The entrepreneurial university and academic discourses: The meta‐synthesis of Higher Education articles

Abstract

The innovative teaching, knowledge and technology production and societal service activities of academics are largely discussed within the entrepreneurial university discourse in Higher Education journals. Therefore, this research focuses on a meta‐synthesis of Higher Education articles to better understand the concepts of the entrepreneurial university and entrepreneurial academic. After the systematic elimination based on keywords and titles, 25 articles have been selected from the top 10 Higher Education journals in the SCImago Journal Rankings. Content analysis was performed on these articles to highlight the common operational areas in entrepreneurial universities and activities of entrepreneurial academics. The meta‐synthesis shows that, both for universities and academics, entrepreneurship is overwhelmingly characterised by the commercialisation of scholarly activities that enrich institutional income revenue as well as academics’ personal income. However, such an approach can distance universities from their mission of public good; so Higher Education administrators should create mechanisms that would allow both to take place in a balanced way.

Role of knowledge management in developing higher education partnerships: Towards a conceptual framework

“…Literature (Al‐Youbi et al, 2020; Elezi & Bamber, 2018; Gray, 2016; Gregory, 2008; Uslu et al, 2019) highlights that developing HEI partnerships is a challenging process; however, the vast majority of challenges are attributed to institutional culture, which is developed and influenced by the leadership and management approaches, found within an institution. Therefore, making use of literature related to institutional culture (Fullwood et al, 2019; Lee, 2018) is very important to understand the characteristics of a partner and be able to develop a behavioural paradigm that is aligned with the institutional culture of partners.…”

“…Findings from literature (Elezi, 2019; Fullwood et al, 2019; Tan, 2016) suggest that there is a general consensus that when asked individually, HE practitioners are in favour of knowledge sharing practices although acknowledge the challenges associated in doing so. Nevertheless, numerous studies (Al‐Youbi et al, 2020; Kim & Rehg, 2018; Nasim et al, 2020; Uslu et al, 2019) have highlighted the challenges that HE executives and managers experience in deploying effective KM practices within HEIs and realise the complexity of doing so within partnership settings. Long‐term partnerships between HEIs focus on developing and delivering new joint academic programmes and display a consolidation of collaborative practices as a result of strong and integrative KM factors.…”

What business schools do to support academic entrepreneurship: a systematic literature review and future research agenda

“…Etzkowitz et al's (2019) discussion on university-region co-development strategy, views the university as a stakeholder; the BS is uniquely placed to understand the academic incentives and the market-based systems necessary to facilitate the configuration of a mutually beneficial entrepreneurial ecosystem. While there is a recognition in the literature that universities are a public good, overly emphasising entrepreneurship as the commercialisation of scholarly activities can detract from universities primary objective (Uslu et al 2019). However, it is important that universities adopt an ecosystem approach rather than excessively focusing on individual elements and leverages policy decisions to further strengthen their potential for economic impact (Hayter et al 2018).…”

Understanding the evolution of the entrepreneurial university. The case of English Higher Education institutions

“…The entrepreneurial university literature has developed over the years with different disciplinary approaches (e.g., Clark, ; Guerrero, Cunningham, & Urbano, ). The model has been portrayed as a step in the natural evolution of the university system (e.g., Rothaermel, Agung, & Jiang, ; Uslu, Calikoglu, Seggie, & Seggie, ; c.f. Martin, ).…”