The Role of Justice Perceptions in Formal and Informal University Technology Transfer

We extend organizational justice theory by investigating the justice perceptions of academic entrepreneurs regarding interactions with their universities. We assess how these justice perceptions influence the propensity of academic entrepreneurs to engage in different forms of commercialization, as well as the moderating role of entrepreneurial identity and prosocial motivation. We test our predictions using data from 1,329 academic entrepreneurs at 25 major U.S. research universities. Our results indicate that organizational justice is positively associated with intentions to engage in formal (i.e., sanctioned) technology transfer, and negatively associated with intentions to engage in informal (unsanctioned and noncompliant) technology transfer, which we characterize as a form of organizational deviance. Our findings also show that entrepreneurial identity and prosocial motivation (i.e., a focus on oneself vs. others) amplify and attenuate, respectively, the relationship between justice perceptions and technology transfer intentions. Finally, although intentions to engage in formal technology transfer predict subsequent behavior, intentions to engage in informal technology transfer do not.