Mixed-motivation factors on academic research commercialisation in Malaysian technical universities

Commercialisation had become one of the main activities for academics. Besides generating income for the university, academic research commercialisation is able to boost up the nation economic gains and quality of life. Therefore, it is important to understand the motivation factors of academic researchers since they are the main player in the commercialisation activity. By understanding their motivation factors, the policy makers are able to execute right initiatives in boosting up the commercialization activities. Literature classifies motivation factors as extrinsic, intrinsic, and prosocial; however, limited studies discussed on the mixed-motivation factors in academic research commercialisation. Thus, this study aimed to further understand the role of mixedmotivation factors among academic researchers who had successfully commercialised their research results. In achieving the study’s objective, this study utilised the Self-Concordance Theory as the study’s framework and applied a qualitative case study approach. The informants in the study were the academic researchers from four Malaysian technical universities. The study revealed that the academic researchers were motivated by the mixed-motivation factors in supporting their commercialisation activities. There are two groups of mixed-motivation factors that had been identified in the study, which the difference between those two is the overlapping size of the prosocial motivation factor in the Venn diagram. It shows that the prosocial motivation is either extrinsically-driven or intrinsically driven. It is hoped that, by knowing the right motivation factors for the academic researchers, the policy makers will execute the best strategy to motivate the novice or unexperienced academic researchers to commercialise their research results as to boost up the research commercialization rate in local universities.