Abstract
The expansion of universities' missions to include the support of regional economic development has led to conflicts between traditional norms of open science and the norms of entrepreneurialism, as well as placing university faculty in situations of potential conflict of interest. We posit that there are important differences between how universities support regional economic development in terms of leading to normative and ethical conflicts. Using data from two independent samples of U.S. and European faculty, we explore and compare faculty attitudes towards regional engagement and knowledge commercialization using factor analysis. The results show that U.S. faculty make a clear distinction between the appropriateness of university regional engagement, on the one hand, and knowledge commercialization, on the other. European faculty view regional engagement and knowledge commercialization along the same spectrum in terms of appropriateness. At the same time, a sizeable portion of faculty in both the U.S. and in Europe simultaneously express positive attitudes towards knowledge commercialization and commitment to the norms of open science and importance of avoiding conflicts of interest.
JEL Classification: O31, O32, O38, O17
