Which governance structures are conducive to the performance of TTOs? Evidence from Taiwan

University technology transfer offices (TTOs) are being introduced at a rapid pace, making it critical that we understand how they affect university-to-industry technology transfer performance. Despite the growing interest in TTO governance, there are very few studies on TTO governance structures and how they are empirically effective in technology transfer performance. Our study aims at contributing to the existing literature in two ways. First, we take into account the diversity of TTO governance structures from a theoretical perspective: three types of TTOs are identified: market-oriented structure TTO, hierarchy-oriented structure TTO, and hybrid structure TTO. Second, we test our hypotheses by examining the number of patents licensed and technology transfer revenue for 157 Taiwan universities from 2016 to 2018. We find that (i) market-oriented structure is positively related to both the number of patents licensed and technology transfer revenue gained, (ii) hierarchy-oriented structure negatively affects both the number of patents licensed and technology transfer revenue gained, and (iii) we further find a negative interactive effect of market-oriented structure and hierarchy-oriented structure on the number of patents licensed and technology transfer revenue gained. These findings can inform the management of policies related to the performance of university-to-industry technology transfer, calling for attention to these organization structure attributes.