Proceeding Book of The 4th ICMEM 2019 and The 11th IICIES 2019, 7-9 August 2019, Bali, Indonesia ISBN: 978-623-92201-0-5 Published by Unit Research and Knowledge, SBM ITB 749 | Page THE LEVEL OF ACADEMICS’ ENGAGEMENT IN THE HIGHER EDUCATION: HOW ARE THEY REFLECTED IN RESEARCH BEHAVIOR? Hary Febriansyah, Uruqul Nadhif Dzakiy, and Henndy Ginting School of Business and Management, Institut Teknologi Bandung, Indonesia Email: hary@sbm.itb.ac.id Abstract. Academics’ are an important element in developing higher education with their role on knowledge development through research. To realise excellent results of research, we need academics whose strong engagement on it. This research measures level of academics’ engagement on research in Institut Teknologi Bandung, an outstanding research university in Indonesia. The results show that level of the academics’ engagement is high with the highest score is dedication aspect. This engagement can be reflected in various outputs such as scientific publication, innovation in teaching method, and social empowerment like new product development, consultancy, project with institution or industry, creating popular book, and developing social business. High passion and self-motivation are factors that make academics have directed research by concerning in certain output. From this research, it can be recommended two things. First, it is important for policy makers in particular institution to be aware with various concern of academics so that they can propose proper policy to switch from research quantity into quality. Second, requirement for promotion with emphasis on publication should be evaluated by considering another research outputs. Keywords: academics’ engagement, research behavior INTRODUCTION Higher education is required to provide research that able to anticipate problems and themes of debates as a way to develop concepts and generate knowledge (Teichler, 2003). Academics is part of employee that is the most crucial capital that can help the sustainability of an organisation (Stephanie and Gustomo, 2015). As developing country, Indonesia is still facing problems regarding academics performance (Sukirno, 2017). In the Southeast Asia scope, publications from Indonesian scholars rank number three in 2017 under Malaysia and Singapore (http://www.scimagojr.com). Since issuance of Ministerial Regulation No. 20/2017 which pushes middle-level to high-level scholars to get published in journals or else lose their allowance, the journal has received 10 times the usual number of submissions 1 . Unfortunatelly, it is still has poor quality on average 2 . The number of international publication for Indonesian researchers compared with some Southeast Asian countries is very low, furthermore Indonesia has less reputable international journal (Wiryawan, 2014). Whereas, publication in prominent journals is actually becomes parameter in particular for career promotion even not one and only (Ministry of Research and Higher Education, 2019). Results from good research quality are reflected in other outputs such as creating new prototype products and patents. With only 89 researchers per 1 million compared with 2274 for Malaysia (World Bank, 2019 3 ), it shows that Indonesian researchers are more productive. From this, it is interesting to explore how really academics’ engagement happens from this few numbers. Finally, we can recommend several ways in how to increase research output to be more qualified than now. This research uses Institut Teknologi Bandung (ITB) as case study. ITB was Indonesia second rank of publication according to scopus in 2018 and the best university in Indonesia according to Ministry of Research and Higher Education in 2018. Meanwhile, we use Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (UWES)-17 as tool to measure engagement level. UWES is a questionnaire that includes the three constituting aspects of work engagement: vigor, dedication, and absorption (Schaufeli and Bakker, 2003). Work engagement has a positive impact on job performance (Bakker and Demerouti, 2008) that it is the positive antipode of burnout (Schaufeli et al., 2002 ; Schaufeli et al., 2006). From this measurement, we will know actually score of academics’ engagement on research. Then, we will explore how this engagement level will be reflected in which outputs. To get this findings, we did in-depth interview with some related respondents. This findings will become recommendation for policy makers both university level or national level to take proper actions to increase research atmosphere in academics world. Finally research output will be more qualified than before. By optimizing its quality, research output will contribute to our better life. Ulku (2004) revealed in journal 1 https://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2018/06/10/wanted-6000-new-journals-to-publish-150000-papers.html 2 As Henri A. Verbrugh said in The Jakarta Post https://www.thejakartapost.com/academia/2018/12/20/breaking-with-the-past-no-more-negligence-in- research.html 3 https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.POP.SCIE.RD.P6 brought to you by CORE View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk provided by SBM ITB Journal System