Дисертації з теми "Universités entrepreneuriales"

Ce travail de recherche porte sur la compréhension du rôle de l’université « entrepreneuriale » dans la favorisation de la création des startups chez les jeunes étudiants Libanais. En cela, la revue de la littérature vise à comprendre comment les universités au Liban réussissent à promouvoir une culture de l’innovation, à orienter les étudiants vers la créativité et l’entrepreneuriat et à contribuer à la création d’emplois. Cette étude mobilise la théorie de la vue basée sur les ressources (RBV) pour analyser les ressources internes des universités qui peuvent contribuer à leur succès en tant que catalyseurs de l'entrepreneuriat.La méthodologie est dite qualitative et fondée à la fois sur la collecte de données de la part des interviewés et aussi à partir d’une observation participante. Les données collectées à partir des entretiens semi-directifs ont été traités avec le logiciel Nvivo 12. L’élaboration du dictionnaire des thèmes a été arrêtée à la fois à suite du traitement des données et l’arrêt progressif des entretiens dans la mesure où les nouveaux n’apportaient plus d’informations additionnelles.Les résultats principaux découlent de deux catégories, chacune comprenant deux sous-thèmes. Ces catégories sont relatives à celles des initiatives et les activités entrepreneuriales et aussi aux défis et les obstacles à l’encontre des initiatives entrepreneuriales. A la suite de la discussion des résultats, l’interprétation des propos des interviewés en fonction de l’analyse de la revue de la littérature a établi huit propositions de recherche.Les implications se comprennent par les contributions des universités au sujet des programmes d’incubation. Cela peut impliquer la favorisation de la créativité, l’idéation et aussi par l’assurance de réseaux pour la facilitation de l’accès aux ressources financières et des opportunités. Cependant, si des implications se manifestent à ce stade, il est tout aussi important de prendre en compte les défis qui se posent à chaque niveau
This research focuses on understanding the role of the "entrepreneurial" university in promoting the creation of startups among young Lebanese students. In this regard, the literature review aims to comprehend how universities in Lebanon succeed in promoting a culture of innovation, guiding students towards creativity and entrepreneurship, and contributing to job creation. This study applies the resource-based view theory (RBV) to analyze the internal resources of universities that can contribute to their success as catalyst for entrepreneurship.The methodology is qualitative and based on both data collection from interviews and participant observation. Data collected from semi-structured interviews were processed using NVivo 12 software. The development of the theme dictionary was determined through data analysis and the gradual cessation of interviews as new information ceased to emerge.The main results stem from two categories, each comprising two sub-themes. These categories relate to entrepreneurial initiatives and activities, as well as challenges and obstacles facing entrepreneurial initiatives. Following the discussion of the results, the interpretation of interviewee statements in light of the literature review analysis led to the formulation of eight research propositions.The implications are understood through universities' contributions regarding incubation programs. This may involve fostering creativity, ideation, and ensuring networks to facilitate access to financial resources and opportunities. However, if implications arise at this stage, it is equally important to consider the challenges that arise at each level

My first major contribution to knowledge is that practically, I modified the European (EU) framework (2012) by introducing a 3x3 best practice model to advance policy and strategy of entrepreneurship in the higher education sectors. My second major contribution is that theoretically, I used evolutionary resource-based view (RBV) theory to analyse all-encompassing factors influencing how universities co-evolve with their external environment to become more entrepreneurial which has been predominantly utilised as an internal analysis only. An evolutionary view of resource-based theory argues that variation in universities' approaches towards entrepreneurialism is underpinned by their resources and capabilities. Therefore, this research draws on the evolutionary perspective of RBV to explore both internal and external factors. Thereby extending RBV with a taxonomy of factors. My third major contribution is that conceptually, I utilised the strategic corporate entrepreneurship (CE) as a complementary concept to explore how entrepreneurial practices are configured in university settings. This is essential because CE has widely been used to advance the understanding of entrepreneurial activities within established and large private firms only. The strategic view of CE argues that an organisation might not have developed a new business but understand how to explore opportunities in a highly turbulent environment involving multiple actors. In doing so, it provides a comprehensive analysis into the classification of and strategy types behind why some universities are high in entrepreneurial activities than others and how coordination of such activities results in heightening entrepreneurial edge. While branding the activities into classifications, I extend CE with local, national, EU, and international levels of impacts of the entrepreneurial engagement and strategy types. Therefore, the integration of RBV with CE is important to advance our understanding of why and how some pre-1992 (established/old) and post-1992 (new) of the 'self-defined' universities are considered 'entrepreneurial'. Thus, have implications for strategy and management practices. The study develops a 3x3 practical model that can shape strategy, practice, and policy of entrepreneurship in university settings. This is essential because there is a lack of clarity in terms of how the seven components of the entrepreneurial university identified in the EU framework applies to the UK context. Therefore, this qualitative case study research is underpinned by an integrated lens of both RBV theory and CE concept to explore how fifteen (15) UK self-defined entrepreneurial universities are responding to the policy impreative 'becoming more entrepreneurial'. Through the combination of qualitative methods, thirty-two (32) key informant interviews were complemented with document analysis and participant-led visual methods. In contrast to the findings of the EU framework, my analysis generated three taxonomies of factors, three classifications of characteristics, and three typologies of the entrepreneurial university. In doing so, it highlights some policy and practice implications including having a cohesive and coherent strategy and how well-coordinated entrepreneurial activities enhance competitive position in today's higher education marketplace. Consequently, it offers valuable experience for university leaders and managers to deliberate on their strategies and management practices for entrepreneurialism. As such, the primary beneficiaries of the research contributions are universities and the secondary include funding councils, higher education policy planners, small and medium enterprises (SMEs), practitioners, and researchers.

National innovative performance is a key driver for sustainable growth (Pavitt, 1980). National innovative capacity may be improved by fostering industrial Research and Development (R&D), by funding academic research and by effectively supporting university-industry interactions in order to strengthen the linkage between R&D and product development. In a context of growing relevance of external sources of innovation, where the industry, rather than relying on internal R&D, increasingly engages in ‘open innovation’ (Chesbrough, 2006), the role played by universities is crucial. The essays presented in this thesis focus mainly on academic R&D and knowledge transfer mechanisms from the university viewpoint, as opposed to government or industry perspectives. These essays contribute to our understanding of how universities organise themselves to adapt to this changing context. In other words, the thesis looks at the ‘reflexivity’ norm of the system associated with the entrepreneurial university, as established by Etzkowitz (2004); or “a continuing renovation of the internal structure of the university as its relation to industry and government changes, and of industry and government as their relationship to the university is revised”.

Universities play a major role in the national innovative capacity of a country as producers and transmitters of new knowledge (see for instance, Adams, 1990; Mansfield, 1991; Klevorick et al. 1995; Zucker et al. 1998; Cohen et al. 2002; Arundel and Geuna, 2004; Guellec and van Pottelsberghe, 2004). While European countries play a leading global role in terms of scientific output, they lag behind in the ability to convert this strength into wealth-generating innovations (this is known as the ‘European paradox’, see for instance Tijssen and van Wijk, 1999; and Dosi et al. 2005). This level of innovation may be improved by different factors; for instance, by fostering an entrepreneurial culture, or by increasing industry’s willingness to develop new products, new processes. One of these factors relies on the notion of an ‘entrepreneurial university’. Universities, in addition to the two traditional missions of research and teaching, foster their third mission of contribution to society, by improving the transfer of knowledge to the industry. New tools and regulations have been established to support universities in this process. Since the early 80’s, academic technology transfer offices (TTOs) have been created, dedicated employees have been trained and hired, incubators for the launch of new academic ventures have been set up, academic or independent pre-seed investment funds have been founded and laws related to the ownerships by university of their invented-patents have been promulgated.

But what exactly stands behind the notion of ‘entrepreneurial university’? There exist more different descriptions of a similar concept or of a similar evolution than a general agreed definition. Indeed, "(…) There is high heterogeneity, there is no such thing as a typical university, and there is no typical way to be or become an entrepreneurial university" (Martinelli et al. 2008, p.260). However some similar patterns of what is or should be an entrepreneurial university may be identified.

First, there is this notion of a revolution experienced by universities that now have to integrate a third mission of contributing to economic development aside of their traditional academic missions. “(…) But in the most advanced segments of the worldwide university system, a ‘second revolution’ takes off. The entrepreneurial university integrates economic development into the university as an academic function along with teaching and research. It is this ‘capitalisation of knowledge’ that is the heart of a new mission for the university, linking universities to users of knowledge more tightly and establishing the university as an economic actor in its own right” (Etzkowitz, 1998, p.833).

This revolution finds its origin in a necessary adaptation of universities to an external changing environment where modern societies put a strong emphasis on knowledge. “The concept of the entrepreneurial university envisions an academic structure and function that is revised through the alignment of economic development with research and teaching as academic missions. The transformation of academia from a ‘secondary’ to a ‘primary’ institution is a heretofore unexpected outcome of the institutional development of modern society (Mills, 1958). In consequence, the knowledge industry in modern societies is no longer a minor affair run by an intellectual elite, an activity that might be considered by pragmatic leaders as expendable; it is a mammoth enterprise on a par with heavy industry, and just as necessary to the country in which it is situated (Graham, 1998, p.129)”, quoted by Etzkowitz et al. (2000, p.329).

The notion of an ‘entrepreneurial university’ also exceeds the simple idea of the protection of academic intellectual property by patents owned by universities and their out-licensing as well as the launch of new ventures. It encompasses an overall change of how the university is organised. “In the gruesome and heady world of changing external environments, organizations – including universities – will need to seek opportunities beyond their existing competences (Hamel and Prahalad, 1989, 1994), which suggests the need for an entrepreneurial orientation (Lumpkin and Dess, 1996)”, quoted by Glassman et al. (2003, p.356). This entrepreneurial orientation will only be possible if the overall organisation of the university changes. “An entrepreneurial university, on its own, actively seeks to innovate how it goes about its business. It seeks to work out a substantial shift in organizational character so as to arrive at a more promising posture for the future. Entrepreneurial universities seek to become 'stand-up' universities that are significant actors on their own terms” (Clark, 1998, p.4).

The notion of entrepreneurial university also encompasses the concept of academic entrepreneurship in its broad sense. For a university to become entrepreneurial, individual academics also have to adapt and to behave in an entrepreneurial way. This concept is not solely conceived here as the launching of new ventures by academics (a view embraced by Shane, 2004, for instance). It relates more to the view of Stevenson, Roberts and Grousbeck (1989), referenced by Glassman et al. (2003, p.354) or “the process of creating and seizing an opportunity and pursuing it to create something of value regardless of current available resources.”

