Social Studies of Science 2005 Tuunainen 173 210

ABSTRACT This paper presents a challenge to the idea of what some scholars have
called the entrepreneurial university. By applying and elaborating on Thomas Gieryns

concept of boundary work, it offers evidence to the effect that developing an
entrepreneurial university is not as straightforward as it may seem from a more
generalized perspective. Developing such an entity, at least in the confines of
traditional, public-funded universities, is complicated by the emergence of a
boundary between public and private activities. This study focuses on a potential
hybrid research group: an academic group that sought to fuse its research with
potential business activity within an ordinary university department. Controversies
over four distinct issues arose: 1) the bureaucratic authority of a department
chairman, 2) the allocation of teaching loads, 3) the ownership of research tools and
materials and 4) the intellectual property rights of the researchers. Ultimately, the
controversy was resolved through a formal written contract that established two
boundaries: a border between the social roles of university researchers and those of
private entrepreneurs, and a physical separation of the work done by academic
projects from that of corporate development. As a result, the hybrid research group/
firm was purified into a private entity with no direct ties to the university.
Keywords
company
biotechnology, boundary work, entrepreneurial university, start-up
Contesting a Hybrid Firm at a Traditional

University
Juha Tuunainen
Since the mid 1990s, many authors have argued that science and universities are undergoing major transformations. This research, spanning
science and technology studies, higher education research and research
policy, maintains that systems of knowledge production and the university
as an institution are losing their traditional characteristics as they become
more tightly coupled with the global knowledge economy and related
national innovation policies (Etzkowitz et al., 2000; Gibbons et al., 1994;
Marginson & Considine, 2000; Slaughter & Leslie, 1997). On the other
hand, this thesis and the related analyses have been subjected to rigorous
evaluation and criticism (Godin, 1998; Godin & Gingras, 2000; Krucken,
2003; Rip, 2000, 2002; Shinn, 1999, 2002; Weingart, 1997). This debate
produces a frame of reference for the discussion of a topic that has not
been scrutinized empirically in previous science and technology studies,
namely, the emergence of the so-called entrepreneurial university (Etzkowitz, 2003a, 2003b; Marginson & Considine, 2000; Smilor et al., 1993).
Social Studies of Science 35/2(April 2005) 173210
SSS and SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks CA, New Delhi)
ISSN 0306-3127 DOI: 10.1177/0306312705047825
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Social Studies of Science 35/2
In particular, I shall regard the case study of a hybrid firm consisting of a

plant-biotechnology research group and an emergent start-up company as
a vehicle for shedding light on the feasibility of entrepreneurial activities in
the confines of a traditional university, the University of Helsinki, Finland.
Using the concept of boundary work as an analytical tool, I shall demonstrate how university administrators forced the two elements of the hybrid
to separate from each other. The results of the analysis challenge the thesis
according to which the traditional public university is generally being
transformed into an entrepreneurial university.
The Entrepreneurial University and Hybrid Research Groups

As elaborated in the recent literature, the notion of the entrepreneurial
university stands for a variety of different phenomena. For instance, the
concept has been used to represent the application of market-like mechanisms in university management (Marginson & Considine, 2000), to
account for more intensive participation of academics in technology transfer (Slaughter & Leslie, 1997), and to denote any serious attempt by
universities to reform themselves (Clark, 1998). With respect to science
and technology studies in particular, the most relevant discussion of the
entrepreneurial university has been presented by Henry Etzkowitz and coworkers. As analysed by Etzkowitz, the entrepreneurial university is a new
type of institution which is evolving as a result of the intensive interaction
between the previously isolated spheres of the university, industry and
government.1 The overlapping of these institutional realms is creating a
novel knowledge infrastructure that supports the emergence of hybrid
organizations and tri-lateral collaboration networks. The university is being
moulded into an entrepreneurial entity characterized by the third mission
of direct contributions to the national economy (Etzkowitz & Leydesdorff,
2000: 10911). The entrepreneurial university, thus, integrates economic
development into the university as an academic function along with
teaching and research (Etzkowitz, 1998: 833). In this kind of university,
the foundation of spin-off firms has become systematized into an organizationally refined approach that makes the entire institution a quasiincubator fostering new business ventures, helping start-up companies
and encouraging the growth of regional trade and industry (Etzkowitz,
2002).
While this conception certainly mirrors important trends in the contemporary higher education and science policies, it does not pay enough
attention to the problems and contradictions universities encounter as they
cater for the new economic functions. Instead, it seems as if the advent of
the entrepreneurial university was virtually prophesied in the model.2 For
instance, various controversies surrounding the commercialization of research results are predicated to disappear as the entrepreneurial university
takes hold: the opposing norms and orientations will be reinterpreted,
emphasizing harmony rather than disharmony, mutual reinforcement
rather than detraction from each goal (Etzkowitz, 2003b: 116).3 The
Tuunainen: Contesting a Hybrid Firm
175
emergence of the entrepreneurial university is also being seen as a fairly

universal phenomenon. Etzkowitz wants to show that public institutions
like the University of Colorado at Boulder and the State University of New
York at Stony Brook are undergoing a similar kind of transformation as the
prestigious private Stanford University or the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology (MIT) (Etzkowitz, 1998, 2003b). Strands of the model are
also to be found in Europe, Latin America and Asia (Etzkowitz, 2002,
2003b; Etzkowitz et al., 2000).
Although the model proposed by Etzkowitz accounts for the new role
of universities in the advancement of national economic prosperity, such as
alterations in their collaboration networks with industries (Geiger, 1988;
Godin & Gingras, 2000; Kenney, 1998; Marginson & Considine, 2000;
Slaughter & Leslie, 1997), I wonder whether these changes justify speaking
of the emergence of a whole new type of university on a global scale. I also
wonder whether the available empirical evidence is strong enough to
support the claim that the entrepreneurial university is on the rise. It seems
to me that the model was developed on the basis of data from very
exceptional universities, such as MIT. Thus, the models applicability to
other kinds of universities in other countries might be much weaker (Clark,
1998: xiv, 135; Krucken,
2003; Marginson & Considine, 2000: Chapter

7). One way to test the scope of this model is to subject a real series of
events to an empirical analysis. In this instance my hypothesis is that this
case study of a hybrid firm a research group spin-off will show the
limited usefulness of the model in the context of the traditional publicfunded universities in Europe.4
I consider this approach legitimate, as the entrepreneurial university
implies the emergence of hybrid entities. Indeed, hybrids of various kinds
have been identified in the recent research literature. Basically, these
accounts fall into two main categories: 1) close collaboration networks
between different actors and 2) hybrid firms that operate within the
academic setting. In the former, university scientists integrate academic
research and private business activity into a complementary relationship;
the academic work is carried out in a research laboratory and the commercial development in a company to which researchers maintain a close
relationship. In these sorts of hybrids, the boundaries separating the firm
from the university become blurred except from a legal point of view. This
notion of the hybrid is, nonetheless, a rather weak one: it accounts for
close, collaborative networks consisting of university research groups,
government laboratories and companies, or for arrangements where research is done simultaneously in two distinct environments, the research
laboratory on the campus and the spin-off company somewhere else
(Etzkowitz, 1998; Fransman, 2001: 2645).
In contrast to this, the latter notion of the hybrid is more akin to the
situation that arose in my example. In this instance, as described by
Andrew Webster and co-workers, the integration of research and entrepreneurship goes further because corporate activity is not hived off to a
separate location but is pursued in an academic setting (Etzkowitz, 1996;
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Etzkowitz et al., 2000; Rappert & Webster, 1997: 1224).5 This kind of a
hybrid has been called a hybrid firm: it is a company that is likely to be
still located within the university and dependent on the university for a
degree of administrative and financial support (Etzkowitz et al., 2000:
320). Although such an enterprise typically seeks the growth that will take
it to full independence, the firms staff occupies both academic and
company positions concurrently (Etzkowitz et al., 2000: 320). In connection with such hybrids, the dividing line between academic research and
industrial development seems to vanish altogether.
As illustrated by Webster and colleagues, the dual life of the hybrid
within the university may pose considerable challenges. In their study on
university spin-off companies in the United Kingdom, they found that
researchers who pursued academic research simultaneously with corporate
activity were confronted by conflicting messages from different sections of
the host university. The researcherentrepreneurs were also confused by
muddled university policies concerning intellectual property rights
and troubled by potential resentment or envy from their colleagues and
students. Altogether, this atmosphere discouraged the hybridization of
activities, while the governmental pressure to commercialize fostered it
(Etzkowitz, 1996; Rappert & Webster, 1997: 123; Rappert et al., 1999).
Parallel observations have also been made by Paul Rabinow (1999) with
respect to an American biotech company and a French governmental
genetics laboratory operating in Paris.
On the basis of this body of research, the hybrids constituted by
research groups and start-up companies (called, hereafter, hybrid firms)
provide a strategic focus of study, for their success or failure can serve to
probe the limits of Etzkowitzs thesis concerning the emergence of the
entrepreneurial university within the framework of traditional, publicfunded and comprehensive European universities. In the present case
study, the researchers did not set out to maintain a fine line between
commercial and university activities, but tried instead to create a new
hybrid model of practice by uniting public-sector research with privatesector activity. This attempt, which was the first for the particular university faculty, resulted in a serious conflict. This dispute provides excellent
raw material for a more comprehensive analysis of the factors that create,
define and at times adjust the indistinct and dynamic boundary between a
university and a business. Recalling the well-known trouble-making experiments by Harold Garfinkel (1989 [1967]: Chapter 2), the discord in this
dispute broke down the local social order at the university and made
the boundary-work clearly observable. It could, thus, be argued that the
conflict was responsible for revealing structures and alignments whose
existence might otherwise have been left unobserved. On that basis, my
aim was, specifically, to determine: how the participants articulated the
boundary as part of their routine administrative work, what issues came up
when addressing it, and how the boundary shifted and took different forms
during the conflict.
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Fragility of the Hybrid Firm: Boundary Work in an

