Entrepreneurship imperatives in higher education institutions: The case of Australian universities

Abstract

Earlier research has not explicitly emphasised the dynamic integration of entrepreneurship imperatives and transformation in developing the entrepreneurial university. The purpose of this research is to examine the linkage between the strategic intents articulated by universities and their corresponding level of entrepreneurship transformation. This article develops a theoretical framework to examine transformational imperatives, applying a data analytical approach to assess strategic documents using automated content analysis and complex algorithms. Australian universities were chosen for the research given the specific context of the higher education sector and the availability of strategic documents on the institutions’ websites. In the research context, the findings show that, while there are some variances with specific institutions, Australian universities in general, and several groups of universities in particular, expressed different levels of determination, ranging from moderate to moderately strong, to transform themselves into being entrepreneurial. Universities’ management can benefit from the theoretical framework developed in this research to craft strategies to further adopt entrepreneurship imperatives. Implications are also provided to inform universities, industry and government with regard to enhancing the dynamics of entrepreneurship ecosystems.

Student entrepreneurship ecosystems at Australian higher education institutions

“…This aligns with the UA literature of Maritz et al. (2021b) and Nguyen et al. (2021), yet in contrast to the entrepreneurship education program literature of Maritz (2017).…”

“…Nguyen et al. (2021) further integrates key leadership and strategic challenges as identified by Klofsten et al.…”

“…, 2017), entrepreneurship and enterprise teaching and pedagogies primarily by Jones (see Jones, 2019a, b), entrepreneurship education programs by Maritz (see Maritz, 2017; Maritz and Brown, 2013), studies of the Australian entrepreneurship education landscape predominantly by Maritz and colleagues (see Maritz et al. , 2019, 2021a, b) and the entrepreneurial university by Nguyen (see Nguyen et al. , 2021).…”

“…, 2019), university start-up accelerators (Metcalf et al. , 2020) and the entrepreneurial university (Nguyen et al. , 2021).…”

“…The EE literature offers new insights on how to understand the factors that underlie the success of entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial mindset (Pidduck et al, 2021;Wurth et al, 2021), whilst the entrepreneurship education ecosystem literature delves deeper within the context of student entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship education (Liu et al, 2021). Other studies have examined specific initiatives related to student entrepreneurship, including entrepreneurship education programs (Maritz et al, 2019), university start-up accelerators (Metcalf et al, 2020) and the entrepreneurial university (Nguyen et al, 2021). Few studies have, however, examined the impact of integrating these concepts into SEE.…”