The Influence of the Organizational Culture on Academic Entrepreneur's Knowledge Sharing Behavior: Case Study at Private University Colleges in Malaysia

One of the methods to encourage the private university colleges' academicians to achieve academic entrepreneur capability is through research activities. The research activities enable the private university colleges' academicians to commercialize their research discovery and become innovative academic entrepreneurs in future. Several scholars argue that the direct involvement of academic entrepreneur into industrially relevant activities would solve some imperfections in the transmission of knowledge and motivate researchers to undertake projects with greater economic and social relevance (Gibbons et al., 1994; Ezkowitz 2004). On the other hand, some scholars (Farsi and Talebi, 2009) are skeptical about the ability of academics to manage commercial activities, while still abiding by the rules and missions of academia and the scientific community. In line with this, it is important for the private university colleges in Malaysia to have a appropriate culture that encourages academicians to share their research idea with others. The willingness to share their research idea shows that the academicians have intention and initiative to collaborate with others, next, commercializes their findings and later become innovative academic entrepreneurs in the future. The commercialization of their research findings helps the private university colleges to obtain profit. Therefore, the objective of the study is to investigate the influence of organizational culture on the academic entrepreneurs sharing research idea behavior. The qualitative approach and multiple case study method were used to fulfill the research's objective. The theory of planned behavior by Ajzen (1991) was used to determine academic entrepreneurs sharing research idea behavior. The findings showed that the organizational culture has influence academic entrepreneurs' attitude, subjective norm, perceived behavioral control and intention to share their research idea with others that leads to development of innovative academic entrepreneurship.