Administrative Context
To address how the operation of the hybrid firm was administrated within
the university organization, I will apply the concept of boundary work
(Gieryn, 1999; Jasanoff, 1994).6 In his book Cultural Boundaries of Science,
Thomas Gieryn (1999: 45) elaborates the concept of boundary work as
follows: it is a discursive attribution of selected qualities to scientists,
scientific methods, and scientific claims for the purpose of drawing a
rhetorical boundary between science and . . . non-science. He goes on to
state that boundaries are sociologically interesting research topics precisely
because they are variable, changeable, inconsistent and volatile. They arise
locally and episodically as a result of strategic practical action; and are
created and reproduced as actors contend, legitimate and challenge the
cognitive authority of science for the sake of their own goals and
interests.
In this study, I do not treat the concept of boundary work as a readymade idea prescribing exactly what to see in the data, but as a sensitizing
concept that can be used to suggest directions along which to look
(Blumer, 1954: 7). Thus, as Herbert Blumer (1954: 7) puts it, it gives the
user a general sense of reference and guidance in approaching empirical
instances.7 I shall adapt the concept of boundary work in two ways in
order to apply it to the case discussed in this article. First, instead of
emphasizing the demarcation between science and non-science, I shall
focus on a particular set of local bureaucratic procedures used by the
leader of the research group and the university administrators to define the
boundary between academic research and private business.8 It appears that
four specific stakes9 were at risk when this boundary was contested: 1) the
bureaucratic authority of the department chairman, 2) the allocation of
teaching loads between faculty members, 3) the ownership of research
tools and materials and 4) the intellectual property rights of the groups
researchers. By focusing on the struggle over authority and resources, I
hope to expand our present understanding of boundary work to include
also the analysis of boundaries as locally constructed organizational rules
and regulations. Second, I will attempt to expand the concept of boundary
work from the conceptual and rhetorical realm to account for material and
organizational arrangements in time and space. This becomes evident in a
description of the process by which the conflict was resolved by contract.
In this instance, the boundary not only took shape as an exercise in
rhetoric but also involved the dissolution of the hybrid roles of researcher
entrepreneurs in addition to an attempt to have the academic researchers
work in facilities that were separate from those given to the start-up
company. Thus, the idea of boundary work is connected with the importance of the physical location of research from the vantage point of the
interaction between science and society (Galison & Thompson, 1999;
Gieryn, 1998; Henke, 2000).
178
Moreover, by examining the process through which a hybrid firm

became purified (cf. Latour, 1993) into a private entity with no direct ties
to the university, the present analysis will contribute to the understanding
of what it takes for hybrid entities to become stable features of social order
within the confines of the traditional university. In this respect, the
theoretical insights drawn from the case study point to a balancing of
autonomy and control in a local setting that displays a complex mixture
of academic freedom and institutional assignment (see also Rappert &
Webster, 1997: 11819). As will be demonstrated, creating such an equilibrium is a fragile task. In this case, preserving the relative autonomy of
the hybrid firm within the university is easily at odds with the university
administrations attempts to secure a minimum degree of accountability
and negotiation. More importantly, the case illustrates how a concentration by academic researchers on commercialization may result in serious
difficulties with the traditional university functions of research and teaching. Instead of easily combining these different organizational missions
with the new task of fostering economic development, the university may
opt to protect its public character and separate entrepreneurial activity
from its core academic units.
The data analysed here fall into two categories. The first comprises a
total of 184 documents, mostly letters and email messages, written by the
stakeholders involved in the boundary work from September 1998 until
April 2000. I acquired these documents from the personal archives of the
research group leader, whom I will call Professor Anna Monto (below
professor), and the department chairman, whom I will call Professor
Pekka Wilenius (below chair). As far as I can tell, all major actions taken
by the participants are represented in these documents. The second data
set consists of 17 unstructured interviews with eight key stakeholders in
the process. These interviews were made from autumn 1998 until the
beginning of 2000 and lasted typically from one to two hours. During
the interviews, the respondents were free to shape the course of the
discussion and take up any issues they regarded as important from their
particular perspectives. It should also be noted that the terms with which
they expressed their concern about the boundary between university and
private business were endogenous to the documentary data and interviews:
that is, these terms are drawn from the data.
The documents were first arranged in chronological order, and then
coded according to the topic treated. At the same time, note was taken of
what the author of a document hoped to accomplish with the message.
Second, the content of the interviews was linked to that of the coded set of
email messages, memoranda and letters by taking note of speech segments
that were in one way or another related to the issues addressed in the
documents. In that way, interview material could be used to support
the documentary data: I used them to reconstruct the wider historical and
institutional context in which the boundary work took place and to get
access to concurrent descriptions, rationalizations and reflections by the
stakeholders during and after the episode.10 For anonymity, the actual
179
names of the stakeholders, the university department and the start-up

company have been replaced by pseudonyms, and the numbers assigned to
the rooms are pseudo-numbers. All other details are factual.
The Research Group Establishes the Firm in the University

Department
The Department of Agronomy in Transition
Traditionally, research in the university department where hybridization
occurred was based on an agronomical research approach. It rested upon
the external manipulation of growth factors in plants that have an effect on
the yield. Typically, standardized field and greenhouse experiments were
combined with statistical analyses with the aim of determining the most
suitable growing conditions for each plant. By the turn of the 1990s, this
relatively unified agricultural research tradition began to change with the
advent of studies of sustainable farming practices and research using novel
methods of plant biotechnology. Quite soon, horticulture, plant physiology
and agroecology also were included in the broad scope of the departments
research activities.
Consequently, the social organization of the department was characterized by the existence of several groups of researchers. In each field of
study junior faculty members and doctoral students were preparing their
theses under the supervision of comparatively few professors of agronomy,
horticulture, agroecology and crop science. These fields of investigation
varied with regard to their distinctive intellectual profiles. To begin with,
the agronomical research concentrated on field studies of plant populations, with the aim of increasing their yield capacity and tolerance to
various kinds of stress factors. The horticultural research sought to investigate the impact of factors such as fertilization on the internal quality of
vegetables, their yields and their storage endurance. Having only recently
been introduced into the department, research on agroecology was still
embryonic. Finally, crop researchers explored the use of biotechnological
methods to engineer crop plants with enhanced tolerance to various biotic
and abiotic stress factors, such as viruses, insects and temperature, as well
as to understand their underlying biological mechanisms (Tuunainen,
2005).11
The Monto Groups Research in the Departmental Context
Originally, the incorporation of the Monto group into the department was
motivated by an attempt to modernize the departments research tradition.
A Finn by birth but having defended her PhD thesis in the United States,
Dr Monto had acquired broad international experience. Her experience
was amplified by working in developing countries for the Food and
Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Continuing to act as a
consultant, she then accepted a post-doctoral research position at an
agricultural experiment station in the United Kingdom. After founding a
180
research group of her own, she arrived in Finland in 1990. At that time,
her group consisted of a post-doctoral fellow and several doctoral candidates. It was solidly supported by the leaders of the department and the
faculty. This support was due to the fact that research in the department
was considered to be lagging behind other work being done abroad,
especially in plant biotechnology. The leaders, then, considered the recruitment of Professor Montos group as a means to approach the international
standard.
Within the department, Professor Monto was among the most successful scientists, with a strong track record in winning competitive grants,
supervising students and publishing in peer-reviewed international journals in the fields of biotechnology, plant science and genetics.12 Her group
was the first in Finland to apply modern biotechnology to improve fieldcrop plants. During the time period studied, the group was an active and
cohesive entity strongly networked with relevant plant-biotechnology research groups throughout the world. From the very beginning, the groups
research programme13 had a dual nature, combining an epistemic concern
with a practical orientation; a common feature of agricultural research and
biotechnology (Gieryn, 1999: Chapter 5; Kimmelman, 1992; Kleinman,
2003; Miettinen, 1998; Shinn & Joerges, 2002; Webster, 1994).14 As an
instance of what Gieryn might call hybrid science, the group began its
work by attempting to develop a virus-resistant potato cultivar, in order to
understand the biology of a natural virus-resistance mechanism in the
potato and to combat the biological hazards created by viruses in potato
production (Tuunainen, 2001). As the research progressed, the group
extended the scope of its research. Cell and molecular-biological studies
on the potato and its virus resistance were supplemented by research on,
among other topics, insect resistance in various crops, development of a
production system for foreign proteins in plants, and using biotechnological methods to improve oat production.15
The Emergence of the Hybrid Firm
The research groups dual research programme proved a good starting
point for patenting research results and establishing a start-up company.
By the late 1990s, the Monto groups research had resulted in a number of
useful and potentially commercializable results, such as transgenic virusresistant potato and synthetic insect-resistance genes. As no commercial
venture in these areas existed in Finland, the group members came up with
the idea of establishing a firm of their own. As of 1997, the group was
receiving most of its funding from a major Finnish financing organization
for applied and industrial research and development. As required by the
funding organization, it had also extended its collaboration networks from
academic partners to international plant-breeding enterprises. The final
trigger for the establishment of the start-up company was, however, the
groups dissatisfaction with the local research culture within the department. Nonetheless, as they did not want to leave the university once and
181
for all, the researchers pondered the possibility of combining academic

research with business activity. In August 1998, the group founded a
biotechnology firm CropCorp. As Professor Monto stated:
[CropCorp] is my first priority, and I want to proceed to lead it provided
that we can get capital investment. . . . And, then, maintain, partly, if
these people are interested, or if some other unit at the university is
interested, an academic group including students from developing countries in order to work with more profound academic questions.16
Professor Monto had come to the conclusion that commercial research was
her uppermost concern, and that academic research was to be continued if
possible. Although uncertain about the possibility of success with such
hybridization, the group decided to opt for it. As a result, a mixed
community, or to use Rabinows (1999: 154) idiom, a hybrid structure . . .
between public-supported science and industry, emerged: the professor
and three of her graduate students became shareholders of the enterprise
while remaining at the same time members of the faculty. One of these
students even started to work for the firm, while others continued their
academic careers. The professor, then, came up with an idea of applying
for a 50% leave from her academic post in order to work part-time as a
research director in the enterprise.
Although the company was founded in 1998, it did not start operations until early in 1999, when the necessary capital investment was
secured and the chief executive officer was recruited. During the first years
of its operations, the firms growth was rapid although it did not yet have
revenue from sales and was dependent on investments and project funding
obtained from outside sources.17 In October 1999, the total staff of the
hybrid consisted of 13 people altogether, five of whom were working in
the company and eight in the academic projects at the university. A few
years later the company was employing 28 people all by itself. Similarly,
the companys business orientation was subject to rapid change: having
been exclusively a research-driven entity in its early stages, the corporate
mode of activity took real effect after early 2000.
As the business orientation evolved, the firms areas of specialization
underwent considerable change. In the beginning, the research and development (R and D) activities were, not surprisingly, based on the Monto
groups research, that is, on solving agricultural problems by using the
tools of molecular biology, genetic engineering and plant biotechnology.
This was further strengthened by Professor Montos experience in a
number of natural-resource-management projects in Africa, Asia and Latin
America. Since the European markets for genetically modified foodstuffs
were affected by a moratorium brought about by growing consumer
scepticism (Bauer, 2002; Bonfadelli et al., 2002; Dahinden, 2002; Gaskell
et al., 2000; Gutteling, 2002; Kohring & Matthes, 2002), the nascent
company soon redirected its R and D activities toward the production of
animal feed and industrial enzymes. Correspondingly, the clients of the
company were located not in Finland or even in Europe, but in North
182
America and developing countries. The product-development processes

