While public research organisations (PROs) are increasingly expected to transfer knowledge to businesses and other stakeholders, their engagement in knowledge transfer (KT) activities is still under-researched. Better understanding of PROs’ KT engagement, including how it is shaped by PROs’ organisational characteristics, could lead to better tailored policies in support to PROs’ effort to transfer knowledge. We develop a conceptual framework linking PROs’ specialisation in different fields of knowledge to their profiles of KT engagement and validate it empirically using a six-year panel data set of 33 PROs in the UK. We use multidimensional scaling and cluster analysis techniques to identify three distinct KT profiles, which are stable over time, and strongly associated with the PROs’ knowledge field specialisation. We argue that these profiles may depend on the different market readiness and user specificity of knowledge outputs arising from different fields of knowledge and derive implications for theory, policy, and practice.

中文翻译：

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公共研究组织的知识转移概况：知识专业化领域的作用

尽管人们越来越期望公共研究组织 (PRO) 将知识转移给企业和其他利益相关者，但他们对知识转移 (KT) 活动的参与仍然没有得到充分研究。更好地了解 PRO 的 KT 参与，包括它是如何受 PRO 的组织特征塑造的，可能会导致更好的定制政策，以支持 PRO 转移知识的努力。我们开发了一个概念框架，将 PRO 在不同知识领域的专业化与其 KT 参与概况联系起来，并使用英国 33 个 PRO 的六年面板数据集对其进行实证验证。我们使用多维缩放和聚类分析技术来识别三个不同的 KT 配置文件，它们随着时间的推移是稳定的，并且与 PRO 的知识领域专业化密切相关。