The difficulty facing universities is then to adapt to their external environment while preserving the integrity of their two traditional academic missions. However, some conceive this challenge as precisely an ability that characterise the very intrinsic university’s nature. "The uniqueness of the university,(…) lies in its protean capacity to change its shape and function to suit its temporal and sociopolitical environment while retaining enough continuity to deserve its unchanging name” (Perkin, 1984, p.18).

Furthermore, others perceive this challenge as a tension that has always been at the root of the university’s character. “The cherished view of some academics that higher education started out on the Acropolis of scholarship and was desecrated by descent into the Agora of materialistic pursuit led by ungodly commercial interests and scheming public officials and venal academic leaders is just not true for the university systems that have developed at least since 1200 A.D. If anything, higher education started in the Agora, the market place, at the bottom of the hill and ascended to the Acropolis on the top of the hill… Mostly it has lived in tension, at one and the same time at the bottom of the hill, at the top of the hill, and on many paths in between” (Kerr, 1988, p.4; quoted by Glassman, 2003, p.353).

Nevertheless, it appears that some institutions, the ones integrating the best their different missions and being the most ‘complete’ in terms of the activities they perform, will be better positioned to overcome this second revolution than other institutions. “Since science-based innovations increasingly have a multidisciplinary character and build on "difficult-to-codify" people-centred interactions, university-based systems of industry science links, which combine basic and applied research with a broader education mission, are seen as enjoying a comparative advantage relative to research institutes” (OECD, 2001 quoted by Debackere and Veugeleers, 2005, p.324). Or as stated by Geuna (1998, p.266), in his analysis of the way the different historical trajectories of European universities are influencing their ability to adapt to the current changing environment, “ (…) the renowned institutions of Cluster IV (pre-war institutions, large in size, with high research output and productivity) are in a strong position both scientifically and politically, and can exercise bargaining power in their relations with government and industry. (…) On the other side, universities in the other two clusters (new postwar universities, characterised by small size, low research output and low research orientation and productivity, whether involved in technological research or in teaching), with very low research grants from government, are pushed to rely more heavily on industrial funding. Being in a weak financial position, they may find themselves in an asymmetric bargaining relationship with industry that they may be unable to manage effectively.”

To summarize, one could attempt to define the broad notion of an ‘entrepreneurial university’ as follows. An entrepreneurial university is a university that adapts to the current changing environment that puts a stronger emphasis on knowledge, by properly integrating the third mission or the capitalisation of knowledge aside of its two traditional missions. This adaptation requires a radical change in the way the university is organised. It will require important strategic reorientation from the top but also, and mainly, it will require from the individual academics to better seize new opportunities to generate value (not only financial but also scientific or academic) given scarcer resources. Renowned and complete universities (with teaching, basic and applied research) have an edge over other institutions to overcome this second revolution.

This notion of ‘entrepreneurial university’ has drawn criticisms. For example, academics’ interactions with industry could impact negatively on research activities by reorienting fundamental research towards more applied research projects (Cohen and Randazzese, 1996; David, 2000), by restricting academic freedom (Cohen et al. 1994; Blumenthal et al. 1996; Blumenthal et al. 1997), or by potentially reducing scientific productivity (see for instance van Zeebroeck et al. 2008 for a review on this issue). The present work does not address the issue of the impact of increased interactions with the business sector on traditional academic missions nor the question of whether universities should become entrepreneurial or not. Instead, the essays start from the idea that the ‘entrepreneurial university’ notion is part of the intrinsic nature of modern universities, or at least, is a part of its evolution. Industry-university relationships are not a new phenomenon; it can be traced at least to the mid- to late-1800s in Europe and to at least the industrial revolution in the USA (Hall et al. 2001). What is evolving is the nature of such relationships that become more formal. The present analysis starts then from the general observation that some universities (and researchers) are more entrepreneurially-oriented and better accept this mission than others. From that stems the primary research question addressed in this thesis: are there characteristics or conditions leading to a smooth coexistence of traditional and new academic missions inside an entrepreneurial university? And if so, what are they?

Existing work on the entrepreneurial university is a nascent but already well developed field of research. The aimed contribution of this thesis is to analyse the topic under three specific but complementary angles. These three perspectives are explored into the four main chapters of this work, structured as follows. Chapter 1 is titled “Turning science into business: A case study of a traditional European research university”. It introduces the topic by investigating the dynamics at play that may explain the propensity of a traditional, research-oriented university to start generate entrepreneurial outputs, while being not full-fledge entrepreneurially organised. Exploring the importance of “new” entrepreneurial outputs, as defined as patents and spin-off companies, compared to other ways of transferring new knowledge to the industry, Chapter 2 reviews the literature on the variety of knowledge transfer mechanisms (KTMs) used in university-industry interactions. It is titled “University-Industry interactions and knowledge transfer mechanisms: a critical survey”. Given scarcer structural funds for academic research and increasing pressure on academics to diversify their activities in terms of being involved in patenting or spin-off launching, Chapter 3 and Chapter 4 investigate the role played by individual characteristics of researchers in attracting competitive, external funding. Chapter 3 presents stylised facts related to external fundraising at ULB and characteristics of researchers who attracted these funds over the period 1998-2008. The empirical analysis on associations between individual characteristics of researchers (intrinsic, scientific and entrepreneurial) and the extent of funds attracted from different sources (national, regional and business) is presented in Chapter 4, titled “The determinants of academic fundraising.” Chapter 5 concludes and suggests ideas for future investigation on this topic. Chapter 6, in appendix of the present work, titled “A note on the drivers of R&D intensity”, is not directly linked to the issue of the entrepreneurial university. It has been included to complement the studied topic and to put in perspective the present work. Academic research and university-industry interactions constitute important drivers of a national R&D and innovation system. Other factors are at play as well. Looking at this issue at the macroeconomic level, Chapter 6 investigates to what extent the industrial structure of a country influences the observed R&D intensity, and hence would bias the well-known country rankings based on aggregate R&D intensity.

Doctorat en Sciences économiques et de gestion
info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Universities are an important part of the history of Europe and have been at the centre of European society since around the 13th century. Universities were actually modelled in the East and from out of the East they changed the world.

Cette thèse est consacrée d'une part à la conceptualisation de l'esprit entrepreneurial et d'autre part à l'identification des facteurs de son développement à l'université. L'étude théorique nous a amené à considérer l'esprit entrepreneurial comme un processus mental composé d'un ensemble d'attitudes et de sentiments de compétence favorable à une orientation entrepreneuriale. L'université à côté d'autres facteurs de socialisation pourrait le développer. Et ce en évoluant vers une université entrepreneuriale moyennant l'adoption d'une orientation entrepreneuriale. De ce fait, elle est amenée à adopter des pratiques entrepreneuriales à la fois au niveau de son environnement interne qu'externe. Nous avons mené une investigation préliminaire à travers des entretiens semi-directifs avec 24 responsables des universités tunisiennes afin d'explorer, identifier et cerner les facteurs de développement de l'entrepreneuriat et de l'esprit entrepreneurial à l'université tunisienne. De surcroît, la démarche hypothético-inductive nous a permis de superposer les propositions théoriques issus de la littérature avec les principaux résultats de l'enquête. Ce qui nous a permis par conséquent d'affiner et d'enrichir le modèle conceptuel à travers l'ajout de nouvelles variables: • Le type de l'université influence le développement de l'entrepreneuriat et de l'esprit entrepreneurial; • L'importance du rôle du responsable de l'université dans le développement de l'entrepreneuriat et de l'esprit entrepreneurial à l'université: il est appelé à devenir un entrepreneur; • L'importance du réaménagement du plan d'étude; • Au niveau de l'enseignement de l'entrepreneuriat: importance des pédagogies originales et ludiques et celles basées sur les TIC et de la formation des formateurs en entrepreneuriat; • Intégration de la communication avec et entre étudiants et de la motivation de ces derniers ; • Importance de nouer des partenariats universités/ universités et plus de contact avec la société. Le modèle conceptuel proposé affiné par l'étude exploratoire peut servir comme référence ou point de départ pour des recherches ultérieures visant l'étude des facteurs de développement de l'entrepreneuriat et de l'esprit entrepreneurial à l'université. Il peut servir également comme outil mis à la disposition des universités voulant initier et concrétiser une politique de promotion de l'entrepreneuriat et de l'esprit entrepreneurial en leur sein. L'originalité de cette thèse est d'offrir une nouvelle conception de l'entrepreneuriat: un état d'esprit, un domaine d'enseignement et d'éducation et une option de carrière possible. Ainsi, sa valeur consiste à contribuer à la conceptualisation de l'esprit entrepreneurial, à alimenter la réflexion autour des facteurs de développement de l'entrepreneuriat et de l‘esprit entrepreneurial à l'université et à aborder de nouveaux concepts: université entrepreneuriale et orientation entrepreneuriale de l'université. Mots clés : Université, entrepreneuriat, esprit entrepreneurial, conceptualisation, enseignement de l'entrepreneuriat, facteurs de développement, orientation entrepreneuriale
This thesis is dedicated, on one hand, to the conceptualization of the entrepreneurial spirit and the identification of the factors of its development at the university, on the other. The theoretical study led us to consider the entrepreneurial spirit as a mental process composed of a set of attitudes and feelings of skills (or competencies) favorable to an entrepreneurial orientation. The university, along with other factors of socialization, could develop such by evolving towards an entrepreneurial university for the adoption of an entrepreneurial orientation. To this effect, it is brought to adopt entrepreneurship practices at both at the internal and external levels of its environment. We conducted a preliminary empirical investigation through semi-directive interviews with 24 persons in charge of the Tunisian universities so as to investigate, identify and encircle the factors of development of the entrepreneurship and the entrepreneurial spirit a Tunisian universities. Besides, the hypothetic-inductive approach allowed us to stack the theoretical propositions stemming from the literature with the main results of investigation. In so doing, we managed to refine and enrich the conceptual model through the addition of new variables: • The university type influences the development of the entrepreneurship and the entrepreneurial spirit; • The importance of the role of the person in charge of the university in the development of the entrepreneurship and the entrepreneurial spirit for the university: it is called to become an entrepreneur; • The importance of the refitting of the study schedule; • At the level of the entrepreneurial education: importance of the original and playful pedagogies and those based on TRICK and the training(formation) of the trainers in entrepreneurship; • Integration of the communication with and between students and their motivation; • Importance to knot partnerships universities / universities and more contact with the society. The proposed conceptual model refined by the exploratory study can serve as reference or point of departure for later researches aiming at studying the development factors of the entrepreneurship and the entrepreneurial spirit at the university. It can also serve as a tool given to universities intending to introduce and concretize a policy for the promotion of entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial spirit within their context. The originality of this thesis is to offer a new conception of the entrepreneurship: a state of mind, a domain of teaching and education and an option of possible career. So, its value consists in contributing to the conceptualization of the entrepreneurial spirit, in feeding the reflection around the factors of development of the entrepreneurship and the entrepreneurial spirit at the university and in approaching new concepts: entrepreneurial university and entrepreneurial orientation of the university. Keys words University, entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial spirit, conceptualization, entrepreneurial education, factors of development, entrepreneurial orientation