were extremely slow and the prospective sales were expected to materialize
after a period of five to seven years.
Simultaneously with the founding of the hybrid firm, the professors
term as the department chair came to an end. This change in the departmental leadership had major effects on the groups ability to combine
academic work with business. Upon the expiration of Montos term, Pekka
Wilenius, who had recently been appointed professor of agroecology, was
elected as chair.18 This change had two important consequences for the
Monto group. First, administrative procedures within the department
changed. The new chairs emphasis on correct procedures and his perception of departmental democracy replaced Montos informal and managerial approach towards administration. Second, Monto became officially
accountable to her new superior, with whom she had already clashed on a
number of issues: filling an associate professorship; a dispute over the
ecological risks of plant biotechnology; and a planned reform of the facultys departmental structure.
Commercialization in the Context of a Traditional University:

Confusion Created by Weak Regulation
As discussed by Etzkowitz (2003b), disputes about conflicts of interest
augur the advent of the entrepreneurial university. That is, they are signs of
impending organizational change, and will fade away once the initial
attempts to separate academic work from business activities are replaced
by an integrative approach that combines research and commercialization
in a common framework. In this case, such conflicts were exacerbated by
the weak regulation of commercial activities in the university. Moreover,
there were no simple solutions to the problem facing the future of the
hybrid firm within the existing departmental structures and procedures.
Commercialization of Research Results in the University of Helsinki
The Finnish government did not encourage universities and academic
researchers to commercialize their results until the late 1990s. This situation parallels that of France, where there was basically no biotech start-up
industry until the mid 1990s (Rabinow, 1999: 44).19 At the University of
Helsinki, the oldest and largest university in Finland, the general policy
that aimed at fostering commercialization emerged in 1997. From then on,
commercialization was considered an important new field of endeavour,
and a number of activities and structures were created to assist it. For
instance, like many other universities, the University of Helsinki became
aggressive in the managing of intellectual property rights and the commercialization of research results (Hayrinen-Alestalo et al., 2000; Tupasela,
2000). However, the university was also a traditional academic institution.
Founded in 1640, it had a strong German influence from the Humboldtian
ideal of a university protected from commercial and political influence, and
which produces a scholarly elite that internalizes the highest values of
183
national culture (Rothblatt, 1997: 227).20 Given such a tradition and

self-understanding, the trend toward commercialization clearly put the
university under pressure to redefine its practices.
During the 1990s, commercialization started to expand within the
University of Helsinki as a result of new governmental policies that
encouraged applied R and D by increasing the allowances distributed
through the National Technology Agency (Tekes) (Nieminen & Kaukonen,
2001). Consequently, established rules and regulations within the university began to lose their effect. In Finland, universities are public
institutions governed by a number of laws, regulations and contracts.
Typically, these were not constructed specifically for universities, but for
the state administration as a whole. Moreover, they were established before
the commercialization of university research results became an important
issue. Thus, regulations concerning business activities remained very few
and the University of Helsinki remained quite free to take its own stand
towards commercialization. In an internal administrative report (Esko et
al., 1997) the idiom of a free area was used to characterize this state of
affairs. Accordingly, the stance taken towards commercialization was
guided by expediency and informal university policy rather than adherence
to the letter of the law.
Norms Regulating Business Activities within the University
Norms regulating the business activities of university professors were
introduced and maintained at three levels. At the first level were the State
Civil Servant Law and the statute governing all the state civil servants in
every administrative branch. At the second level were the collective bargaining contracts agreed between the government and labour organizations, which defined the conditions under which professors performed
their duties. At the time of this study, a new policy of total work-time
planning (instead of a fixed number of, say, teaching hours) was being
introduced for the sake of increasing flexibility and enhancing chances for
research. The third level was the university: administrative regulations
stating, among other things, that the general administrative authority
within the department was the chair, whose task it was to lead and control
its activities.
The aim of the Civil Servant Law was to secure the performance of the
basic functions of the state effectively, appropriately, and in accordance
with judicial relief. It follows from this that its provisions were restrictive.
At the same time, they remained abstract, failing to take into account the
specific nature of academic activities.21 Consequently, making them effective at universities required much discretionary judgement by university
administrators. From the point of view of the present analysis, the key
clauses in the Civil Servant Law are the following:
1. A primary obligation of a civil servant was to take care of his or her
official duties. This meant that a professor had to perform teaching,
184
research and administrative tasks. He or she needed also to comply with

appropriate supervision and control regulations.
2. A civil servant was not allowed to have a secondary occupation22
besides his or her office, unless given a specific permit for it. Permission
had always to be sought for engaging in a secondary occupation, if it
was to use working hours. In other cases, it was enough for the office
holder merely to give notice of it. The secondary occupation was not to
cause any impediment to the performance of an office holders duties.
3. A leave of absence could be accorded to a civil servant, either fully or
partially.
4. A civil servant who failed to perform his or her duties could be given an
admonition or a reprimand. In serious cases, this might even lead to
dismissal.
According to Esko et al. (1997), these rules were not specific enough to be
used as actual instructions in university departments. Consequently, the
University Senate was asked to outline more precise conditions permitting
business activity. However, no guidelines were defined, and the burden was
shifted to the faculties and departments. With respect to the regulation of
intellectual property rights (IPRs), the university proved more active,
however. Since 1967, the Finnish Employment Invention Law has granted
the right to patent research results to university scientists themselves;
researchers have not even had an obligation to inform the university
administration. During the late 1990s, this policy was reconsidered by a
few governmental working groups (Ministry of Education, 1998; Ministry
of Trade and Industry, 2002). The University of Helsinki also sought to
alter its policy and launched a new procedure to deal with issues relating
to IPRs. According to the initiative, the IPRs should be transferred from
individual academics to the university institution. Although the proposal
was not strictly in conflict with the law, as scientists were expected to assign
their IPRs voluntarily to the university, the proposed change of the
university policy created confusion.
Ambiguity Regarding the Proper Course of Action
In this case, a troublesome situation emerged with respect to vague
regulation of commercial activities. It became evident during interviews
with local actors who complained of ambiguity and expressed frustration
when discussing the start-up firm and the patenting of research results.
Several instances of this could be cited. The dean of faculty expressed his
opinion that the lack of experience with start-up firms was a main reason
for not having clear administrative procedures and regulations. He also
referred to his understanding that Professor Monto had confused the
boundary between her official academic duties and her commercial business, and made a reference to her slightly liberal use of working hours:
We do not have much experience with this kind of activity and now,
obviously, problems come up in this (situation) where no clear practices
185
have been formed. On these grounds, somewhat fuzzy situations emerge,

and it is, of course, a bit unfortunate. And in this (Montos) case it has
appeared that the use of the office time for the benefit of the interests of
ones own firm has been, perhaps, slightly liberal.23
The department chair called for a shared agreement on rules and regulations on the involvement of academic personnel in business activities that
were related to their university duties: Anyway, this [work in the university] is interpersonal activity, in the end. And if somebody conceives . . .
makes rules of her own and acts only barely within legal boundaries, this
wont work at all.24
The professor, then, underlined the ambivalence of the entire university policy. In her viewpoint, the university favoured commercialization
in the abstract but prevented people from doing it in reality:
Question: Could you condense into a few words how the university . . .
has behaved towards this commercialization issue?
Answer: Ambivalently. That is, the decisions in principle, along with these
big physical buildings that have been constructed for firms, express the
positive attitude. But then every turn of events has clearly (indicated) that
in practice there is a lot of backlash, so that people who do not accept this
are given possibilities to muck around. The implementation of the (new)
mode of action is ambivalent. The word has not yet turned into flesh, so to
say. People dont yet act according to the rhetoric.25
The situation was no better with respect to the ownership of intellectual

property rights. According to the professor, the emergent university policy
was in conflict with the law: But it [the university policy] is, now, against
the law. The Finnish law states that there is no need for researchers to make
such a contract as to transfer the [intellectual] property rights [to the
university]. Instead, university researchers own their inventions.26
The industrial liaison officer working in the universitys central administration, on the other hand, underlined the lack of any legislative standard
and stressed the need for contractual agreements:
The legislation says screamingly little about these issues. It only states that
with respect to the university, researchers own the [intellectual property]
rights. But life has become so subtle that there hasnt been time enough to
adjust the law to fit special cases, and, perhaps, there is no need to do so.
But precisely for that reason one needs to be strict as regards these
contracts and settle each case individually; [the current situation] where
the law says nearly nothing underlines the need for a contractual agreement on things.27
Thus, in practice the university policy concerning commercialization remained open to case-by-case decision-making, mostly at the level of the
local department. In this case, a number of stakeholders were involved.
Each of them occupied a distinct institutional position corresponding to
his or her specific competence and perspectives on the boundary at risk
(Figure 1).
186
As summarized in Figure 1, one of the participants in this process was

a colleague of both the professor and the chair. Because she neither
occupied any administrative position nor belonged to the professors
research group, she was a kind of active bystander. Her contribution as a
faculty member to the boundary work was small but crucial. She first
insisted that the professor had blurred the boundary and that more
articulate regulations should be adopted. The professor represented the
FIGURE 1
Major stakeholders, their work duties and their perspectives on the boundary
between departmental duties and private business.
Perspective on boundary
between university activities
and private business
Stakeholder
Work duties
Faculty Member
Teaching of certain courses and

production of scientific results
Departmental activities and

private businesses have become
confused; clarification of
regulations needed
Professor
Teaching of certain courses,

production of scientific results
and creating commercial products
Private businesses do not belong

