Bozeman & Gaughan, 2007).

Professors provided different reasons for industry involvement and transition to the academy.

We find that these differences stem from three sources: economic constraints, different research environments and personal interests.

Introduction An inherent issue in academic work rests in the “ivory tower” problem, in which academics can be perceived as pursuing research projects without directly translated practical applications.

Students in universities also have perceptions of their professors’ progression to their current position as purely through intra-academia positions. Although these perceptions may stand true for many fields, professors in business schools differentiate themselves through a closer connection to industry and non-linear career progression into academia.

Our paper seeks to understand the decision making processes of business school professors in their pursuit of academic and industry careers. Through interviews with faculty of the Jesse Jones Graduate School of Business at Rice University and the College of Administrative Sciences and Economics at Koç University, we analyzed underlying motivations for professors to integrate industry exposure with their academic pursuits. Interview and survey data obtained from Koç University provided unique comparisons to Rice University as both schools focus on quality research and undergraduate programs. Furthermore, Koç University adopts various aspects of academic systems in America, including smaller student to faculty ratios and a liberal arts approach to provide well-rounded learning experiences. However, a key difference between the two is Koç University’s lack of a tenure system for a permanent job position. Instead of being granted tenure, professors are evaluated every five years and are promoted based on “external recommendations by international peers” instead of largely on publication output like in most American research universities (Inan, 2015). We use this absence of the tenure system to analyze differences in professors’ industry exposure, as there were nuanced reasons to pursue industry work instead of devoting themselves solely to academic pursuits.

Almost three-fourths of Rice and Koç University professors either previously held industry positions before entering the field of academia or pursued concurrent industry efforts alongside Page | 2