This thesis presents a study of the ‘Entrepreneurial University’. It develops a framework for conceptualising the entrepreneurial university by interrogating literature and secondary sources. Regardless of the increasing body of literature on the entrepreneurial university concept, it is revealed to be under-theorized. This literature starting from Clark’s initiatives up until recent publications focus on case studies which are not analytically driven. This gap in the theory of the entrepreneurial university inspired the study aim, which is to develop an analytical framework that can be used as a tool to identify ‘The Entrepreneurial University’ from any other ‘classic university. The study argues that there are three main aspects affecting universities' transformation toward entrepreneurial organization. These are: organization, external environment, and the interaction between organization and external environment. The first aspect investigates the entrepreneurial organizational dimensions, with a comprehensive framework of five organizational dimensions namely managerial, funding resource, mission, external collaboration, and cultural dimension. This been developed as a ‘compass’ to characterize two ideal types of entrepreneurial university. The second and third aspects address the concepts of the entrepreneurial environment and the coherence between the entrepreneurial organization and the entrepreneurial environment where the university exists. The concept of National Education, Research and Innovation (ERI) Funding and Policy Spaces (NERI-FPS) (Nedeva et.al 2013) has been selected as the most appropriate framework for characterizing the entrepreneurial coherence, and analyzed for this purpose, where the variety of opportunities and flexible selection process are seen to be the key elements for the coherence between them. This adds a new development to the theory. Both the entrepreneurial framework and the NERI-FPS have been tested using four European case universities, from the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. The framework is applied to the universities and policy environment in Oman as an example of a developing country seeking to use entrepreneurship as a solution to socio-economic problems. Using qualitative analysis of documentation and detailed interviews, the framework is shown to reveal characteristics of the universities which can be used to develop policy actions. The results reveal that Omani universities are “classic” universities. However, to shift toward an entrepreneurial approach, five scenarios are suggested for Oman, and a pathway toward fully-fledged entrepreneurial universities is illustrated. First an online survey served as a pilot study, the results of which were then used to formulate the second stage which was semi- structured interviews with two Omani universities, and the third stage was in-depth interviews with Omani policy makers. This approach improves the internal validity of the research, and provides a rich picture of the universities and their environment. Finally, the study provides a framework which characterises entrepreneurial universities along a number of context-neutral dimensions which could take the research forward. The novelty of using case of Oman as an empirical study added new contribution into the field. In addition, this study contributes to a better understanding of policy actions with regard to entrepreneurial transformation.

The entrepreneurial intentions of university students are important factors to consider when developing entrepreneurship offerings at tertiary level institutions. This research study reports on pertinent findings from a study which set out to determine Rhodes university undergraduate students‟ entrepreneurial intentions and their pull and push factors that have brought them to the decision to become entrepreneurs. A survey, using a 43 question structured web-based instrument was used to capture the responses from undergraduate students across different departments at Rhodes University, Grahamstown. Key findings suggest that few undergraduate students intend to enter into an entrepreneurship career immediately after completion of their studies, whereas many of the respondents were more interested in doing so five years after graduation. The vast majority of students were satisfied without having formal entrepreneurial education and factors such as previous employment in entrepreneurial activities, and family influence had a statistical significant relationship with entrepreneurial intention.

Research on entrepreneurial motivation of university scientists is often determined by quantitative methods without taking into account context-related influences. According to different studies, entrepreneurial scientists found a spin-off company due to motives like independency, market opportunity, money or risk of unemployment (short-term contracts). To give a comprehensive explanation, it is important to use a qualitative research view that considers academic rank, norms and values of university scientists. The author spoke with 35 natural scientists and asked professors and research fellows for their entrepreneurial motivation. The results of this study are used to develop a typology of entrepreneurial and non-entrepreneurial scientists within German universities. This paper presents the key findings of the study (Sass 2011).

Dans la présente thèse, on analyse une possible réaction des universités aux défis de la société par le passage d'un modèle d'université classique à une conception d'université entrepreneuriale. Dans la la première partie de l'ouvrage, l'auteur présente la situation actuelle des systèmes d'enseignement supérieur de France et de Roumanie, les transformations des entreprises et des universités et les raisons pour lesquelles les universités et les entreprises doivent travailler ensemble et interagir réciproquement. La conclusion de cette première partie montre que les universités doivent changer leurs structures, devenir plus ouvertes, plus courageuses et innovantes pour participer au développement de la société de la connaissance. Dans la deuxième partie, on présente d'abord le modèle d'université entrepreneuriale développé dans la littérature et ensuite, l'auteur développe un modèle original d'université entrepreneuriale. Ainsi, on propose un modèle de management d'une telle université et en utilisant la technique nouvelle d'organigraphie, l'auteur présente le fonctionnement réel de l'université entrepreneuriale. On retrouve aussi les directions principales de la sratégie de l'université entrepreneuriale qui doit impérativement comprendre l'ouverture internationale, l'innovation pédagogique, une flexibilité plus large, une gouvernance moderne et responsable, un management par projets, un management financier plus proche de celui d'une entreprise, la création des structures entrepreneuriales universitaires, une préoccupation plus importante pour répondre aux besoins de la société et de l'économie. En conclusion, on affirme que la transformation des universités pour devenir entrepreneuriales doit se déployer sur le management stratégique, la construction institutionnelle, le management de l'organisation, l'innovation pédagogique, l'ouverture et l'internationalisation
This thesis analyses a possible reaction of universities to the challenges posed by society, suggesting a shift from the classical university. In the first part of the paper, the author presents the current French and Romanian higher education systems, the changes occured in enterprises and universities, explaining why universities and enterprises should work together and help one another. The conclusion of this first part indicates that universities should change their structures, become more open, more courageous and innovative, in order to contribute in a pro-active manner to the development of the knowledge society. The second part presents firstly the model of entrepreneurial university reflected in literature ; further , the author introduces an original model of entrepreneurial university. He also proposes a management model for such universities and presents the real functioning of the entrepreneurial university, using the organigraphic approach. The reader may also find here guidelines on the entrepreneurial university strategy, which should include international openness, pedagogical innovation, more flexibility , modern entrepreneurial university structures, more focus on meeting the needs of society and economy. As a conclusion, the changes involved so that universities become entrepreneurial should build upon strategic management, institutional development, organizational management, pedagogical innovation, openness and internationalization