to outsiders; teaching, research
and administrative duties have
been performed diligently
Department
Chairman
Management of the departments

teaching, research and
administration
Accounts on teaching and

business activities must be given;
faculty must act in accordance
with regulations; the professor
has neglected teaching
Dean of Faculty
Management of the facultys

teaching, research and
administration
Administrative regulations must

be followed
University
Lawyers
Lawfulness of university activities
Public and private activities must

stay separate
Industrial
Liaison Officer
Commercialization of the
research results

stay separate
Director of
Personnel Affairs
Personnel affairs at university
Interpretation of regulations;
guidance given to the chair and
professor
University
Rector
Management of the universitys

activities
Entrepreneurship should be
advanced at university; the
professors contribution to
teaching is recommended
Head of
Administration
Lawfulness of institutes activities

stay separate
187
research group that had formed the hybrid firm. She considered that
the company was a private concern that was none of the chairs business.
The professor also maintained that she had performed her official duties,
such as teaching, diligently. The last six stakeholders represented the
administration. Of them, the department chair and the head of administration were the most important. As immediate superiors of the university
researchers and teachers, it was their task to monitor the rules and
regulations, as vague as they were. These officials had primary responsibility to define the form and extent of entrepreneurial activities among the
faculty in agreement with the representatives of the universitys central
administration (Esko et al., 1997).
Contesting the Hybrid Firm in the Department: Four Stakes

at Risk
During the process of hybridizing the academic and the business activities,
four stakes were disputed by the parties involved. These were: 1) the
bureaucratic authority of the department chair, 2) the allocation of teaching loads between faculty members, 3) the ownership of research tools and
materials and 4) the intellectual property rights of the Monto groups
researchers. Although they had been mingled during the course of the
dispute, the first three of these roughly match the major phases of the gradually deteriorating conflict. The first phase began when the department
chair started to insist on accounts from the professor concerning the startup firm in the autumn of 1998. The second was initiated by the professors
inflexible email concerning the requested accounts in November 1998, and
the chairs subsequent response. The third phase emerged when a number
of instruments and other items were transferred from the university to the
companys laboratory in the summer of 1999. Finally, the question concerning the IPRs ranged over all these phases, that is, from the beginning
of 1999 until the summer of 2000.
1. The Bureaucratic Authority: Administrative Accounts Requested and Denied
Typically, universities in the United States and Europe expect academics to
disclose their commercial activities by submitting some sort of formal or
informal administrative report. The purpose of such accounts is to make
the administration generally aware of commercial activities and to avoid
the emergence of potential ethical, legal or financial conflicts of interest.28
Despite these procedures, it is rather common for academics to avoid
formal procedures and administrative demands (Rappert et al., 1999: 886;
Sheen, 1996: 126). The concept of account can help us analyse how the
bureaucratic authority was articulated in the present case.
Accounts can be regarded as linguistic devices that are employed by
the participants whenever their action is subjected to inquiry, hence
preventing conflicts from arising by verbally bridging the gap between
action and expectation (Scott & Lyman, 1968: 46; for related conceptions
of accounts, see Gieryn, 1999; Mulkay, 1997; Mulkay & Gilbert, 1982).
188
Here, I am focusing on an explicit request by the department chair that the

professor account for her embryonic business activity and the performance
of the departmental teaching duties. Since the person demanding accountability was the departmental leader, reporting became part of a specific
bureaucratic context designed to make the employees work performance
observable by, reportable to and negotiable with the superior. It was,
indeed, a method of securing a line of demarcation between public and
private sector activities. The fact that the professor resisted accountability
gave rise to the explicit contention of an otherwise implicit privatepublic
boundary; the local social order was destabilized and a heated conflict over
the administrative authority of the department emerged.
It was quite evident that both of the persons involved in the conflict
discussed various aspects of the dispute with circles of acquaintances.
Although I did not have very good access to it, the professors circle
included the core members of her group, that is, the three doctoral
students with whom she had founded the company. These colleagues had
backgrounds in scientific disciplines and departments other than the one
they were currently working in. My judgement is that this core group was a
very cohesive entity and that it shared with the professor a similar attitude
towards the department and the agricultural scientific tradition. The
department chair, on the other hand, communicated much more extensively with the faculty and the administration than did the professor. As
illustrated by the documentary data available, the chair carried out an
extensive correspondence with the dean and the vice-dean of the faculty as
well as with officials in the universitys central administration. Obviously,
these personal connections were instrumental to him in determining what
to do in many tricky phases of the conflict over the contested boundary.
The Start-up Firm Established: Concerns about Boundary Blurring
Emerge The faculty member first articulated her concern regarding the
possible boundary blurring by the professor. Although the firm had not yet
even begun functioning, she expressed her concerns to the chair. In
September 1998 she reported: everything I hear from around me seems to
indicate, really, that [Anna] manages her firm here among us supported by
the professors salary. She also said that although the issue was deplorable it had to be tackled. A month later, she approached the chair again,
complaining that the professor and a member of her group had sold
university courses co-designed by other faculty to external customers. This
case was presented as an example of what would happen if the faculty
members mixed business with their university duties: The boundaries
began to vanish. As a result, she stressed the regulatory point of view:
there should be some clear rules of activity. The question was grounded
on the faculty members own decision not to perform any job for her own
consultancy under the auspices of the university. Whether or not the
actions reported by the faculty member were violations of regulations is
less interesting than the fact that the concern for clean administrative
boundaries emerged immediately after the firm was established. It seems,
189
as noted by Brad Sherman (1994: 522), that introduction of privateproperty concerns into the university destabilized the existing relationships
between faculty members and prompted the question of how to control the
new situation.
Taking his duty as a supervising civil servant seriously, the chair
concentrated on the issue. After some private investigations, he started
requesting the professor to account for her activity. He wanted her to tell
him how she was going to arrange the firms relationship to the department. He also advised her to apply for a permit for a secondary occupation, and asked her to draw up a comprehensive work-time schedule,
which was a recently introduced administrative procedure at the university.
In her reply, the professor promised to do so, but explained that she had
not yet spoken about the firm, since the group was still waiting for
investment capital commitments. The chair expressed enthusiasm about
the company and reported to the university lawyer that everything seemed
to be all right. The hybridization of activities did not seem to be a problem;
the professors response encouraged the chair to believe that there was only
one, shared set of regulations and that the professor was going to comply
with it. His optimism was, however, premature. The local social order soon
collapsed because the professor suspected that the chair had a hidden
agenda. As demonstrated by Garfinkel (1989 [1967]: 501), such doubts
typically lead to confusion and bewilderment when explicitly stated. In this
case, the professors doubt concerning the chairs purposes led her to reject
the request for an accounting of the business activity.
The Professor Opposes the Chairs Requests The issues relating to the
blurred boundary between traditional academic activity and entrepreneurial business activity became entangled with other issues related to the
departmental working environment. Thus, in order to understand why
the professor resisted accountability, some historical context is needed.
First, she felt deep frustration after her unsuccessful attempts to modernize
the departments agronomical research tradition by fostering the biotechnological approach. Second, discord erupted among the faculty members concerning research priorities and their mutual disrespect for each
others work. Third, the new department chair represented a competing
scientific tradition, namely, agroecology. He also lacked experience as an
administrator and was thus uncertain in performing his duties. The disagreement among the faculty members had emerged a few years earlier as
the professor vocally and publicly criticized the faculty and its old-boy
network, claiming that the quality of research had to be improved. A
serious conflict ensued. On the professors side, this led to increasing
dissatisfaction and the belief that her biotechnology group was being
isolated from the community in favour of the departments other
disciplines.
On the other hand, many of the faculty the chair included blamed
the professor for causing the controversies while simultaneously strongly
disagreeing with her perception of the situation. They thought that she was
190
personally responsible for the problem: although she was regarded as

highly intelligent, in their view she did not acknowledge the work of others
but appeared to be tough and self-centred. Because the overall situation
was perceived differently, the stakeholders were unable to coordinate their
actions to any significant degree. As a consequence, the situation deteriorated and, after a couple of months, the professor and the chair were in
the midst of a heated conflict focusing on the boundary between the
professors official duties and her private businesses.
The chair claimed that the crux of the matter was the departments
teaching. According to him, the professor had refused to teach, and since
some other teachers complained about their excessive workloads, he started pushing her to become more active in teaching. He was, however, also
concerned about the boundary issue. Recurrently complaining about not
having received the requested accounts, he referred to what he regarded as
proper conduct: according to the law . . . the professor who has business
activities close to his or her branch must report them in order to ensure
that things wont get all confused. In sum, accounts were requested for
two reasons: 1) to police the boundary between the official duties and
private business interests and 2) to manage the departments teaching
responsibilities.29
The professor, then, perceived the chairs actions as fundamentally
different from her previous performance of leadership. Parallel to the case
of Daniel Cohen discussed by Rabinow (1999), the professor had a very
casual attitude toward administration. Instead of respecting bureaucratic
correctness, she, like Cohen, managed her extensive personal networks
through frequent trips, acted dynamically and spontaneously and focused
on the outcomes of the research, such as publications. She also believed
that not everybody else was expected to give accounts; that the new chair
treated her differently. In consequence, the situation developed into a
personal power struggle: the professor regarded the chairs actions as
expressing mistrust, overenthusiastic administration, bullying and micromanagement exercised at the expense of the departments academic
performance and applied mission. She also maintained that the situation
was polarized and believed that plant biotechnology was being expelled
from the department in favour of agroecology, which was the chairs
discipline.
As a result, the professor drew her own boundary between the department and the hybrid firm: she did not give any information on the private
business to the chair. In her view, the important issue was the fulfilment of
her academic duties, which she believed she had done outstandingly. She
maintained that she was accountable only to the highest executive, the
rector; he was the right administrator with whom to discuss this issue
because the company was going to relocate to the universitys science park.
This viewpoint was in sharp contrast to the chairs perspective. In his view,
accountability was a central concern. He held that there was only one
legitimate reporting line, and that it went through his position. He also
stressed that he was not interested in the firm, as such, but only as far as it
191
was related to the professors duties: 1) how the professor, as a dual

