Academic Entrepreneurship vs. Changing Governance and Institutional Management Structures at European Universities

Abstract

This article discusses academic entrepreneurship in the context of ongoing changes in university management and governance in European universities. The comparative perspective is provided by the European Union (EU) research project 'European Universities for Entrepreneurship: Their Role in the Europe of Knowledge' (EUEREK) comprising seven European countries, and it draws heavily from ideas and research results of Burton Clark, Michael Shattock and Gareth Williams. It views transformations in university governance and management in the context of the recent emphasis by the European Commission (EC) on the vital role of changes in institutional governance and its 'modernisation agenda for universities'. The article presents a general discussion of the EC's prioritisation of areas of transformation of European universities in which governance structures figure prominently, discusses the role of risk-taking at entrepreneurial institutions and shows the role of risk management. It also discusses the clash of old academic and new managerial values at entrepreneurial universities and the traditional academic idea of collegiality. Finally, conclusions are drawn regarding the future of public institutions in Europe.

Exploring the synergistic potential in entrepreneurial university development: towards the building of a strategic framework

“…7 A key strategic issue is the degree to which university leadership seeks to embed responsibility for the above issues within the faculties and departments (Blackmore & Blackwell, 2008;Kweik, 2008).…”

Competing for Public Resources: Higher Education and Academic Research in Europe — A Cross-Sectoral Perspective

“…A more probable institutional response to possibly worsening financial environments in which higher education institutions will operate is through revenue-side solutions: seeking new sources of income, largely nonstate, noncore, and nontraditional to most European systems, 'external income gen eration' leading to more 'earned income', as Gareth Williams termed it in Changing Patterns o f Finance in Higher Education with reference to British universities already two decades ago (Williams, 1992, pp. 39-50; also see Kwiek, 2008;Kwiek, 2012b;Shattock, 2009). New sources of income may thus include various forms of aca demic entrepreneurialism in research such as consulting, contracts with industry, research-based short-term courses, and so on, and various forms and levels of cost-sharing in teaching including tui tion fees at any or all study levels from undergraduate to graduate to postgraduate studies, depending on national academic traditions, as well as systems of incentives for institutions and for entrepreneurialminded academics and their research groups within institutions.…”

The New Spirit of Managerialism

“…The leader in this respect will need to act as a bridge between stakeholders and departments and between bottom-up and top-down initiatives (Kweik 2008 ). Some resources may have to be found for new units, some of which may reach across traditional discipline and departmental boundaries.…”