[ES] El interés de esta investigación se centra fundamentalmente en los siguientes aspectos. En primer lugar, exploramos cómo la literatura actual sobre el espíritu emprendedor de los estudiantes universitarios centrada en la "Global University Entrepreneurial Spirits Students Survey" (GUESSS), uno de los mayores proyectos de investigación relacionados, puede contribuir a la investigación sobre el espíritu emprendedor de los estudiantes universitarios y ayudar a los investigadores a utilizar esta base de datos. Este es el primer paso de este trabajo, ya que permitió identificar las áreas menos estudiadas en la literatura sobre el espíritu emprendedor de los estudiantes universitarios. En segundo lugar, ampliamos las investigaciones anteriores sobre los modelos de intención emprendedora (y la intención de sucesión) y vamos más allá de la intención al tomar la intención de implementación como un paso más cercano del comportamiento. Y, en tercer lugar, los resultados de este estudio ayudarían a dar consejos a las universidades, a los académicos y a los responsables políticos para construir una universidad emprendedora y, en definitiva, una sociedad emprendedora. El objetivo principal de esta investigación es contribuir al estudio de las intenciones emprendedoras de los estudiantes universitarios. Más concretamente, los objetivos específicos de este trabajo están relacionados con 1) identificar las variables centrales que influyen en el emprendimiento de los estudiantes universitarios en la literatura sobre emprendimiento centrada en el proyecto GUESSS; 2) estudiar los efectos mediadores de los componentes de la TPB entre la educación emprendedora y la intención emprendedora; 3) analizar el efecto de la educación emprendedora teniendo en cuenta el papel de la universidad, la familia y el contexto social en los componentes de la TPB como antecedentes de la intención emprendedora; 4) reducir la brecha intención-conducta añadiendo la etapa intermedia de la intención de implementación y los efectos moderadores de la orientación a la meta y 5) explorar el fenómeno de la intención de sucesión. Nuestro primer estudio muestra que la fase de intención es la etapa más estudiada del proceso empresarial. Sin embargo, existen ciertas áreas que deben ser abordadas y eso es precisamente lo que pretendemos conseguir con los siguientes estudios. Encontramos que el Aprendizaje del Programa afecta a la Intención Emprendedora a través de los componentes de la Teoría de la Acción Planificada (TAP). En este sentido, es importante destacar que las Normas Subjetivas no mediaron la relación entre el Aprendizaje del Programa y la Intención Emprendedora, sino que influyeron en la Intención Emprendedora a través de las Actitudes hacia el Emprendimiento y el Control Conductual Percibido (CCP). En cuanto a los efectos de la Educación Emprendedora, encontramos que esta variable actúa como moderadora, especialmente en la relación entre Actitudes hacia el Emprendimiento e Intención Emprendedora, Normas Subjetivas e Intención Emprendedora, y Contexto Familiar y Normas Subjetivas. A medida que avanzamos en el proceso emprendedor, nuestros resultados validaron el Modelo de Acontecimiento Emprendedor (MAE) para predecir las intenciones emprendedoras y, además, la elección de carrera emprendedora 5 años después de terminar los estudios moderó la relación entre la Intención Emprendedora y la Intención de Implementación. Por último, al analizar la Intención de Sucesión en las empresas familiares, nuestros resultados mostraron el impacto del Apoyo Parental en la Autoeficacia de la Empresa Familiar y en el compromiso con la empresa familiar. Además, nuestros resultados confirmaron un impacto positivo del compromiso con la empresa familiar en la Intención de Sucesión, especialmente el Compromiso Normativo.
[CA] L'interés d'esta investigació se centra fonamentalment en els següents aspectes. En primer lloc, explorem com la literatura actual sobre l'esperit emprenedor dels estudiants universitaris centrada en la "Global University Entrepreneurial Spirits Students Survey" (GUESSS), un dels majors projectes d'investigació relacionats, pot contribuir a la investigació sobre l'esperit emprenedor dels estudiants universitaris i ajudar els investigadors a utilitzar esta base de dades. Este és el primer pas d'este treball, ja que va permetre identificar les àrees menys estudiades en la literatura sobre l'esperit emprenedor dels estudiants universitaris. En segon lloc, ampliem les investigacions anteriors sobre els models d'intenció emprenedora (i la intenció de successió) i anem més enllà de la intenció al prendre la intenció d'implementació com un pas més pròxim del comportament. I, en tercer lloc, els resultats d'aquest estudi ajudarien a donar consells a les universitats, als acadèmics i als responsables polítics per a construir una universitat emprenedora i, en definitiva, una societat emprenedora. L'objectiu principal d'esta investigació és contribuir a l'estudi de les intencions emprenedores dels estudiants universitaris. Més concretament, els objectius específics d'este treball estan relacionats amb 1) identificar les variables centrals que influïxen en l'emprendimiento dels estudiants universitaris en la literatura sobre emprendimiento centrada en el projecte GUESSS; 2) estudiar els efectes mediadors dels components de la TPB entre l'educació emprenedora i la intenció emprenedora; 3) analitzar l'efecte de l'educació emprenedora tenint en compte el paper de la universitat, la família i el context social en els components de la TPB com a antecedents de la intenció emprenedora; 4) reduir la bretxa intenció-conducta afegint l'etapa intermèdia de la intenció d'implementació i els efectes moderadors de l'orientació a la meta i 5) explorar el fenomen de la intenció de successió. El nostre primer estudi mostra que la fase d'intenció és l'etapa més estudiada del procés empresarial. No obstant això, existeixen unes certes llacunes en la literatura que han de ser abordades i això és precisament el que pretenem aconseguir amb els següents estudis. Trobem que l'Aprenentatge dels Programes Formatius afecta a la Intenció Emprenedora a través dels components de la Teoria de l'Acció Planificada (TAP). En aquest sentit, és important destacar que les Normes Subjectives no van mediar la relació entre l'Aprenentatge dels Programes Formatius i la Intenció Emprenedora, sinó que van influir en la Intenció Emprenedora a través de les Actituds cap a l'Emprenedoria i el Control Conductual Percebut (*CCP). Quant als efectes de l'Educació Emprenedora, trobem que aquesta variable actua com a moderadora, especialment en la relació entre Actitud cap a l'Emprenedoria i Intenció Emprenedora, Normes Subjectives i Intenció Emprenedora, i Context Familiar i Normes Subjectives. A mesura que avancem en el procés emprenedor, els nostres resultats van validar el Model d'Esdeveniment Emprenedor (*MAE) per a predir les intencions emprenedores i, a més, l'elecció de carrera emprenedora 5 anys després d'acabar els estudis va moderar la relació entre la Intencions Emprenedora i la Intenció d'Implementació. Finalment, en analitzar la Intenció de Successió en les empreses familiars, els nostres resultats van mostrar l'impacte del Suport Parental en l'Autoeficàcia de l'Empresa Familiar i en el compromís amb l'empresa familiar. A més, els nostres resultats van confirmar un impacte positiu del compromís amb l'empresa familiar en la Intenció de Successió, especialment el Compromís Normatiu.
[EN] The interest of this research focuses mainly on the following aspects. First, we explore how the current literature on university student entrepreneurship focused on the Global University Entrepreneurial Spirits Students Survey (GUESSS), one of the largest related research projects, can contribute to research on university student entrepreneurship and help researchers to use this database. This is the first step in this work as it allowed as to identify the main gaps in the literature of university student's entrepreneurship. Second, we extend previous research on the entrepreneurial intention models (and succession intention) and we go beyond the intention on taking implementation intention as a closer step of behavior. And third, the results of this study would help give advice to universities, academics and policymakers to build an entrepreneurial university and in short, an entrepreneurial society. The main goal of this research is to contribute to the study of entrepreneurial intentions of university student's entrepreneurship. More specifically, the specific objectives of this work are related to 1) identify the core variables influencing university student's entrepreneurship in the entrepreneurship literature focused on the GUESSS project; 2) study the mediating effects of the components of the TPB between entrepreneurship education and entrepreneurial intention; 3) analyze the effect of entrepreneurship education considering the role of the university, family, and social context on the components of the TPB as antecedents of entrepreneurial intention; 4) reduce the intention-behavior gap by adding the middle stage of implementation intention and the moderating effects of goal orientation and 5) explore the succession intention phenomena. Our first study shows that the intention phase is the most studied stage of the entrepreneurial process. However, there are certain gaps that need to be addressed and that is exactly what we intend to achieve with the following studies. We found that Program Learning affects Entrepreneurial Intention through the components of the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB). In this sense, it is important to highlight that Subjective Norms did not mediate the relation between Program Learning and Entrepreneurial Intention but influenced Entrepreneurial Intention through Attitudes toward Entrepreneurship and Perceived Behavioral Control (PBC). As for the effects of Entrepreneurship Education, we found this variable acts as a moderator, especially in the relationship between Attitudes towards Entrepreneurship and Entrepreneurial Intention, Subjective Norms and Entrepreneurial Intention, and Family Context and Subjective Norms. As we move through the entrepreneurial process, our results validated the Entrepreneurial Event Model (EEM) to predict entrepreneurial intentions and in addition, the Entrepreneurial career choice 5 years after completing studies moderated the relationship between Entrepreneurial intention and Implementation Intention. Finally, when analyzing Succession Intention in family firms, our findings showed the impact of Parental Support in Family Business Self-Efficacy and in commitment to the family firm. Furthermore, our results confirmed a positive impact of the commitment to the family firm on Succession Intention, especially the Normative Commitment.
Jiménez Arribas, I. (2021). University Student’s Entrepreneurship: an Integrated Analysis of Entrepreneurial Intention [Tesis doctoral]. Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/Thesis/10251/172361
TESIS

Il mio elaborato finale, della tesi di Laurea Magistrale, analizza il tema dell'Università imprenditoriale e porta come case study lo spin off di Strategy Innovation (geograficamente localizzato presso l'Università Ca' Foscari di Venezia). L'elaborato si articola in 3 capitoli: il primo capitolo affronta in maniera compilativa la tematica dell'università imprenditoriale e degli spin off, il secondo porta come case study Strategy Innovation e ne analizza l'ecosistema, e infine, il terzo capitolo affronta la tematica dei KPI relativamente al case study precedentemente proposto.

Drawing on the theory of planned behaviour, this research attempts to examine the impacts of students' entrepreneurial learning on their entrepreneurial intention. In this study, self-report data were collected from 334 students in eight higher education institutions in Hong Kong. The results of the data analysis supported the association between entrepreneurial learning and entrepreneurial intention, as well as the mediating effect of entrepreneurial self-efficacy. The moderating effect of openness was also found to be significant, whereas that of entrepreneurial climate was not. This study provides practical implications to address the issues of low start-up rates of entrepreneurship among university students and some recommendations to university educators.

This research focused on assessing the perception of student´s at Umeå School of Business and Economics towards entrepreneurial success. Moreover this research focused on comparing student’s perception and perception of importance of entrepreneurial success, which has been defined three dimensionally. The conceptual definition of entrepreneurial success has emerged from the existing literature and could be explained as follow: entrepreneurial success is a cluster of financial performance, operational performance and Satisfaction (which refers to the entrepreneur’s satisfaction. We identified that the literature was remaining in some ways nebulous when it was to officially define the notion of entrepreneurial success. This notion has been somehow associated to the perception of entrepreneurial success, because of the approach or methods that have been used to assess it. Moreover, we have identified that some factors have been confirmed as influencing the perception of entrepreneurial success, however these results were not targeted students, but mainly entrepreneurs. We formulated the following research question: Which factors influence the perception and the perception of importance of entrepreneurial success, among Umea University‘s students? This research has been conducted by including all master program students and bachelor students in graduating class at Umeå School of Business and Economics, to examine their perception of entrepreneurial success generally and additionally compare their perception in order to determine whether some factors were influencing their perceptions. The conceptual model has been created in order to determine whether the selected variables: Gender, age, background and perception of entrepreneurship as a culture is influencing two aspects: the perception of entrepreneurial success and the perception of importance of the entrepreneurial success. These two aspects have been underlined by the two first questions of our questionnaire, and have been defined according the same dimensions: Financial performance, Operational performance and satisfaction These previous four variables have permitted to form groups in order to attest of potential differences of perceptions. From all the analysis that have been proceeded. It has been found that not all the components from the conceptual model were likely to be considered as influencing the perception of entrepreneurial success and the perception of importance of entrepreneurial success.