affiliate, would take care of them and 2) how the firm would arrange its
relationship to the department. To him, the boundary was permeable: the
firm was a collective affair and the department should benefit from it
financially through merit points.
In November 1998, the professor informed the chair about the enterprise and her intention to take a partial leave of absence. She had the idea
of working part-time in the firm while continuing her academic research.
The chair approved the leave. The professor also expressed her hope that
the firm could rent laboratory space from the department until the
universitys business incubator was completed. The chair answered that
this appeared to be possible. However, the professor was still uncertain
about the possibility of combining the two modes of activity. Could she
really divide her time between the firm and the department? Would the
transfer to the business incubator result in a breakdown of her ties with
the university? These were questions she wanted to discuss with the
university rector when he came to visit her laboratory.
According to the professor, her loyalties to the department were not
very strong. Thus, she did not see any need to inform the chair about the
rectors visit but regarded it as being related to a private business with no
other ties to the department besides a request to rent space for a short
time. The chair felt badly about that. He sent a letter to the rector
regretting not having known about the visit and noting the fact that the
department had approved the professors request for partial leave and
the rental of the laboratory. Because he was aware of the cautious attitude
towards commercialization within the administration, he also avowed that
the firm was a positive development and asked for the rectors support.30
The professor objected to the chairs intervention and sent an email to
him, drawing a strict boundary between the department and the
enterprise:
Hi, my meeting [with the rector] was entirely private, and I do not want
you to intervene in it in any manner. . . . If any of my meetings with the
university management, or other, are connected to the department I shall
inform you properly. I do not want you to mention [the firm CropCorp]
on any occasion either, least of all in association with this department or
your own support. You sure know why. We are arranging our affairs fully
legitimately, and we shall contact the department properly.31
The chair believed that the professor did not see the department as a
partner in collaboration. He was perplexed about that and reacted
strongly:
On account of this (email) I have changed my attitude to the extent that I
now regard the forthcoming negotiation (on the leave) as extremely
difficult. On this basis, I conclude that she has something like aggression, something like belligerent sentiments towards this department.
Just as if we had, or some of us had, done something against her . . . 32
This exchange was a turning point in the process of insisting upon and
resisting accounts: it expressed the grave difference in viewpoints between
192
the two stakeholders. It also redefined the conditions in which the accounting would take place. The professor maintained that she did not need to
share any information about the firm with outsiders, including the chair.
In her view, bureaucratic accountability was futile and counterproductive
to the departments application-oriented mission. Since no legal rules were
violated, the chair should not get involved with issues related to the
company. The chair considered his demands for information as legitimate
and was bewildered. He had no idea what the professor meant by her
saying you sure know why, that is, he did not recognize the hidden
motives attributed to him. He claimed to understand that she refused both
accountability and partnership with the department. Consequently, it
became impossible for him to act as a supervisory civil servant, to cite the
university lawyer.
2. The Allocation of Teaching Loads between Faculty Members: Enforcing
Case-Specific Regulations
In the previous subsection, accountability was portrayed as a means to
monitor the boundary between public university activity and private business activity. Correspondingly, it was shown that resistance to these attempts made the otherwise implicit border controversial. The effort of the
chair to enforce the rules, then, was a method of pushing the professor to
comply with the administrative routines of the university and to make her
become a more active teacher, thus, a means to make the abstract legal
provisions and administrative regulations locally effective. Indeed, as discussed by Benjamin Gregg (1999), the validity, even the very existence, of
rules and regulations has to be locally re-created when they are applied.33
In this case, no clear-cut regulations concerning private business activity
within the university existed, or if they did, the stakeholders were not
aware of them. Thus, creating the regulations was a part of the problem of
defining the contested boundary.
Confusion about Proper Procedures: the Professors Application for Leave
Delayed After the exchange both of the participants felt confused, and
together with administrators they tried to figure out how to proceed. The
chair had a more powerful position compared with that of the professor,
and he decided to tighten up his attitude. Trying to normalize the situation
through administrative means, he intervened in the professors work by
sending her a severe letter requesting her 1) to give a report on how she
was using her work time, 2) to draw up a work schedule and 3) to adopt a
constructive attitude towards the department.
A total annual work-time plan was to be submitted by all employees in
accordance with a new administrative guideline for academic staff to report
their contributions to teaching, research and administration. During the
period of time studied, neither the chair nor the professor knew exactly
how best to fulfil this obligation. Its aim was to serve as a neutral
coordinating mechanism to take the strengths and interests of the faculty
193
members into account, securing their contribution to departmental activities but allowing for more freedom of choice. Among other things, it
provided an opportunity to negotiate working hours. It was not designed as
a tool for coercion, but in this case the chair pushed the professor to teach
undergraduate courses that, in his view, were being neglected.
For months I advanced that matter very gently, like Could you, please,
make the work-time plan? that would make it apparent that (she) doesnt
teach and why (she) doesnt teach, etc. No. The work-time plan, the
insistence on it, was an infringement of intellectual freedom although it is
a guideline given by the central administration.34
The chair also sent another letter to the professor stating that her leave
would be approved only if she took care of her official duties. Motivated by
a declining trend in the number of Masters degrees, the chair even
suggested re-arrangements of the responsibilities of the professors at the
department. Supported by the director of personnel affairs and the rector,
he made the professors waiver of the responsibility for one of the departments three undergraduate programmes nearly a condition for her
leave.
Now, it was the professor who was perplexed. To resolve the question
of whether she had a right to the leave, she contacted some administrators
and reported to the chair the advice she was given. She asserted that the
work-time plan was not as urgent an issue as it appeared to be. As to her
waiving the responsibility to run the undergraduate programme, she rejected the chairs view entirely. In her view, the chairs actions confirmed
his hidden agenda: she was being mobbed, plant biotechnology was being
expelled, and the chair was in opposition to her partial leave. When the
professor sought advice on the issue from the universitys chief of personnel affairs, it became clear that a 50% appointment was fully acceptable,
thus, the leave was granted by the Faculty Council.35 The chain of events
had, however, delayed the application, and the professor ended up in a
situation where she prioritized her consultancy project over her official
duties for a short time during the semester. The chair did not accept this
and decided to take further disciplinary actions.
Diligent Teaching and Permit for the Business Activity Enforced as Regulations
by the Chair To normalize the situation and to make the professor comply
with the administrative routines, the chair admonished her with a severe
letter, which was examined and revised by the dean, the university lawyer
and the director of personnel affairs. It stipulated that: 1) the professor
should pursue her teaching duties diligently and 2) she should apply for a
permit for business activity. These regulations were case-specific; they were
based on the general provisions stated in the law but expressed in terms of
the issue at hand. As a result, the universitys liberal stance towards the
universitybusiness boundary (Esko et al., 1997) became restrictive in this
case:
194
You are still more a professor . . . than a private entrepreneur: society pays
you expecting that you use the most of your time and energy to achieve
the goals of your discipline and those of our department. Teaching
undergraduate students is the most important part of your duties. . . . I
urge you to apply for permission to engage in entrepreneurial activity
during working time immediately. . . . I urge you to up-date your worktime plan and start energetic teaching.36
To justify the regulations, the chair listed a number of what he believed

were the professors serious mistakes. He also expressed his lack of confidence in the professors group, since the researchers occupied positions in
both the department and the company. Such hybrid roles were difficult to
control, given the absence of trust and mutual collaboration. From the
professors perspective, the letter and the chairs related oral statements
were groundless and erroneous. The chair had said that she had embezzled
the six weeks pay, been away from work with full salary and misappropriated taxpayers money, made a serious mistake and acted illicitly
and that the university administration was investigating her actions.
Shocked by these accusations the professor examined their validity and
tried to get them corrected. She was informed that no investigation had
been initiated and no malpractice had been recognized. The administrators, however, regarded the issue as being a problem of human relations
between the two persons and found no effective way to solve it. For
instance, the chief of personnel affairs said her role was consultative only
with no prospect of over-ruling the department chairman. Thus, the
chairs statements were left unchanged.
In this phase, the task of establishing a boundary was accomplished
through a disciplinary act. The chair managed the boundary by referring to
the professors teaching duties, to the administrative necessity to acquire a
permit for private business, and to the professors perceived malpractice.
The administrators that he consulted also took a restrictive attitude towards hybridizing university research and business. This state of affairs
became evident in a meeting called by the rector. In her summary of the
discussion, the professor said that the atmosphere was accusative, emphasizing the interests of the university. The hybridization was now considered
illegitimate and the boundary, originally weak and wavering, had become
coercive, a means of social control (see also Gieryn, 1999: 17).
3. The Ownership of Research Tools and Materials: University Property should
not Be Taken into the Firms Laboratory
Despite the conflict, the research group and the hybrid firm worked at the
department until the companys laboratory was completed at the universitys business incubator building. However, when the researchers
moved into the new laboratory it appeared to be insufficiently equipped. To
continue their work, the group wished to borrow necessary tools and
equipment from the department. According to the regulations, the university owned these instruments since they had been acquired through
public grants. As usual within public universities, borrowing required the
195
approval from the appropriate administrator, that is, the department

chairman. Soon after, a loan contract between the firm and the department was drafted. However, some other items (laboratory glassware,
reading lamps, electrophoresis devices etc.) besides those mentioned in the
contract were also transferred. The chair said it should not have happened:
We should have agreed on them, because once a year it comes in black and
white from the central administration . . . that they are the property of the
university.
Because the chair considered that the items taken beyond the contract
were numerous and since he was dead tired of being flexible, he contacted
the police. He also sent a letter to the firms chief executive officer stating:
I insist on behalf of the owner, the University of Helsinki, that CropCorp
Ltd. immediately [underlining in original, JT] return all the instruments,
supplies, materials etc. not specified in the contract. The CEO did not
believe any items had been taken without permission and referred to a
specific clause in the contract. However, he did not let the conflict worsen,
but pursued reconciliation: the list of the loaned articles was extended and
the conflict resolved. However, the loan contract agreed to by the chair
and the firm had to be terminated quite soon. The chair had it examined
by the university lawyer, who regarded it valid by a whisker. After having
the internal inspector check it, the lawyer, to the chairs surprise, recommended that it be invalidated.37
4. Intellectual Property Rights: Confusion about the IPR Policy in the Context
of a Multilateral Research Project
While the situation was coming to a head within the department, the
boundary between public research and private business was articulated in
yet another way: in terms of the ownership of prospective intellectual
property rights (IPRs). In many analyses of commercialization, the issue of
IPRs and patents has been in the front line (Hughes, 2001; Krimsky, 2003;
Myers, 1995; Packer & Webster, 1996). While the situation in the United
States is relatively uniform as universities hold the ownership of the IPRs
generated by the faculty,38 things are much more fragmented and dynamic
in the European countries. For instance, university scientists working in
Finland, Sweden, Norway and Germany have a parallel right to patent
their research results. In the United Kingdom, in contrast, each university
is free to determine its own policy (Harvey, 1996; Ministry of Education,
1998).
As discussed earlier by Sherman (1994), patenting of research results
also involves the juridification of science and affects the practice of research.39 In the present case, the prospective patenting of research results
by the Monto group was connected with a complex system of contract law.
In this respect, the problem was not so much between the professor and
the department chair, but concerned the universitys central administration
and its changing IPR policy.40 In practice, it was played out as a part of a
specific research project the Monto group was pursuing in collaboration
196
with other research groups working in governmental research centres. In

