Policy-related discussions increasingly view universities as so-called “engines of economic growth” (Hayter, 2018). The unique process of academic capitalism, which integrates the search for truth and the pursuit of economic revenue, has turned public research universities into enterprises competing for external funding and knowledge producers looking for profitable patents (Münch, 2014). In China, ‘the 13th five-year plan of developing science and technology in higher education’ announced in 2016 has encouraged the partnership between universities and enterprises to develop applied research and obtain external funds (Lai&Li, 2020). Since then, Chinese universities have been adjusting their measures from different aspects to respond to new national policies and encourage university teachers to participate in entrepreneurial research activities. Adopting a university capability perspective, we seek to understand the challenges faced by Chinese academics when conducting applied research, and hence identify the drawbacks of current measures and figure out how Chinese universities can better promote applied research in the context of academic capitalism.

To facilitate a more fine-grained discussion about how different measures may contribute to encouraging teachers to participate in applied research, the ‘university capabilities’ framework will be adopted (Rasmussen, 2015). This framework was developed from studying the process of university spin-off venture formation and offers a theoretical basis to understand the strategic measures on promoting university teachers’ participation in applied research. Simply stated, Universities can develop measures to better promote applied research around the following three capabilities, namely, capabilities that open new paths of action, capabilities that integrate internal and external resources, and capabilities that balance academic and commercial interest. Using these three capabilities provides an analytical framework that identifies the drawbacks of current university measures and helps unpick how the university can improve current measures in order to better promote applied research. Existing research has mainly focused on the implementation process of the measures related to these capabilities, their effectiveness, and how they affect individual academics needs further illustration. Therefore, university teachers’ perceptions of these three aspects will be investigated in this research. Specifically, the research questions are as follows:

1. How do university teachers perceive and interpret current measures that are aimed at opening new paths of action?

2. How do university teachers perceive and react to the measures related to integrating internal and external resources? 

3. How do university teachers perceive measures on balancing academic and commercial interests?

Semi-structured interviews will be the main form of data collection for this study. In-depth interviews will be conducted with 20 university teachers from four academic areas including Social Science, Education, Engineering, and Arts. Under the context of academic capitalism, the characteristics of different disciplines lead to differences in their access to external funds (Lai&Li, 2020). In this case, the four chosen areas are aligned with the market at different levels. The research will be conducted in a second-tier research university in China, who have been focusing on seeking external funded research and actively introducing new measures for this purpose.

Preliminary findings for this study are as follows. Firstly, the capability of opening new paths of action focused on the university-level measures which trigger university teachers’ participation in applied research. According to the informants, currently there are no implicit or explicit backings from the university which help academics decouple from the traditional university tasks and spend time on entrepreneurial activities. Most informants pointed out that current university measures discouraged them from participating in applied research because funding obtained from the partnership with industry was not one of the indicators of an academic’s performance in annual appraisals. Only traditional university tasks and funding from the national foundation of social/natural science can save them from being punished in their annual assessment. Secondly, a combination of resources is the driver for the research commercialization process (Greene et al., 1999). In terms of the capability of integrating resources, most informants responded that the university can provide connections to industry partners and access to inter-disciplinary expertise in the start-up phase. However, follow-up resources including academic sabbaticals, laboratory space, technician time and consumables are insufficient, and there are no organizations like TTO or patent offices to turn to for professional guidance. 
Thirdly, capabilities that balance academic and commercial interest refers to how universities overcome the challenges brought about by the differences in cultures and work practices between the university and industry. Most informants indicated that due to copyright issues, the data of applied research can barely be employed to write academic papers; other problems including intellectual protection and poor quality of the applied projects also stopped the informants from translating outcomes of applied research into academic outputs. The selected university was in lack of policies to alleviate the tension between the need for external funding and the chase for academic freedom.

Greene, P.G., Brush, C.G., Hart, M.M., 1999. The corporate venture champion: a resource- based approach to role and process. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice 23 (Spring), 103–122.
 Hayter, C., Nelson, A., Zayed, S., & O’Connor, A. (2018). Conceptualizing academic entrepreneurship ecosystems: A review, analysis and extension of the literature. The J ournal of Technology Transfer, 43(4), 1039-1082. Lai, M., & Li, L. (2020). Early career researchers' perceptions of collaborative research in the context of academic capitalism on the Chinese Mainland. Higher Education Research and Development, 39(7), 1474-1487. Münch, R. (2014). Academic capitalism : Universities in the global struggle for excellence (Routledge advances in sociology ; 121). New York, NY: Routledge. Rasmussen, & Borch, O. J. (2010). University capabilities in facilitating entrepreneurship: A longitudinal study of spin-off ventures at mid-range universities. Research Policy, 39(5), 602–612. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.respol.2010.02.002 Rasmussen, & Wright, M. (2015). How can universities facilitate academic spin-offs? An entrepreneurial competency perspective. The Journal of Technology Transfer, 40(5), 782– 799. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10961-014-9386-3