Dans une économie de la connaissance, une importance croissante est accordée à la production d’innovations issues de la collaboration entre industrie et monde académique. Notre recherche porte sur le concept de l’université entrepreneuriale. Cette dernière, en sus de l’enseignement et de la recherche, concourt à la réalisation d’une troisième mission d’engagement social et économique. Cette thèse analyse le soutien de l’université à l’essaimage. Plus particulièrement, nous cherchons à explorer l’organisation interne de l’université, les pratiques qui en découlent ainsi que le rôle des interactions entre les membres de l’organisation dans le soutien à l’entrepreneuriat académique. Cette recherche s’inscrit dans la théorie des organisations et emploie la théorie des institutions habitées. À travers une méthodologie qualitative et exploratoire, nous comparons l’université d’Amsterdam aux Pays-Bas et l’université libre de Berlin en Allemagne, où 68 entretiens ont été réalisés. Une des différences fondamentales entre le fonctionnement des universités et celui des spinoffs réside dans des représentations et une gestion du temps diamétralement opposées. Le transfert de connaissances du monde académique vers les acteurs privés nécessite que l’université possède certaines propriétés organisationnelles, telles que la transparence, la simplicité et la célérité de ses pratiques. Nos résultats tendent à démontrer que ces qualités pourraient être acquises grâce à une certaine flexibilité organisationnelle et une certaine indépendance dans la gouvernance des structures de soutien. Ces contributions nous amènent à proposer une nouvelle définition du concept d’université entrepreneuriale
In a knowledge-based economy, there is increasing attention paid to innovation coming out of university-industry collaboration. This research focuses on the concept of the entrepreneurial university, which, in addition to education and research, pursues a third mission of social and economic development. This thesis specifically analyses the support from the parent organization to the spin-off creation. In this regard, we explore the internal organization of the university, its practices, and the role of interactions between various organizational members in order to spur academic entrepreneurship. This research refers to organizational theory, and especially to inhabited institutionalism. Through a qualitative, exploratory, and data driven methodology for which 68 interviews were conducted, we compare the support provided by the University of Amsterdam (in the Netherlands) with that offered by the Free University of Berlin (in Germany). One of the main discrepancies between the university proceedings and the spin-off operations is the different motivations and the timeframe required for action. Knowledge transfer from academia to private corporations requires certain organizational attributes from the university, including transparency, simplicity, and alacrity of its practices. Our results demonstrate that the university should favor organizational flexibility and independent organizational governance for its support for academic entrepreneurship. Our empirical contribution leads us to reconsider and propose a new definition for the concept of the entrepreneurial university

This study set out to explore the ways in which non-STEM academics, working within UK universities that had positioned themselves publicly as ‘entrepreneurial’ institutions, interpret and negotiate the related concepts of the entrepreneurial academic and university. The entrepreneurial university concept has become a ubiquitous theme in higher education and policy literatures in recent decades, having been described variously as an ‘idea for its time’ (Shattock, 2010) and the ‘end-point of the evolution of the idea of the university’ (Barnett, 2010, p.i). This research set out to interrogate some of the key ways in which this institutional form, and the corresponding concept of the entrepreneurial academic, have been discursively constructed by advocates in the UK and beyond. Further to this, the study aimed to collect narratives of experience from non-STEM academics employed by self-described ‘entrepreneurial’ universities, both to enquire into how they interpreted the ‘entrepreneurial paradigm’, and to invite them to report on how they felt that their university’s assumption of an enterprise mission had, or had not, influenced its organisational ‘culture’ and their subjectively experienced academic work-lives. The researcher’s interest in the relationship between enterprise discourse and the organisational ‘culture’ of universities stemmed from the apparent consensus within the scholarly and policy literature about the need for universities to develop an integrated ‘entrepreneurial culture’ (Clark, 1998, p.7)(Gibb, 2006b, p.2)(Rae, Gee and Moon, 2009) by pursuing a policy of ‘organisational culture change’, with culture here denoting ‘the realm of ideas, beliefs, and asserted values’ (Kwiek, 2008, p.115) which inhere within institutions. To this end, a series of semi-structured, interpretive interviews were carried out with participants from a range of non-STEM disciplines, working in a variety of university types in the UK. The researcher then employed a discourse-analytic method to delineate some of the ‘discursive repertoires’ that participants used to account for their professional practices, and report on their experiences in - and understandings of - the entrepreneurial university. What emerged from this analysis was a complex picture of ‘enterprise discourse’ within the contemporary university setting, as well as a general tendency amongst participants to adopt a position of ontological scepticism where the issue of ‘university culture’ was concerned. Further to this, it was determined that the ‘inclusive’ interpretation of entrepreneurialism typically employed by advocates for the paradigm had not generally been taken up by participants, for whom it was, for the most part, a phenomenon associated variously with ‘managerialism’, ‘market values’, ‘the business agenda’, ‘income generation’, ‘money making’, and the figure of the ‘individual, lone, romantic, heroic capitalist’. Additionally, where subjects were conversant in broader, more ‘social’ conceptions of academic entrepreneurialism, they typically reported that it was rarely articulated in the internal communications of their respective universities.

To explain what drives entrepreneurial action, a fundamental question of the entrepreneurship research field, the study of individual’s cognition has emerged as a promising perspective, as it describes the mental processes through which individuals identify and take decisions about entrepreneurial opportunities. Most of this research has emphasized the consequences of cognition on entrepreneurial action, highlighting that individuals need the proper knowledge and motivation to identify and act upon entrepreneurial opportunities. However, less is known about the mechanisms through which these cognitive dimensions can be developed through individuals’ exposure to their social context. This is surprising as entrepreneurship is a socially embedded phenomenon and entrepreneurs are social embedded: literature has acknowledged that elements of the social context in which individuals grow up (e.g., family and early life experiences) and to which individuals are attracted later in life (e.g., workplace, friends, education) play a central role in cultivating and developing their predispositions towards entrepreneurship. The aim of the present thesis is to address this gap by concentrating on university as social context and its role in nurturing entrepreneurial cognition. University is chosen because it represents a context, which provides opportunities of learning and socialization, as well normative frames that shapes the cognition, aptitudes and beliefs of its members, students and scientists. Specifically, the three missions of university – education, research and commercialization – together concur to the development of its members’ entrepreneurial thinking and acting. The first paper focuses on the university education mission and its effects on students’ entrepreneurial knowledge adopting a learning perspective. It illustrates the extent and the circumstances under which students’ exposure to different entrepreneurial education offerings produces entrepreneurial learning outcomes. The second paper focuses on the university research mission and its effects on scientists’ success in commercializing innovations adopting an imprinting perspective. It illustrates the mechanisms through which the career imprints – which scientists internalize in the research lab – translate into open innovation behavior by their innovative startups. In turn, open innovation is shown to represent the mediating mechanism that explain why ventures founded by scientists have an advantage over other innovative startups in the commercialization of new products or services. The third paper focuses on the university commercialization mission and on how this element of university culture affects the well-being experience of student entrepreneurs. Adopting an identity perspective, it illustrates that the effect of different dimensions of firm performance (e.g., financial, social) on student entrepreneurs’ psychological well-being is contingent to the entrepreneurial culture of their university. On the basis of these studies, the thesis moves towards a process-based framework that illustrates the mechanisms and circumstances under which individuals who select themselves in the university social context develop the cognitive dimensions which, in turn, influence their entrepreneurial actions and outcomes. This framework provides the opportunity to discuss a research agenda and formulate practical implications for entrepreneurs, educators and policy-makers.
To explain what drives entrepreneurial action, a fundamental question of the entrepreneurship research field, the study of individual’s cognition has emerged as a promising perspective, as it describes the mental processes through which individuals identify and take decisions about entrepreneurial opportunities. Most of this research has emphasized the consequences of cognition on entrepreneurial action, highlighting that individuals need the proper knowledge and motivation to identify and act upon entrepreneurial opportunities. However, less is known about the mechanisms through which these cognitive dimensions can be developed through individuals’ exposure to their social context. This is surprising as entrepreneurship is a socially embedded phenomenon and entrepreneurs are social embedded: literature has acknowledged that elements of the social context in which individuals grow up (e.g., family and early life experiences) and to which individuals are attracted later in life (e.g., workplace, friends, education) play a central role in cultivating and developing their predispositions towards entrepreneurship. The aim of the present thesis is to address this gap by concentrating on university as social context and its role in nurturing entrepreneurial cognition. University is chosen because it represents a context, which provides opportunities of learning and socialization, as well normative frames that shapes the cognition, aptitudes and beliefs of its members, students and scientists. Specifically, the three missions of university – education, research and commercialization – together concur to the development of its members’ entrepreneurial thinking and acting. The first paper focuses on the university education mission and its effects on students’ entrepreneurial knowledge adopting a learning perspective. It illustrates the extent and the circumstances under which students’ exposure to different entrepreneurial education offerings produces entrepreneurial learning outcomes. The second paper focuses on the university research mission and its effects on scientists’ success in commercializing innovations adopting an imprinting perspective. It illustrates the mechanisms through which the career imprints – which scientists internalize in the research lab – translate into open innovation behavior by their innovative startups. In turn, open innovation is shown to represent the mediating mechanism that explain why ventures founded by scientists have an advantage over other innovative startups in the commercialization of new products or services. The third paper focuses on the university commercialization mission and on how this element of university culture affects the well-being experience of student entrepreneurs. Adopting an identity perspective, it illustrates that the effect of different dimensions of firm performance (e.g., financial, social) on student entrepreneurs’ psychological well-being is contingent to the entrepreneurial culture of their university. On the basis of these studies, the thesis moves towards a process-based framework that illustrates the mechanisms and circumstances under which individuals who select themselves in the university social context develop the cognitive dimensions which, in turn, influence their entrepreneurial actions and outcomes. This framework provides the opportunity to discuss a research agenda and formulate practical implications for entrepreneurs, educators and policy-makers.