these centres, individual researchers did not possess any rights to their
inventions, but the patents belonged to the organizations. As indicated
earlier, the situation differed in each university in Finland: according to the
law, university scientists owned their IPRs.
The confusion concerning the ownership of the IPRs came up during
the research project on biotechnological oat improvement. The professor
described the situation as follows: In the first project meeting, I picked up
the issue [concerning the IPRs] . . . just because we were privatizing
[research results]. That is, [I wanted] to clear up the situation by drafting a
research agreement. . . . I was stupid to take up that issue.41 Subsequently,
while the research agreement was being drafted, complications emerged as
lawyers representing the research centres were not willing to accept the
Monto group as a contracting party alongside the university; the Monto
group had to be dropped from the contract. From the university lawyers
perspective this, then, implied that all the contractual obligations fell on
the universitys side, without any future profit generated by the possible
inventions. As a result, and in line with the universitys evolving IPR policy,
the central administration expected the researchers to transfer their IPRs
to the university. In the words of the research liaison officer: in my
opinion, there is some sort of a gap in the legislation; we are responsible for
everything but the researcher gets all the benefits. The equation does not
hold.
A further complication was the possible exploitation of the research
results by the private company, CropCorp.42 In the industrial liaison
officers view, when these [IPRs] move over to somebodys firm, and that
research is [simultaneously] done therein and in the university, then we are
approaching those problems where private and public issues get all mixed
up. The university lawyer was of the opinion that the issue had to be
resolved through a contract made between the university and the researchers, a contract that keeps these things separated.43
Whereas the officials of the central administration emphasized the
legal responsibilities of the university and the need to maintain a fine line
between the research and business, the professor insisted that the inventors
had the legal right to the forthcoming results:
We are fulfilling all the commitments we have according to that [research]
proposal. . . . In addition, we want to own our inventions, as stated in the
Finnish law. But we are ready and willing to grant these for the use of the
consortium members through an inexpensive licence. . . . We have also
after discussing it with the universitys industrial liaison officer accepted
a five per cent management fee, a sort of a royalty, from the forthcoming
revenue because this [research] has been done here [at the university]. . . .
Now they want us to transfer our [IP] rights to the university. These will
be handed back to us when this research discontinues in the university but
it wont at least for thirty years. [Later,] the management fee was also
raised from five up to twenty per cent, which is rather generous . . . and
we cannot accept that.44
197
As implied by the stakeholders in the oat improvement project, the conflict

over IPRs also altered the relations between the involved scientists. The
project coordinator said that the research had advanced substantially but
the IPR controversy was impeding the collaboration. Professor Monto, on
the other hand, said:
We are insanely transparent in these [project] meetings . . . . Each
technical result is being represented, everything in the overheads. We leave
the official reports to secure our back regarding the commitments of the
research plan. We act like defendants all the time. . . . Last time I already
refused that attitude. I said I cant help it we have these rights and we are
going to stick to them.45
The clash of viewpoints proved profound and the participants the Monto
research group, the lawyers of the university and the lawyers of the research
centres were left in limbo by the juridical dispute for an extended period
of time. Finally, it was resolved as a part of the process whereby the Monto
groups academic projects were relocated in the universitys biotechnology
research institute. In that context, two agreements were concluded as
preconditions for the association: 1) a collaboration agreement between
the institute, the research group and the start-up company and 2) a
contract concerning the contested intellectual property rights.
Resolving the Boundary Problem: Social and Spatial

Separation between Academic Research and Business Activity
So far, I have described and analysed the research groups attempt to
operate as a hybrid entity at the university, and the related boundary work
where the four issues administrative authority, allocation of teaching
loads, the ownership of research tools and materials, and intellectual
property rights were contested. The settlement of this dispute took place
in a different organizational unit of the university: a biotechnology research
institute, where the Monto group was relocated as the conflict came to a
head in the department. Despite being an independent unit administratively separated from the departmental faculty, the institute was still
part of the university. Operating in a science park, its primary focus was on
high-quality academic research and postgraduate education and as a new
objective it had become more active in the commercialization of research
results. Thus, the leaders of the institute considered entrepreneurship in a
positive light, provided that it was accomplished beyond the confines of the
institute and did not affect working hours or employees ability to carry out
their academic duties. As the institute did not have any undergraduate
teaching responsibilities to fulfil, one of the most complex boundary issues
was removed from the start: the allocation of teaching loads. Thus, the
articulation and management of the public-versus-private border proved
somewhat easier.
As mentioned above, the groups transfer required drafting of two
specific contracts: the one concerning the IPRs (the IPR agreement) and
the other defining the conditions under which the groups academic
198
projects but not the company were associated with the institute (the
collaboration agreement). Reaching a decision about the IPR agreement
proved rather straightforward, as it had already been under discussion for a
long time. The issue was resolved along lines determined by the university
central administration. The collaboration agreement, on the other hand,
proved more complex, as it was a new issue on the table. A major function
of the agreement was to bifurcate the hybrid community by creating a
boundary between its academic projects and private business activities.
From the groups perspective, this was highly problematic. It was working
in the field of applied plant biotechnology and was trying both to answer
fundamental scientific questions and to develop agriculturally useful end
products. The researchers saw the hybrid firm as a way to apply research
results to the benefit of society. They had also developed a style of working
flexibly across boundaries between commercial and academic projects: 1)
they had been able to help each other and solve experimental problems
collectively; 2) they thought it possible that CropCorp might commercialize some of the results achieved by the academic projects; and 3) the
professor continued to oversee the academic projects despite being on
100% leave from the university and being employed by the firm.
The stance taken by the institutes head of administration was that
public and private sector research should not be combined in such a way
that the administration would lose its ability to control the use of public
funds. In his view, such problems were likely to emerge if the roles of an
academic and an entrepreneur were confused and public and private
research was being conducted in the very same place:
The roles [need to] stay clear. And, of course, these kinds of mixed
communities further their confusion. But a sort of balance should be
established so that this can be taken care of in some other way besides
only trusting in peoples ethics . . . .
Where does the boundary between university and entrepreneurial activities lie, especially when the university and the entrepreneurial activities
take place in the same premises?46
With respect to the appropriate way of doing business within the university, the institutes administrative head pointed to the report by Esko et
al. (1997). He believed that the proper mode of conduct was the
following:
[She] could have established that firm within the university but she would
have faced the same issue, that is, to give an account of how responsibilities and duties are allocated between them. One can do nothing in such a
way that one sits on two chairs. . . . Within the university, entrepreneurial
activities can be engaged in by hiring equipment, by paying for premises,
instruments, service. . . . But in that case, one cant have a kind of dual
role of being simultaneously engaged in the firm and at the university.
Instead, it is definite: you are either on one side or the other.47
To make this policy effective, a collaboration agreement was concluded

between CropCorp, the research group and the institute. In that contract,
199
an attempt to deconstruct the hybrid was made, that is, its public and
private parts were separated from each other.48 In this connection, two
specific boundaries were instituted: social and spatial. The social boundary
concerned the roles of the professor and two PhD students of her group.
Because of possible conflicts of interest, the mixed roles of researchers
entrepreneurs were abandoned. The head of administration insisted that
the academic projects needed to have a leader who was employed by the
university, and that this firm should not become involved in those undertakings. On these grounds, the professor (now working for the firm)
resigned from the position of project leader, and two graduate students
were named as new principals. The professors role was defined as being
not the responsible leader of the projects but only a scientific expert. The
contract also named the researchers and technicians working for the
academic projects, thus separating them from those working for the firm.
The spatial boundary defined in the contract, then, highlighted the
importance of the physical location for the changing relationship between
public and private research (Gieryn, 1998). While the hybrid firm sought
to keep its laboratory as a kind of a trading zone (Galison, 1997: 80305)
between academic research and corporate development, the formal written
contract separated the two from each other. In particular, the contract
specified the rooms in which the academic projects could be pursued, thus
separating them physically from the corporate activity. The agreement
stated: The office and laboratory facilities of ABP [the academic part of
the hybrid, that is, Research Projects in Agricultural Biotechnology] are
located . . . in the business incubator building. Rooms C23, C24, C25 and
C06 (laboratories), and C13 and C14 (offices) of the building are at the
disposal of the ABP. Other rooms at the disposal of the group were
reserved for the use of the commercial projects of CropCorp (Rooms C10,
C11, C12, C15, C22, C26, C27 and C28). The assignment of different
activities to different places is shown in Figure 2 (Room C06 located at the
other end of the building is not represented).
In practice, the publicprivate division written into the contract was
called into question and redefined by the research group that had established the firm. Ultimately, the contract did not provide an efficient means
to control the use of space and, thus, remained curious from the point of
view of both the head and the professor. The head admitted that the
separation between the working spaces was difficult to maintain at this
stage of development. In this respect, he admitted that the boundary
remained not only rhetorical but illusory as well. In fact, the hybrid firm
had customized its laboratory space by pulling down the partitions in the
research groups area. Instead of being composed of many individual
rooms, as implied in the contract, the area now comprised two large rooms
with workstations and desks for all of the researchers arranged in an
unsystematic manner.49 While this was accepted by the head in the end, he
put more emphasis on the control of how the group used its public
research grants; in this respect, he stressed the principle of transparency
200
FIGURE 2
Separation of the laboratory and office space as defined in the contract between
CropCorp, the research group and the institute.
Offices
C10
(firm)
C11
(firm)
C12
(firm)
C13
(ABP)
C14
(ABP)
C15
(firm)
Corridor
C22
(firm)
C23
(ABP)
C24
(ABP)
C25
(ABP)
C26
(firm)
C27
(firm)
C28
(firm)
Laboratories
and claimed that the grants should not be applied for the sole benefit of the
private firm.
The professor, then, held that the boundaries had the dysfunctional
effect of breaking the link between academic research and societal utility
a link of central importance to the groups applied mission. In fulfilling this
purpose, the hybrid nature of the firm was instrumental: it was a mechanism that could be used to transfer the results from the research laboratory
to agricultural practice. She noted also that bureaucratic solutions, such as
administrative boundaries, did not hinder the informal intellectual interaction, communication and collaboration between researchers in the hybrid community. According to the group members, the boundary, nonetheless, was strict in a specific sense: the firms projects did not make use of
instruments acquired with public funds. However, the researchers worked
the other way around: they used the companys expensive facilities, laboratory chemicals, equipment and computers to support their academic
projects.
From the point of view of CropCorps chief executive, the spatial
boundary served as a means of allocating rental expenses between the firm
and the academic projects. The researchers in the firm and the academic
group also had entered into a mutual confidentiality agreement and
concurred in prohibiting the use of each others results. He remarked that
the academic group and the firm actually worked in different fields of
research. The academic projects studied the virus and insect resistance
of transgenic plants and developed the quality of foodstuffs by using
genetic engineering, while the firm concentrated on the production of
medical proteins and industrial enzymes in plants, and was not interested
in commercializing the results of the groups academic projects.
201
In summary, the boundary between public academic research and

