University boundary units and technology transfer in emerging country: structure and strategies

Universities play an important role in innovation ecosystems as generators and disseminators of knowledge. The effectiveness of this role, however, depends on organizational arrangements and coordination mechanisms that enable interaction between academia, industry, and government. Within this context, university boundary units (BU), including Technology Transfer Offices (TTO), incubators, science parks, and informal boundary-spanning arrangements, emerge as strategic intermediary arrangements in the Technology Transfer (TT) process. While a substantial body of literature has examined these units, existing research remains fragmented, often addressing contextual, organizational, and operational dimensions in isolation and offering limited integration across levels of analysis. In this sense, the general objective of this thesis is to analyze how university BU influence the dynamics and outcomes of TT across different contexts. To achieve this objective, the thesis is structured around three complementary studies. Specifically, it aims to: (i) critically examine how BU operate and adapt across developed and emerging economies, identifying contextual challenges and barriers; (ii) assess how the strategic orientation of TTOs toward internal, external, and mediatory roles affects early- and late-stage TT performance within an emerging economy; and (iii) explore, at a micro level, how BU enact their roles and mobilize social capital in distinct national contexts. Methodologically, the thesis is structured around three interrelated papers. The first paper employs a configurative systematic review to synthesize and compare the roles and challenges of boundary units across heterogeneous contexts. The second paper adopts a quantitative approach, using regression models to evaluate the relationship between TTO strategic orientations and TT outcomes. The third paper draws on qualitative, in situ comparative evidence from interviews and document analysis in Brazil and Italy, applying the social capital framework to examine how BU coordinate internal, mediatory, and external interface roles in practice. The findings show that BU operate as interdependent components of broader technology TT rather than as isolated organizational entities. The review highlights that differences between developed and emerging economies are less about the absence of BU and more about how contextual constraints, coordination challenges, and role complementarities shape their effectiveness. The quantitative results demonstrate that TTO performance depends on a balanced strategic orientation across roles, with misalignment limiting outcomes at different stages of the transfer process. The comparative qualitative analysis shows that while BU mobilize similar cognitive and relational social capital mechanisms across contexts, differences in organizational embeddedness and ecosystem maturity shape how these mechanisms are stabilized, coordinated, and operationalized, independently of national context. By integrating evidence from three complementary studies, this thesis advances theoretical understanding of BU as adaptive and relational intermediaries in TT. It also offers practical implications for university managers and policymakers by providing evidence to support the design of more coherent organizationalstrategies and public policies, that recognize complementarities among BU and align TT mechanisms with contextual specificities of innovation ecosystems. Keywords: technology transfer; boundary units; innovation ecosystems; intermediary organizations; entrepreneurial university