Le champ de recherche en entrepreneuriat est aujourd’hui très répandu mais dans le contexte du Vietnam, il reste encore un domaine de recherche à explorer. Parmi les paradigmes de l’entrepreneuriat, l’approche processuelle, se trouve au coeur de plusieurs recherches récentes. Cette thèse s’intéresse à l’intention qui constitue la première étape du processus entrepreneurial. Elle est consacrée à l’étude des impacts du système éducatif universitaire sur l’intention entrepreneuriale des étudiants vietnamiens. Elle tente de déterminer le rôle de l’« environnement universitaire » dans la formation de l’intention entrepreneuriale chez les étudiants. Le travail est interdisciplinaire entre les sciences de gestion et les sciences de l’information et de la communication. Il consiste à décrire un modèle de facteurs constitutifs de l’environnement universitaire et mesure l’influence de ces facteurs sur l’intention entrepreneuriale. Cette recherche s’appuie sur le modèle d’intention entrepreneuriale de Davidsson (1995) repris par Autio et al. (1997) et la théorie du comportement d’Ajzen (1991). La thèse est effectuée en mobilisant un pluralisme méthodologique combinant approche quantitative par questionnaire et qualitative par entretiens approfondis. Les donnés quantitatives recueillies l’ont été à travers deux enquêtes par questionnaires auprès de 781 étudiants (questionnaire 1) et 220 étudiants (questionnaire 2). Afin de valider les hypothèses de recherche, des tests statistiques ont été conduits : l’indépendant simple T-test, l’analyse de variance Anova ou la régression multiple. Quinze entretiens approfondis auprès de jeunes entrepreneurs qui sont passés par la vie universitaire ont pour but de clarifier le rôle de l’environnement universitaire ainsi que le rôle de la méthodologie pédagogique dans la formation de l’intention entrepreneuriale au sein des établissements universitaires. Le travail de terrain s’est déroulé sur plusieurs mois, auprès de 9 universités vietnamiennes situées au Nord (Hanoï) et du Sud (Ho Chi Minh Ville) du Vietnam. Les résultats de recherche montrent que l’environnement universitaire, dont la méthodologie pédagogique représente un facteur majeur, influence positivement l’intention entrepreneuriale des étudiants vietnamiens. Le rôle de la pédagogie active dans l’enseignement de l’entrepreneuriat est à nouveau confirmé. Les stages en entreprise sont préconisés dans la formation à l’entrepreneuriat. En se basant sur les entretiens approfondis, cette étude ouvre des perspectives nouvelles. Citons notamment le rôle du facteur réseau ainsi que la communication engageante
The entrepreneurial field is a popular subject in the world, but it is a new and attracting research inVietnam where the private economic part has been more appreciated since 1986 (the most important point that marked the renovation of socio-economic system in Vietnam). In the entrepreneurial paradigms, the processing approach that attracts many attentions of recent researchers is followed by this study. With considering the entrepreneurship as the process, this thesis concentrates in the primary of business process (called the creation of enterprise). It studies the influences of university system on the entrepreneurial intention of Vietnamese students, especially the role of university environment in creating the students’ business intention. The most valued aim of this thesis is to describe the factors of university environment and to measure the influences of these factors on entrepreneurial ideas. It is evident that this research is typical combination between management science and information and communication science.This study bases on the entrepreneurial intention paradigm of Davisson (1995) that practiced by Autio etal (1997) and the behavioural theory of Ajzen (1991). The subject is studied by the combination between qualitative and quantitative methods. The two survey questionnaires were conducted with about 1000 completed questionnaires to collect the data for the research. The statistical tests were done such as the independent simple T-test, the analysis of variance ANOVA, the multiple regressions in order to confirm the hypotheses of research. Moreover, the fifteen of deep interview with young entrepreneurs who grow up from university system supplements the deeper understanding about the role of teaching method and university environment in creating entrepreneurial intention. The study is based on six months of fieldwork at nine universities in both the North and the South of Vietnam. The results show that the studying environment and teaching method are two key factors which have high positive influence on entrepreneurial intention of Vietnamese students. They also acknowledge the role of active pedagogic and the close relationship between the literature and the practice by the encouragement to be on probation in enterprises. This research also opens up the new prospect including the role of definition “réseau et communication engageante”

Entrepreneurs play a major role in the 21st century economy, especially in developing countries such as Chile. Entrepreneurial individuals generate innovative ideas, create jobs, and push older businesses to improve competitiveness. To encourage entrepreneurial skills and mindset among the next generation of students, different public and private initiatives have started to include entrepreneurship education (EE) in all levels of education, especially in higher education. Nowadays, EE is not only about business creation, it is about educating individuals to be capable of creating opportunities using entrepreneurial skills to deal with complex and uncertain environments. Yet, while much is known about how entrepreneurs not only create social, environmental, and economic value, the entrepreneurial process is still not understood well enough. This lack of understanding limits our ability to teach entrepreneurship. The purpose of this mixed methods study was twofold: (1) to explore relationships between faculty teaching perspectives, the experience of the faculty and student entrepreneurial intentions in required entrepreneurship courses at Chilean universities. From this information, I identified those faculty who seem to have differential impact on students entrepreneurial intentions (Phase I: quantitative, secondary data), and (2) to describe and explain how the entrepreneurship faculty define and think about entrepreneurship education and teaching methods (Phase II: qualitative, primary data). This study found that the required entrepreneurship courses in a Chilean university had no impact on student entrepreneurial intentions. However, the study also showed that faculty entrepreneurial experience might be a factor that impacts student entrepreneurial intentions. The qualitative part of the study indicated that while faculty hold a perspective in which entrepreneurship is more than simply business creation and are already using some "learning through" entrepreneurship pedagogical elements, but are still primarily basing classes on "learning for" entrepreneurship strategies such as business plan development.

A better understanding of how groups create a sense of place in the urban environment gives insights into implications of entrepreneurial strategies and divisive cultures there. In this thesis, I study university students who have been conceptualised as a group that is powerful in influencing and shaping their urban surroundings. In particular, I explore how they develop a relationship to the university city via an analysis of the case of Liverpool. By analysing the notion of the 'student experience' as it is employed by the participants of this research, I aim to emphasise the importance of place in learning and practicing what it means to be a student. In this thesis, I adopt a methodological framework from social constructionism and empirical phenomenology building on the understanding that what can be studied about the social world is how it appears to people and how they construct their own realities. In the attempt to get close to the lifeworlds of the students who took part in this research, I employ the methods of autophotography, photo-elicitation and walking interviews to investigate the significance of the urban fabric in which people's practices are embedded in. A frame analysis approach inspired by Erving Goffman is established as a tool to analyse spoken and spatial data in a way that is sensitive to what people do and the layers of meaning in which they make sense of these practices. My analysis suggests that students' relationship to the city is characterised by the enactment of a typification with regard to categorical knowledge of what it means to be a student. The 'student experience' is a social, spatial and aspirational category which students aim to achieve through particular practices and their enactment in specific urban spaces. Students' engagement with the university city is interpreted as a collective practice in which urban space is used as a marker of distinction, not just towards non-student populations but also relative to different cohorts of students. Student culture is characterised by rigid membership criteria contingent on a partial engagement with the university city. Overall, I situate this bounded type of engagement with the city within the context of the university in which different years of study imply changing ways of identifying as students and as such implicate changes in how students use and make sense of urban space.

It is widely accepted that the educational system of universities has to provide an academic environment that may serve as a catalysts for high-technology start-ups. The academic tradition of entrepreneurship in German-speaking countries is very short. Until recently, fostering innovations and new product development through entrepreneurship has not been regarded as a primary task of universities. However, perspectives have changed in this respect, and there have been numerous attempts to enhance the role of university graduates as founders of innovative businesses. In this paper, we compare the entrepreneurial intentions of students at two German-speaking universities (the Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration and the University of Munich) with the corresponding results for a leading institution in this field: Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). We find very distinct patterns of entrepreneurial spirit in these universities. The results also suggest that the lower level of founding intentions among students in Munich and Vienna may be attributed to their less distinctive entrepreneurship education. This leaves a great deal of room for improvement. (author's abstract)

Entrepreneurial ecosystems are an important economic consideration but remain an understudied phenomenon. In particular, research emphasising the role of the entrepreneur within entrepreneurial ecosystems is scant. Entrepreneurial universities, particularly the commercialisation activities by academic entrepreneurs, contribute to both the emergence and development of entrepreneurial ecosystems at the university-industry (U-I) boundary. Yet, an understanding of the links between university characteristics and micro-level cognition on entrepreneurial ecosystems remains limited. Furthermore, it is not clear how the dynamics of entrepreneurial ecosystems differ across different national geographies. Venture development at the U-I boundary is difficult and uncertain. Entrepreneurs must make decisions under intense ambiguity and make sense of the highly uncertain situation. Nowhere is this more evident than in knowledge and technology-intensive sectors, where venturing relies on entrepreneurial coping responses to uncertainty. However, little is known about how entrepreneurs cope with uncertainty, especially when uncertainty is irreducible. To progress understanding of entrepreneurial behaviour amidst uncertainty, and the emergence and development of entrepreneurial ecosystems at the U-I boundary, this PhD thesis investigates venturing in the field of regenerative medicine (regenmed). This is a particularly suited study context since regenmed commercialisation activities, which are driven by university-based stem cell research, are highly uncertain and the industry is still in a formative stage. This PhD thesis explores entrepreneurial behaviour amidst uncertainty and the development of entrepreneurial ecosystems at the U-I boundary. The thesis comprises of three empirical studies (essays) that can be read independently, however, together the essays provide an enhanced understanding of entrepreneurial behaviour and the development of entrepreneurial ecosystems at the U-I boundary. Essay 1 reveals how ecosystem participants make sense of venturing processes in a highly uncertain, technology-intensive field. It highlights the development of coping strategies during the sensemaking process, and illustrates an association between university entrepreneurial culture and coping strategies. A model of sensemaking process under uncertainty is presented and a typology of sensemaking types in uncertain ecosystems is proposed. Essay 2 is a cross-national study of entrepreneurial ecosystems in Edinburgh (UK) and Madison (USA). The study investigates the development of entrepreneurial ecosystems around two research-intensive universities, which have a long history in stem cell innovation. The essay highlights the effects of cultural artefacts on microlevel behaviours. The influence of behaviour and cognition on the development of entrepreneurial ecosystems is modelled. This reveals different development paths for similar ecosystems. Essay 3 explores the emergence and development of entrepreneurial ecosystems, and considers how these help drive technology-based economies. More specifically, the study explores technology transfer and contextual factors across three regenmed ecosystems (Edinburgh, Madison, and Moscow) to reveal the emergence of entrepreneurial ecosystems at the U-I boundary. Findings show that ecosystem and venture characteristics emerge from institutional characteristics, micro-level cognition and regional context. Additionally, university culture and entrepreneurial coping strategies generate a typology for spinouts within the ecosystem. Collectively, these three essays reveal novel phenomena explaining how ecosystem actors make sense of uncertainty and how this influences the emergence of entrepreneurial ecosystems at the U-I boundary. Additionally, they reveal the importance of context in the venturing process and in entrepreneurial ecosystem dynamics. This provides important contributions to theories of entrepreneurial behaviour, entrepreneurial ecosystems and technology transfer. These scholarly contributions impart important practical implications.