corporate activity remained ambiguous and fluctuating. When it was
located in the department, the institute was part of the university organization and followed the principles defined by the central administration. The
head of administration continued his efforts to define the boundary by
consulting the very same officials that the department chairman had
consulted. Nonetheless, it became clear to him that the boundary problem
was not really resolved. Instead, it remained permanently at risk as the
head found it necessary to continuously monitor the groups finances to
ensure that public grants would not flow from the university to the private
company. As a result, the ongoing boundary work pulled the hybrid
community in different directions, and the group soon decided to end its
academic research projects altogether and become a fully independent
private entity. At this stage, some of the researchers left the community and
CropCorp hired others to work in new commercial projects. The professor,
then, resigned her post to work for a large multinational corporation in the
United States.
Conclusion
I began this paper by referring to the thesis that universities worldwide are
being transformed into entrepreneurial institutions. This transformation
was said to take multiple forms, such as the introduction of market-like
steering mechanisms and the intensive participation of academics in technology transfer. Henry Etzkowitz recently suggested that entire universities
might be restructuring themselves into quasi-incubators for embryonic
start-up companies. In the present article, Etzkowitzs thesis of the entrepreneurial university was given close empirical scrutiny by reference to an
attempt by a research group to hybridize its academic work with an
emergent business activity in the context of a traditional Finnish university.
This sort of a hybrid, which initially was not hived off to a remote
organizational position, such as a science park, but was operated in an
ordinary academic department, was considered a useful vehicle to illustrate
the limits of entrepreneurialism within a traditional public university.
The concept of boundary work was introduced to facilitate my
examination of the destabilized boundaries in this case study. Instead of
referring to the distinction between science and non-science, as done by
Thomas Gieryn, boundary work in this particular instance was understood
as an administrative attempt to maintain and re-create the fine line that
separates academic work from corporate development. As such, this process took place in struggles for control, with four specific issues at stake: 1)
the bureaucratic authority of the department chairman, 2) the allocation of
teaching loads between faculty members, 3) the ownership of research
tools and materials and 4) the intellectual property rights of the researchers. The stakeholders attempted to resolve the dilemma contractually. In this agreement, social and spatial boundaries were imposed upon
the hybrid firm. The former separated the social roles of entrepreneurs
202
from those of academics while the latter referred to the spatial assignment
of different activities to different places. Although these attempts did not
resolve the basic difficulty brought about by hybridization, they demonstrated that constructing boundaries involves material and organizational
arrangements in time and space, in addition to conceptual distinctions and
administrative rules.
The lessons learned from the case study show that the traditional
public university is not being transformed into an entrepreneurial one as
straightforwardly as claimed by Etzkowitz. Instead, in this instance the
attempt to pursue corporate activity alongside academic work within an
ordinary department was beset with complexities and controversies. It also
appeared that the traditional university was not willing unconditionally to
prepare the way for the academic entrepreneurialism within its core
academic units. Instead, the start-up firm was sealed off in a more
peripheral organizational position within the universitys business incubator. Thus, the strong institutional resistance that arose in connection with
the hybrid suggests that the university is able to sustain its traditional focus
and direction in the context of the global knowledge economy and competitive innovation policy.
This case challenges the thesis according to which universities in
general are becoming entrepreneurial organizations. The results also are
compatible with earlier observations, such as Burton Clarks (1998: xiv,
135) unsuccessful effort to identify entrepreneurial universities in Europe
in the mid 1990s. Clark did not come across such universities in the large
higher education systems of Germany, France and Italy. All the entrepreneurial universities he found were relatively young organizations or former
technical schools operating in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands,
Finland and Sweden. A similar observation was made by Simon Marginson and Mark Considine (2000: Chapter 7) in connection with the
enterprise university in Australia. Moreover, as Georg Krucken
(2003)
observed with respect to German public universities, the new policyrelated rhetoric, which emphasizes the commercialization of research
results, is not being matched by equally dramatic changes at the local level
of individual universities. Thus, institutional structures and practices in
universities are more stable than suggested in discourse and policyoriented literature. In my opinion, the thesis about the coming of the
entrepreneurial university appears to be too broad. It does not adequately
take into account the complex organizational structure of universities, but
maintains that commercial impulses penetrate entire universities in a rather
straightforward and thorough fashion. In that respect, I think that a
distinction should be made between special intermediary structures and
functions that assist technology transfer and the core academic units, such
as departments. While the auxiliary parts of the university may, indeed,
reach out to the corporate world, the academic core may still seek to
dissociate itself from entrepreneurship (for a related discussion, see Clark,
1998: 14142). As a matter of fact, the relocation of business ventures into
203
incubators effectively protects the core academic departments from direct

entrepreneurial influence.
Since the management of the hybrid entity discussed in this case study
ultimately failed, it became a private company with no direct ties to the
university. Thus, the study also provides an empirical basis for discussing
what it might take for hybrid entities to gain a foothold within traditional
universities. To begin with, universities are presently supposed to perform a
multitude of different tasks. These include, at least, basic undergraduate
teaching, postgraduate education, scientific research, service and most
recently commercialization. As a result, universities have become functionally overloaded and extremely complex environments for academics to
work in. Introducing hybrid modes of activity into such contexts complicates the local ecology of action and leads to additional regulation. Consequently, finding a way to maintain the delicate balance between autonomy
and control is critical for the survival of the hybrid. To ensure survival, new
rules and regulations as well as extensive discussions of their local implementation are indispensable. In this case example, the university failed
in both respects. First, the University Senate, the main academic policymaking body, did not specify the conditions under which commercial
activities may be pursued within the organization. Instead, these were left
for the departments to construct on a case-by-case basis. Second, once the
difficulties with managing the hybrid firm unfolded, the superiors to
the professor and the department chairman hesitated to intervene in the
process early enough. As a result, the initial conflict escalated and afterwards was hard to bring under control. Had the participants succeeded in
settling their differences earlier, the necessary mutual understanding might
have evolved and the process might have taken a different, smoother
route.50
Meeting these two conditions the drafting of the new rules and
regulations concerning business activity pursued within the university,
and the necessary dialogue on their local implementation constitutes a
considerable challenge for any university. Remarkable cultural changes and
organizational learning would be required in order to make the hybrid firm
a permanent part of the traditional university. Nevertheless, it remains an
open question whether hybrid firms can ever survive as stable organizations within a university. As argued earlier, we might well presume them to
be provisional, a specific phase in a trajectory where researchers seek
to take full advantage of their research results in the commercial world.
Notes
I am grateful to Christopher Henke, Marja Hayrinen-Alestalo, Michael Lynch, Franois
Melard and Lucy Suchman, as well as my colleagues at the Centre for Activity Theory and
Developmental Work Research and faculty and administrators I studied at the University of
Helsinki, for their comments and criticism of earlier versions of this paper. Three
anonymous reviewers of this journal provided me with a number of valuable comments and
suggestions. I also thank Henry Fullenwider for linguistic revision. I also am grateful for
funding from the Academy of Finland (Finnish Centre of Excellence Programme
20002005) for the projects, Technical Innovations and Organization of Research Work (no.
204
37370) and Changing University Research and Creative Research Environments (no.
49789). The Danish Ministry of Science and Technology used part of this article in its
unpublished report titled Framework Conditions for University Interaction with Business
and Community a Comparative Study of Finland, Sweden and UK.
1. Etzkowitz and co-workers (Etzkowitz & Leydesdorff, 2000; Etzkowitz et al., 2000)
elaborate on this thesis, which they call the Triple Helix of universityindustry
government relations. For recent critical discussions of the Triple Helix model, see
Shinn (2002) and Tuunainen (2002).
2. As noted by Shinn (2002: 606), the theoretical underpinnings of the Triple Helix
model are very complex and difficult to understand. In my reading, Etzkowitz (2002:
121) seems to postulate some sort of an underlying mechanism to produce the
entrepreneurial university when he writes that its becoming is not so much a matter of
evolution . . . but of an internal dynamic working itself out. However, the extent to
which universities can truly resist the working of that internal dynamic remains
unclear.
3. As rightly observed by Shinn (2002: 605), the empirical data and the analysis of
concrete events neutralize these normative propensities to some degree. See also an
early article by Etzkowitz (1996), which is more careful than many of his later papers
when it comes to making general claims about the entrepreneurial university.
4. See Shinn (2002: 606) for a relevant discussion on whether start-up companies can be
used to test the validity of the Triple Helix model.
5. According to Etzkowitz and colleagues (2000: 320), hybrid firms comprised 17% of the
sample. The other forms of university start-up companies identified were: the
independent firm (54%), the shell firm (21%) and the virtual firm (8%).
6. In a recent study of boundary organizations, Clark Miller (2001: 495) considered
boundary work the specific focus of this study as but one function in a larger
context of hybrid management. According to him, hybrid management refers to the
work of putting together and taking apart . . . hybrids, orchestrating their use across
multiple forms of life, and bounding and demarcating their relevant domains of
authority. In his terms, hybrid management consists of hybridization, deconstruction,
boundary work and cross-domain orchestration.
7. Gieryn (1999: 34) seems to have taken a similar stand on the concept as well.
8. To my knowledge, the concept of boundary work has not been applied in investigating
everyday administrative routines, despite the fact that this sort of bureaucratic work is
certainly included within the broad scope of Gieryns and Jasanoffs understanding of
the concept. See Thackray (1998) for discussions on the publicprivate relationship in
biotechnology.
9. Gieryn (1999: 15, 91) regards stakes as material and symbolic resources such as
authority, money, jobs, fame, credibility, influence and prestige that are at risk when
participants pursue boundary work.
10. During the process of data collection, the research materials provided by each
stakeholder were kept confidential. Afterwards, as the analysis proceeded, each
informant was given an opportunity to comment on and criticize various versions of
this paper. I found these comments very useful and did my best to incorporate them
into the narrative. These interviews were conducted with the professor (13 October
1998, 19 November 1998, 18 March 1999, 7 January 2000 and 23 May 2000), the
department chair (21 March 1997, 5 November 1998, 30 November 1998, 8 February
1999, 24 June 1999 and 14 January 2000), the dean of faculty (8 February 1999 and
12 January 2000), the head of administration (31 March 2000), the start-up companys
board member (23 March 2000) as well as with the research liaison officer, the
industrial liaison officer and the university lawyer (20 January 2000 and 12 September
2000). All translations from Finnish to English have been made by the author.
11. It is difficult to describe these fields of research in concise terms. Since each of them
included many small projects, the characterization remains necessarily rather
superficial.
205
12. During the 1990s, the external competitive research funding acquired by Professor
Monto from governmental and private business sources came to FIM 1.5 million
(approximately USD 250,000) annually. She supervised 14 dissertations in the fields of
biotechnology and agronomy. Between the years 1990 and 2000, she published more
than 60 articles in peer-reviewed international journals and books. She also held six
plant-biotechnology patents and four patents in crop production.
13. In science and technology studies, the notion of the research programme has been
discussed extensively. Timothy Lenoir (1993: 79), for instance, described research
programmes as being characterized by their problem-oriented focus. They are carried
out in local research facilities, such as laboratories, where assemblages of techniques,
skills, instruments, models, theories, and their materialization in productive
experimental systems becomes blackboxed and stabilized (for relevant literature, see
Fujimura, 1996; Latour & Woolgar, 1979; Lynch, 1985).
14. Well in advance of the current interest in the topic, Joseph Ben-David (1960) presented
an interesting discussion of the hybridization of scientific roles and ideas.
15. Since the group was working in a department that traditionally concentrated on crop
husbandry, plant production and the like, the boundary between the fundamental
biology and practical application embodied by the groups research programme was not
in contention, as such.
16. Interview with the professor (13 October 1998).
17. At this stage of development, the companys only income besides capital investment
and project funding was revenue from consulting and production of educational
materials. Compared with the expenses, these were minor.
18. Professor Monto stepped down from the department chair in response to an
administrative plan to reform the departmental structure within the faculty, which she
strongly opposed.
19. When compared with the United States, the European situation differs significantly: the
first boom of biotechnology start-up companies took place in the United States already
in the late 1970s, whereas European universities were linked to the existing large-scale
enterprises (Orsenigo, 1989: 1236).
20. See Schimank and Winnes (2000) for the entrenchment of Humboldtian ideas in
various European countries. With respect to contemporary German universities,
Krucken
(2003) considered the Humboldtian model as an organizational myth.

