In the current society, universities and research centers have acquired an important role as agents responsible for knowledge transfer (KT) to the non-academic environment (OCDE 1996). The different ways in which these collaborations take place have been the subject of many conceptual (Molas-Gallart et al. 2002) and empirical studies (D'Este and Patel 2007; Landry et al. 2007) in recent years. The aim of this exploratory study paper is to contribute to KT literature from an area of study generally neglected, humanities and social sciences (HSS), and from a unit analysis perspective that have received less attention: the research group. Thus, the questions addressed in this study are: what are the main activities of KT used by HSS research groups to collaborate with non-academic agents? Do group characteristics or group’ leader profile influence the group’ engagement in a specific knowledge transfer activity? Data for this study has been gathered through questionnaires, interviews and databases for a sample made up of 79 research groups (80% of the population) belonging to the HSS area of the Spanish Council for Scientific Research (CSIC). Descriptive and multivariate analyses have been conducted. Results indicate that HSS research groups are very active in some KT activities such as technical advice, consultancy and contract research, whereas their involvement in personal mobility activities is low. Logistic regression analysis shows that the likelihood that research groups engage in any KT activities is not explained by the same factors. However, we obtain evidence showing that there is a common variable positively related with the engagement of HSS research groups for almost all the different activities analyzed: the focus on the social utility of the research.

Trabajo presentado a la DIME-DRUID Academy Winter Conference: "Economics and Management of Innovation, Technology and Organizations", celebrada en Aalborg (Dinamarca) del 20 al 22 de enero de 2011.

The study benefited from financial support from the Spanish National R&D Plan (Ref.: SEJ2005-24033-E) and the Valencian Regional Government (Ref.: GV06/225).

Peer reviewed