Inside the Triple Helix: An Integrative Conceptual Framework of the Academic Researcher's Activities, a Systematic Review

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Introduction In some Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries, the interactions of the economic actors are in transition (Inzelt, 2004). A triple helix model of these interactions is emerging, based on a spiral pattern of relations among three metaactors in a society: Industry, University and Government (Etzkowitz & Klofsten, 2005; Marques, Caraca, & Diz, 2006). None of these three meta-actors prevails on the others; each influences its own trajectory of actions while every trajectory is influenced by the others (Leydesdorff & Meyer, 2006). Their roles and interests are "intimately intertwined in a complex combination of financial, intellectual, personal and legal relationships" (Campbell, Koski, & Blumenthal, 2004a, p. 4). Never has the university had such a place. It has been motivated by external pressures such as the emergence of the knowledge economy within which the university, as a knowledge-producing and disseminating institution, plays a larger role in industrial innovation (Meyer, Sinilainen, & Utecht, 2003; Cooke, 2005; Landry; Amara, & Saihi, 2005); and the steady decline of public funding of research, which increases the competition for public funds (Etzkowitz & Brisolla, 1999). In this context, the university is experiencing its second academic revolution (Jacob, 2000), which leads to the emergence of a third role, beyond teaching and research: the entrepreneurial role (Etzkowitz et al., 2000). The entrepreneurial university is a "key instrument of technology innovation" (Degroof & Roberts, 2004, p. 327). Two trends in the scientific literature have focused on this new academic environment (Marques et al., 2006). The first is focused on the study of the university's three roles, particularly the horizontal relations among the three meta-actors (Gunasekara, 2005). The second is focused on the institution's internal environment (Kirkland, 2005). In this trend, two orientations were considered: the first is an institutional perspective focused on structure, as implicit and explicit rules of play that define specific constraints and opportunities for actors (Kleinman, 1998). The new academic environment has increased the need for the institutional management of public higher education organisations (Hemlin, 2006b). The university faces formidable legitimacy challenges (Gumport, 2000). Attaining financial freedom will increasingly depend upon the university's willingness and capacity to collaborate with industries and other organisations (Landry, Traore, & Godin, 1996). Consequently, research and entrepreneurial activities, which were until recently seen as quasi-completely individualistic activities, have been increasingly considered as an organisational objective that should be managed accordingly (Fisher & Atkinson-Grosjean, 2002). There is a growing interest in the way researchers assume their responsibility in terms of research, entrepreneurial and teaching activities (Kreber, 2000; Porter & Umbach, 2001). Consequently, the second orientation is an agent-centered analysis of faculty members' activities--particularly those of researchers, as operators in a highly manipulable environment and subjected to minimal constraint (Landry, Amara, & Rherrad, 2006). However, this orientation seems to correspond only to ivory tower institutions (Etzkowitz & Klofsten, 2005). In an increasing number of other institutions, this orientation does not take into account the growing pressures to which researchers are increasingly subjected (Meyer, Du Plessis, Tukeva, & Utecht, 2005), and prevents them from self-managing in a "completely free environment" (Laperche, 2002). Each orientation gives only a partial view of the university's complex mechanisms. A more comprehensive understanding of the internal academic environment reveals the need for integration of the different orientations of the literature in a unique conceptual framework (Audretsch & Lehmannb, 2005) that encompasses all the determinants of the researcher's activities and the relation between them. …