21. Special institutional legislation regulates Finnish universities at the institutional level.
This legislation says nothing about commercialization.
22. A secondary occupation is a post, paid work, occupation, trade or business engaged in
alongside the main post. Individual temporary tasks, such as giving lectures, are not
classified as secondary occupations.
23. Interview with the dean of faculty (8 February 1999).
24. Interview with the department chair (14 January 2000).
25. Interview with the professor (7 January 2000).
26. Interview with the professor (23 May 2000).
27. Interview with the research liaison officer, the industrial liaison officer and the
university lawyer (20 January 2000).
28. In Finland, as indicated earlier, requirement for disclosure is based on the Civil Servant
Law. In the United States both public universities (such as the University of New
Hampshire) and prestigious research universities (such as Cornell University) have
instituted disclosure mechanisms similar to those in effect in Finland (Morrison &
Wetzel, 1991; Stein, 1995).
29. Rappert and Webster (1997: 123) report a case in which the founders of a start-up
company were concerned about a potential conflict of interest between teaching and
research.
30. In response, the rector stated: this kind of an experiment may give useful experience of
how business activities emerging in the university can be advanced. He said that vicerectors had agreed with their departments on how the annual total work-time was
distributed among duties, and that they also took part in teaching.
206
31. Email to the department chair from the professor (27 November 1998).
32. Interview with the department chair (30 November 1998).
33. An ethnomethodological approach to the use of legal rules states that such provisions
do not possess stable operational meanings that would render them straightforward or
unproblematical guides to practical actions. Instead of treating rules and regulations as
external causes of practical action, they should be understood as inseparable from it
(Lynch, 1992: 217). This is to say that the meaning of a rule only becomes apparent
through its application over a series of actual situations. Whenever a legal rule is
applied . . . it must be localized to be useful (Gregg, 1999: 371).
34. Interview with the department chair (14 January 2000).
35. As the documents reveal, the department chair and the board of the department
supported this decision.
36. Letter to the professor by the department chair (15 February 1999).
37. I asked the universitys internal inspector to give the reason for such a determination,
however, he refused to comment on the issue for reasons of confidentiality.
38. The Bayh-Dole Act of 1980 created a uniform patent policy in the United States
among the many federal agencies that fund university research. On the grounds so
constituted, universities retain their intellectual property rights to the outcomes of
scientific research.
39. Sherman (1994: 518) called the juridification of science the intervention of the law
into an arena it [had] hitherto largely ignored.
40. The department chairs only concern was the fact that the project researcher worked in
CropCorps laboratory. He weighed whether that situation was acceptable with respect
to his responsibilities.
42. A minor concern for the administrators was also the lack of information given to the
department chair by the professor. They considered it necessary to be transparent in
these kinds of issues, since the chair and the dean of faculty were formally responsible
for the university activities.
43. Interview with the research liaison officer, the industrial liaison officer and the
university lawyer (20 January 2000).
46. Interview with the head of administration (31 March 2000).
47. Interview with the head of administration (31 March 2000).
48. According to Miller (2001: 491), deconstruction refers to the opening up [of] hybrids
to reveal the tacit and often value-laden assumptions embedded in their construction.
49. For instance, office C14, which was formally reserved for academic projects, housed
the firms researchers, but laboratories C22, C26, C27 and C28 were in common use.
For a discussion of customization of laboratory space to suit the particularities of
laboratory culture and ongoing research, see Gieryn (1998: 239).
50. Guston (1999: 91, 2001: 400) points out that the consent of actors created through
daily negotiation is an important aspect of stable boundary organizations. Rappert and
Webster (1997: 122, 129) make a similar observation.
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Juha Tuunainen has recently completed his PhD in sociology at the

University of Helsinki, Finland. His dissertation titled Hybrid Practices: The
Dynamics of University Research and Emergence of a Biotechnology
Company focuses on the work of an agricultural plant-biotechnology
research group and the groups transformation into a university start-up
company.
Address: University of Helsinki, Department of Education, Centre for
Activity Theory and Developmental Work Research, P.O. Box 26
(Teollisuuskatu 23, 3rd floor), Helsinki, FIN-00014, Finland; fax: + 358 9 191
44579; email: Juha.Tuunainen@Helsinki.Fi

Social Studies of Science 2005 Tuunainen 173 210

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ABSTRACT This paper presents a challenge to the idea of what some scholars have

called the entrepreneurial university. By applying and elaborating on Thomas Gieryns

biotechnology, boundary work, entrepreneurial university, start-up

Contesting a Hybrid Firm at a Traditional

Social Studies of Science 35/2

In particular, I shall regard the case study of a hybrid firm consisting of a

The Entrepreneurial University and Hybrid Research Groups

Tuunainen: Contesting a Hybrid Firm

emergence of the entrepreneurial university is also being seen as a fairly

2003; Marginson & Considine, 2000: Chapter

Social Studies of Science 35/2

Tuunainen: Contesting a Hybrid Firm

Fragility of the Hybrid Firm: Boundary Work in an

Social Studies of Science 35/2

Moreover, by examining the process through which a hybrid firm

Tuunainen: Contesting a Hybrid Firm

names of the stakeholders, the university department and the start-up

The Research Group Establishes the Firm in the University

Social Studies of Science 35/2

Tuunainen: Contesting a Hybrid Firm

for all, the researchers pondered the possibility of combining academic

Social Studies of Science 35/2

America and developing countries. The product-development processes

Commercialization in the Context of a Traditional University:

Tuunainen: Contesting a Hybrid Firm

national culture (Rothblatt, 1997: 227).20 Given such a tradition and

Social Studies of Science 35/2

research and administrative tasks. He or she needed also to comply with

Tuunainen: Contesting a Hybrid Firm

have been formed. On these grounds, somewhat fuzzy situations emerge,

The situation was no better with respect to the ownership of intellectual

Social Studies of Science 35/2

As summarized in Figure 1, one of the participants in this process was

Teaching of certain courses and

Departmental activities and

Teaching of certain courses,

Private businesses do not belong

Management of the departments

Accounts on teaching and

Management of the facultys

Administrative regulations must

Lawfulness of university activities

Public and private activities must

Public and private activities must

Personnel affairs at university

Management of the universitys

Lawfulness of institutes activities

Public and private activities must

Tuunainen: Contesting a Hybrid Firm

Contesting the Hybrid Firm in the Department: Four Stakes

Social Studies of Science 35/2

Here, I am focusing on an explicit request by the department chair that the

Tuunainen: Contesting a Hybrid Firm

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personally responsible for the problem: although she was regarded as

Tuunainen: Contesting a Hybrid Firm

was related to the professors duties: 1) how the professor, as a dual

Social Studies of Science 35/2

Tuunainen: Contesting a Hybrid Firm

Social Studies of Science 35/2

To justify the regulations, the chair listed a number of what he believed

Tuunainen: Contesting a Hybrid Firm

approval from the appropriate administrator, that is, the department

Social Studies of Science 35/2