Hello everyone,
I am struggling at the moment to build the model for my research on value creation in academia-business relationships (so companies working with universities). I would like to use structural equation modelling for this.
On one hand, I have "relationship factors" (such as trust and commitment) which influence the "perceived value" of the researcher which again influences "satisfaction" and "intentions"
So, to put it simple:
Relationship factors -> perceived value -> Satisfaction / intentions
Now I am interested in understanding "perceived value" a bit better. So, what a researcher perceives as value of a relationship with businesses. Therefore, I would like to understand which specific value elements have the highest influence. By definition value is defined as the trade-off between benefits and sacrifices. As I found out in interviews, researchers value a lot the benefits for students, society and businesses, not that much their own benefits. Therefore, I would like to understand how much the benefits for the different stakeholder influence the overall value perception of the researcher.
E.g.: do benefits for students drive the perceived value more, or the benefits for the business?
How do I have to conceptualise this now? I guess it is a formative construct as benefits and sacrifices are an integrated part of the construct, isnt it?
What I think I have to do is the following
- Measure the benefits/sacrifices for students which the researcher perceives due to the relationship with a company (I can use multiple items for this)
- Measure the benefits/sacrifices for society ..
- Measure the benefits/sacrifices for the business ..
- Measure the benefits/sacrifices for the university ..
- Measure the benefits/sacrifices for the department ..
- Measure the researchers own benefits ...
Apart from this, I measure the overall perceived value of the relationship. My question is now: using this data, can I analyse the influence of the different stakeholder benefits on the researcher's perceived value (e.g. 23% of the researcher's perceived value of the relationship is explained by benefits to society)?
The next question is: can I then put this formative construct into my above shown model? So, can I do this:
Relationship factors -> various constructs to measure the benefits/sacrifices of the different stakeholders -> relationship value -> satisfaction / intentions
As I have neither worked with formative constructs nor with SEM before, I am very unsure how to deal with this.
Many thanks in advance! Any comments on this would be appreciated a lot!
Thorsten