Introduction
Chinese innovators
This research focuses on Chinese innovators technology transfer and perceived insecurities. The focus is on perceived job insecurity among university faculty researchers and technology transfer office (TTO) staff working with Chinese colleagues. As it happens, university technology transfer is growing in China. This is vital to China’s innovation and intellectual property program. This article provides a literature review used to create a theoretical framework for explaining conflicts between university technology transfer participants. Certainly, economic development and business competitiveness rely on innovation and intellectual property generation. Given increased investments in university research and Chinese universities, it is important to be aware of conflicts between university technology transfer office staff and faculty. Conflicts between university technology transfer participants can thwart efforts to create thriving, successful university technology innovation and commercialization programs.
Job Insecurity
This article provides a literature review which defines insecurity as perceived threats felt by both the faculty researchers and TTO staff. From this literature review, I developed a theoretical conceptual framework and hypotheses to explain this phenomenon. This article examines the top impediment to faculty researchers’ engagement in the process: faculty indifference, ideological resistance, poor discoveries, limited TTO budget, bad TTO reputation, and university bureaucracy (Markman, 2005).
Other impediments examined are lack of trust in the process, delays, and building and guarding research collaboration funding relationships. Further, concerns exist among non-tenured faculty researchers. In addition, this article also examines the theoretical framework for the study of job insecurity related to university technology transfer. Job insecurity is a perceptual phenomenon (Sverke, 2002, Greenhalgh, 1984). This is an affected distress in alignment with stress theory. Stress theory teaches that the anticipation of a fundamental and unwanted event leads to strain (Sverke, 2002).
Conclusion
In summary, this research focuses on job insecurity among university faculty researchers and technology transfer office (TTO) staff. This study is very important to the field of university technology transfer because job insecurity can lead to reduced work effort, propensity to leave, and resistance to change (Greenhalgh, 1984). Personality, motivation, social exchange, social network, power dominance, worker resistance, and communication theories are discussed. Notably, a theoretical conceptual model of the phenomenon is also provided and discussed. Fourteen (14) related propositions are presented. This is groundwork for a future empirical study to test this theoretical concept for Chinese innovators technology transfer.