En el contexto de la nueva economía emprendedora, el factor predominante de producción y fuente principal de competitividad es el capital del conocimiento que junto el capital emprendedor, representan la capacidad fundamental para identificar oportunidades y generar valor añadido a través de la actividad emprendedora y de la innovación. Dado que el conocimiento se crea y se transfiere básicamente en las universidades, tanto los gobiernos como la sociedad en general viene proponiendo en los últimos años modelos alternativos donde dichas universidades contribuyan en mayor medida al desarrollo regional a través del capital emprendedor y la promoción de actividades emprendedoras. La presente investigación avanza en la comprensión de los antecedentes (factores internos y del entorno) y de las consecuencias (decisión de crear una empresa por parte de los estudiantes y graduados) en el contexto de las universidades emprendedoras en economías emergentes. El estudio se fundamenta en una extensa revisión de la literatura que propone un modelo ecléctico integrando los aspectos básicos de la teoría económica institucional, la teoría de recursos y capacidades, la teoría del comportamiento planificado, la teoría social cognitiva, la teoría del crecimiento endógeno y la teoría de la difusión de conocimientos (Capítulo 2). En referencia a los antecedentes, a la luz de la teoría institucional y la teoría de recursos y capacidades, en los capítulos 3 y 4 se analizan los factores internos y externos que condicionan la creación y desarrollo de las universidades emprendedoras. En cuanto a las consecuencias, el capítulo 5 se centra en el estudio de los factores que condicionan el comportamiento emprendedor de los estudiantes, según la teoría del comportamiento planificado y la teoría social cognitiva. Como resultado y adoptando la teoría del crecimiento endógeno y la teoría de la difusión del conocimiento, en el capítulo 6 se estudia el impacto socio-económico de las decisiones emprendedoras por parte de los estudiantes universitarios. Debido a la dificultad en la obtención de datos, el modelo ecléctico considerado en la presente tesis doctoral se contrastó en tres universidades (multi-campus) emprendedoras latinoamericanas, ubicadas en México. Los resultados del estudio confirman la relevancia, directa de los factores internos y del entorno en las decisiones emprendedoras de los estudiantes y graduados universitarios. En base a los mismos, varias implicaciones se desprenden, tanto para la comunidad universitaria, como para los gestores universitarios y sociedad en general.
In the new entrepreneurial economy model, the dominant production factor and prime source of competitive advantage is knowledge capital that complemented by entrepreneurship capital represent the capacity to identify opportunities and create value through innovation and entrepreneurship. As knowledge is generated and transferred by universities, both governments and communities are demanding new models where universities contribute to regional development through the generation of entrepreneurial capital and the facilitation of entrepreneurial activities. This research provides a better understanding about the antecedents (internal and environmental factors) and consequences (students’ start-ups creation and graduates’ career decisions) of entrepreneurial universities’ activities in emerging economies. To achieve this aim, based on an extended literature review, an eclectic model was proposed integrating the main fundaments of Institutional Economics, Resource-Based View, Theory of Planned Behavior, Social Cognitive Theory, Endogenous Growth Theory, and Knowledge Spillover Theory (Chapter 2). Regarding the antecedents, based on the Institutional Economics and Resource-Based View, Chapter 3 and Chapter 4 analyze environmental and internal factors that could condition the development of entrepreneurial universities’ activities. Concerning the consequences, Chapter 5 focuses on how those factors influence the entrepreneurial behaviors or actions of their students (outcomes) in light of Theory of Planned Behavior and Social Cognitive Theory. As a result, adopting the Endogenous Growth Theory and Knowledge Spillover Theory, Chapter 6 also considers the socioeconomic impacts of those outcomes on graduates’ career decisions. Given the difficulties to obtain relevant data, the eclectic model was tested in three Latin American entrepreneurial universities, and the majority of the analysis was particularly based on information from a multi-campus, entrepreneurial university located in Mexico. Our findings confirm the relevant, direct and indirect, influence of certain internal and environmental factors on students’ start-ups and graduates’ career decisions. From these results, several implications emerged for university stakeholders (policy makers, university managers, society).

Prompted by the observation that some Australian universities state that they wish to be entrepreneurial, and appear to be only mildly successful at it, whilst others are entrepreneurial by any measure and yet do not state that aim, this study explores what it means to be an entrepreneurial university in the complex and challenging Australian context. It asks the key question �What does it take?� in seeking to identify the organisational and managerial capabilities that underpin successful entrepreneurial outcomes with a view to developing a model that can assist senior university executives in their managerial and leadership practice. The study is undertaken in an interpretive, qualitative research framework where an initial model based on a literature synthesis, using the work of Clark as a starting point, is presented to a group of participants. All are either present or recent vice-chancellors, higher education industry experts and bureaucrats, or are senior technology transfer managers concerned with direct entrepreneurial efforts in larger universities. In two iterations, the participants are engaged in dialogue about the model, refining and commenting on it until their views are incorporated and it more closely approximates their own mental models for the practice of entrepreneurship in the university. Their comments about related issues of government policy, current national and international trends, their respective university strategies and concerns are also incorporated to add rich meaning to their views on the model itself. The study concludes that there are five clusters of capabilities involved in building an entrepreneurial university in the Australian setting. They are labelled Context, Strategy, People, Enabling Mechanisms and Culture and Internal Politics in this study. There is some overlap with those elements Clark originally identified but also some notable additional emphasis and detail added. In this study, the capability clusters related to relationship with environment and Context and that relating to Strategy and strategic leadership in general are found to be more important than Clark indicated, more crucial in the present Australian context and generally more underdeveloped in Australia than the current circumstances would indicate is necessary. It is concluded that where entrepreneurship is handled as a marginal, optional, or half-hearted pursuit, and the concept not fully embraced, it is likely to result in haphazard outcomes, not always enhancing or progressing the institution in its desired direction. In contrast, successful entrepreneurship in and by Australian universities essentially requires greater emphasis on the capabilities of strategic management and plans that place entrepreneurship centrally in an integrated strategic entrepreneurship framework.

This study focused on exploring students entrepreneurial experiences pursuing business start-up intentions at university. The main aim of the study was to explore students' entrepreneurial intentions and transitions starting a business at university, to inform educationalists and those that support entrepreneurial students in designing future support and interventions. A qualitative approach was taken in this study, with particular reference to Constructivism (Denzin and Lincoln, 1994). A pre and post exploration of students' intentions was designed in the research to explore the context of entrepreneurial students across four universities. A more in-depth look into students' experiences starting a business was conducted with small groups of 3-6 at each university using focus group discussions. Lastly an in-depth unstructured interview was conducted using the Critical Incident Technique (CIT) (Flanagan, 1954; Chell, 1998) to explore `critical incidents' in the students' entrepreneurial experiences starting a business at university; case studies were built from 5 students that had started a business and 5 that hadn't. The results found that students' prior entrepreneurial interests, aspirations and family in business were key motivators towards their desirability to start a business at university. However, upon exploring and generating their ideas and intentions decided against business start-up because of a lack of experience, funding and time. The enterprise funding programme provided the feasibility for students to develop their intentions further and engage in the development of their businesses whilst at university. The enterprise funding programme was an attractive opportunity for those students that initially decided against business start-up and it was found that the practical hands-on learning experience was invaluable. The `critical incidents' that influenced students' decision to start a business were; business idea viable, support from family and friends, practical business training, experience gained, mentor and like-minded students. Those that decided not to start a business indicated that particular non-effective `critical incidents' influencing their decision were; their idea being unviable, personal circumstances, a change of career interests and lack of family support. A model of the transitions of the entrepreneurial students exploring start-up as a career option was presented in the analysis, incorporating the implications to educationalists and those that support entrepreneurial students in designing future support and interventions in the conclusion. The study's contribution to knowledge surrounds an improved understanding of the transitions of students pursuing business start-up and their subsequent career destination through the entrepreneurial transitions model. The use of the CIT method has identified the complexities of students' business start-up experiences and the case studies provide significant contribution. Furthermore, the CIT method highlighted in-depth understanding of the impact of the `learning-by-doing' approach on the enterprise funding programme which was found provided students with the experience and propensity to start a business

Master of Agribusiness
Department of Agricultural Economics
Keith Harris
Iowa State University’s Agricultural Entrepreneurship Initiative (AgEI) was founded in 2005 from a generous gift given by Roger and Connie Underwood of Ames, IA. The original mission for the initiative was to provide undergraduate students at Iowa State University, specifically in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS), with practical business development and entrepreneurial experiences essential for their success in future careers and endeavors. A non-conventional case study structure will walk readers through the history of how the AgEI program came to be and introduce them to the present day, while acknowledging tribulations the program has faced along the way. The purpose of this study is to determine wether the addition of soft skills programming will strengthen the value of the program to Iowa State University CALS students and generate actionable ideas on how to do so. Further analysis will ascertain whether enticing additional participation in the program, while maintaining its original entrepreneurial goals, will allow the AgEI program to grow in value and size. Quantitative, as well as qualitative, means of analysis are utilized to understand the students’ needs for soft skills development and identify skills deemed necessary by entrepreneurs to find success in the marketplace. Results indicate that it is advantageous to add a focus in soft skills development for undergraduate students who have an interest in entrepreneurship and small business development. These skills compliment their technical skills nicely when considering all aspects of creating a successful startup business. By implementing soft skills development programming, the AgEI program will be able to produce more well-rounded individuals and enhance their likelihood to successfully start their own businesses.

