Academics coping with business logic: A study at Indonesian universities

This paper presents coping mechanisms that address competing institutional logics in University-Business Co-operation (UBC). We examined academics at two Indonesian universities and in two science fields, computer science and electrical engineering. Our findings suggest that the level of the integration of business and science logic determines their coping strategies. Academics can act as a hybrid who bridges the two worlds by “compartmentalizing” them. This study infers that inexperienced academics must “learn” in advance about the logic of business before involving themselves in collaboration with business projects.