Le champ de recherche en entrepreneuriat est aujourd’hui très répandu mais dans le contexte du Vietnam, il reste encore un domaine de recherche à explorer. Parmi les paradigmes de l’entrepreneuriat, l’approche processuelle, se trouve au coeur de plusieurs recherches récentes. Cette thèse s’intéresse à l’intention qui constitue la première étape du processus entrepreneurial. Elle est consacrée à l’étude des impacts du système éducatif universitaire sur l’intention entrepreneuriale des étudiants vietnamiens. Elle tente de déterminer le rôle de l’« environnement universitaire » dans la formation de l’intention entrepreneuriale chez les étudiants. Le travail est interdisciplinaire entre les sciences de gestion et les sciences de l’information et de la communication. Il consiste à décrire un modèle de facteurs constitutifs de l’environnement universitaire et mesure l’influence de ces facteurs sur l’intention entrepreneuriale. Cette recherche s’appuie sur le modèle d’intention entrepreneuriale de Davidsson (1995) repris par Autio et al. (1997) et la théorie du comportement d’Ajzen (1991). La thèse est effectuée en mobilisant un pluralisme méthodologique combinant approche quantitative par questionnaire et qualitative par entretiens approfondis. Les donnés quantitatives recueillies l’ont été à travers deux enquêtes par questionnaires auprès de 781 étudiants (questionnaire 1) et 220 étudiants (questionnaire 2). Afin de valider les hypothèses de recherche, des tests statistiques ont été conduits : l’indépendant simple T-test, l’analyse de variance Anova ou la régression multiple. Quinze entretiens approfondis auprès de jeunes entrepreneurs qui sont passés par la vie universitaire ont pour but de clarifier le rôle de l’environnement universitaire ainsi que le rôle de la méthodologie pédagogique dans la formation de l’intention entrepreneuriale au sein des établissements universitaires. Le travail de terrain s’est déroulé sur plusieurs mois, auprès de 9 universités vietnamiennes situées au Nord (Hanoï) et du Sud (Ho Chi Minh Ville) du Vietnam. Les résultats de recherche montrent que l’environnement universitaire, dont la méthodologie pédagogique représente un facteur majeur, influence positivement l’intention entrepreneuriale des étudiants vietnamiens. Le rôle de la pédagogie active dans l’enseignement de l’entrepreneuriat est à nouveau confirmé. Les stages en entreprise sont préconisés dans la formation à l’entrepreneuriat. En se basant sur les entretiens approfondis, cette étude ouvre des perspectives nouvelles. Citons notamment le rôle du facteur réseau ainsi que la communication engageante
The entrepreneurial field is a popular subject in the world, but it is a new and attracting research inVietnam where the private economic part has been more appreciated since 1986 (the most important point that marked the renovation of socio-economic system in Vietnam). In the entrepreneurial paradigms, the processing approach that attracts many attentions of recent researchers is followed by this study. With considering the entrepreneurship as the process, this thesis concentrates in the primary of business process (called the creation of enterprise). It studies the influences of university system on the entrepreneurial intention of Vietnamese students, especially the role of university environment in creating the students’ business intention. The most valued aim of this thesis is to describe the factors of university environment and to measure the influences of these factors on entrepreneurial ideas. It is evident that this research is typical combination between management science and information and communication science.This study bases on the entrepreneurial intention paradigm of Davisson (1995) that practiced by Autio etal (1997) and the behavioural theory of Ajzen (1991). The subject is studied by the combination between qualitative and quantitative methods. The two survey questionnaires were conducted with about 1000 completed questionnaires to collect the data for the research. The statistical tests were done such as the independent simple T-test, the analysis of variance ANOVA, the multiple regressions in order to confirm the hypotheses of research. Moreover, the fifteen of deep interview with young entrepreneurs who grow up from university system supplements the deeper understanding about the role of teaching method and university environment in creating entrepreneurial intention. The study is based on six months of fieldwork at nine universities in both the North and the South of Vietnam. The results show that the studying environment and teaching method are two key factors which have high positive influence on entrepreneurial intention of Vietnamese students. They also acknowledge the role of active pedagogic and the close relationship between the literature and the practice by the encouragement to be on probation in enterprises. This research also opens up the new prospect including the role of definition “réseau et communication engageante”

L'entrepreneuriat s'est construit autour de paradigmes dominants. Ces paradigmes sont essentiellement centrés sur des approches internalistes et sur des approches externaliste. Ces paradigmes ont influencé aussi l'enseignement de l'entrepreneuriat. Actuellement dans la recherche en entrepreneuriat, émerge un paradigme : le paradigme du processus entrepreneurial. Quelle est sa place à côté des paradigmes existants ? Quel est son impact sur l'enseignement de l'entrepreneuriat ? Pour répondre à ces questions, nous avons cherché à envisager à quoi ressemblerait un enseignement en entrepreneuriat dans ce paradigme. Pour cela, nous nous sommes intéressés à l'enseignement de l'entrepreneuriat au Maroc et nous avons développé une recherche intervention permettant de mettre en place des enseignements basés sur le processus entrepreneurial. La thèse proposée s'organise autour de trois parties. La première partie présente les différents paradigmes en entrepreneuriat. A côté des paradigmes dominants, nous présentons le paradigme du processus entrepreneurial. La deuxième partie s'intéresse à l'enseignement de l'entrepreneuriat. Il s'agit de comprendre la place de l'enseignement de l'entrepreneuriat à l'université et la place des différents paradigmes dans cet enseignement et notamment au Maroc. Face à l'absence d'enseignement basé sur le processus entrepreneurial au Maroc, nous proposons dans une troisième et dernière partie de mettre en place ce type d'enseignement à partir d'une intervention faite dans une université
Entrepreneurship is basically built on dominants paradigms. These are esencially based on internal and external approaches and have influenced the teaching of entepreneurship. Today, in the entrereneurial research appears a new paradigm: the paradigm of the entrepreneurial process. Which is the place that take these in relation with the existent paradigms? Which is its impact in the teaching of entrepreneurship? To answer these questions we have tried to consider what could be a teaching of entrepreneurship under this paradigm. This is why we have been interested in the teaching of entrepreneurship in Morocco and we have developed an intervention research that permit us to work with didactics based on the entrepreneurial process. The thesis proposed is organized in three parts. The first one present the different entrepreneurial paradigms, introducing the paradigm of the entrepreneurial process beside the dominant paradigms. The second part is about the teaching of entrepreneuship and try to understand which is the position of entrepreneurship in the university and which are the positions of each different paradigm in this process, especially in Morocco. Facing the lack of teaching based on the entrepreneurial process in Morocco, we propose in a third and last part of this thesis to implement this kind of teaching from an intervention done in a university

This study is to investigate the influence of entrepreneurial activities on teaching at universities. Specifically, the study focuses on entrepreneurial activities' effect on professors' time allocation. The dataset analyzed was constructed from the survey conducted by University of Illinois at Chicago in 1998. The sample was drawn from American academic professional associations' members of the four fields: experimental biology, physics, mathematics, and sociology. Based on the data of 133 professors, the study shows that professors with paid consulting work tend to spend less time in teaching when research activities are controlled. Insignificant are the other variables about entrepreneurial activities: patent application, industry funding, and research collaboration with industry. Also, more research time is likely to result in less teaching time. Insignificant are the other research-related variables: research funding at large and collaborative research in general. In terms of personal and institutional conditions, assistant professors tend to invest more time in teaching than senior professors, but they are likely to reduce more time on teaching than their senior counterparts for increasing research time. Finally, biology and sociology professors tend to allocate less time to teaching than physics and mathematics professors. In a word, entrepreneurial activities and research tend to conflict with teaching at the level of individual professors' time allocation.

The importance attached to entrepreneurship education has become recognized and important by the Nigerian government and Universities that these programs are made compulsory for undergraduates. However, the impact of the existing entrepreneurship education programs in Nigerian Universities in aiding the decision to become self-employed after graduation still remains unclear. A comprehensive examination of the impact of these specific programs have not been examined since their establishment over a decade. This study examines the impact of entrepreneurship education on students' entrepreneurial intentions in Nigerian Universities, and identifies the factors that influence their entrepreneurial intentions. It also considers the suggestions that address the design of entrepreneurship education programs for Nigerian University students. The need of this research developed as a result of the high rise of unemployment among Nigerian graduates, and the scantiness of empirical research on entrepreneurship education in Nigeria. This research followed a pretest post test quasi experimental control group designs by using a group of third year students that participated in entrepreneurship programs and as a control group, students who do not participate in the entrepreneurship programs to measure their entrepreneurial intentions and its antecedents at the beginning and after a semester long entrepreneurship program. Results revealed that there is a positive link between entrepreneurship education and entrepreneurial intentions for Nigerian University Students. It indicates that there is a significant difference between the two groups, the entrepreneurship students showed a higher perceived desirability for entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial self- efficacy, entrepreneurial intentions than the non participants. It also showed that the entrepreneurial learning gained from the program can benefit students with an improved desire and capability to embark on entrepreneurship. The results also showed that perceived desirability for entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial self efficacy were the most significant factors than other control factors in influencing entrepreneurial intentions. Added to this, the element of perceived desirability was found to be stronger than entrepreneurial self efficacy in the influence. Also, among the control factors tested, it was only students' course of study that was found to be a significant influencing factor entrepreneurial intentions. This thesis has made contributions to the existing body of knowledge in the fields of entrepreneurship education and entrepreneurial intentions in a number of ways. Firstly, it conducted one of the pioneer research on entrepreneurship programs that have received no attention in the last decade in Nigeria, by providing more evidence on the applicability of theory of planned behavior in examining the impact of the program on entrepreneurial intentions. Secondly, it also provides more evidence that non-business students specifically, science-based can also develop higher entrepreneurial intentions. Thirdly, through a pre-test post-test quasi experimental control group design in a developing country, this thesis contributes to the methodology used for assessing the impact of entrepreneurship education by providing a robust approach in the assessment. Fourthly, it also adds to the debate on the most influential elements for determining students' entrepreneurial intention as perceived desirability for entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial self-efficacy. Fifthly, it provides more insight into the benefits of entrepreneurship education by revealing the positive impact that entrepreneurial learning has on perceived desirability for entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial self-efficacy. Sixthly and finally, it also provides suggestions for improving the design of entrepreneurship education programs for the Nigerian Universities. It was also proposed that with these suggestions, the entrepreneurship education programs in Nigeria may further consider the suggestions in the program by piloting the test of its impact on students' entrepreneurial intentions.

This thesis entitled ‘Assessing antecedents and consequences of entrepreneurial activities of academics at South African universities’ investigates whether aspects related to the human, physical and organisational capital resources of academics influence their engagement in consulting, sponsored research, licensing/assignment of intellectual property and the spin-off creation with industry, government and civil society. It also examines the way in which the entrepreneurial activities of academics impact on their research and teaching outcome parameters. The research study provides scholars investigating academic entrepreneurship, policy makers and university administrators with the key resource drivers of entrepreneurial action. This knowledge may, in turn, assist them in establishing the appropriate role of institutions and organisations in promoting the entrepreneurial activities of academics.
Thesis (PhD) University of Pretoria, 2016.
Business Management
Unrestricted

To improve and develop South Africa’s entrepreneurial activity, it is vital that the population acquires certain attributes which are common among individuals who exhibit entrepreneurial behaviour. As the occurrence of entrepreneurial attributes increases in the population, so too will the probability of entrepreneurial behaviour and entrepreneurial activity. A possible first step in ensuring that a population possesses the necessary attributes is to assess the current levels of development of these entrepreneurial attributes among students of business. Underdeveloped attributes can then be identified, and steps taken to bring about improvements. The primary objective of this study was to assess the entrepreneurial attributes of undergraduate business students at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University. In order to achieve this objective an in-depth analysis of secondary sources was conducted. The nature of entrepreneurship was defined and its importance highlighted. Furthermore, the status of entrepreneurship both globally and nationally was elaborated on. Entrepreneurship education was also addressed, and its role in developing entrepreneurial attributes was discussed. The 16 entrepreneurial attributes associated with successful entrepreneurs were described. The most commonly used intentions-based models were also discussed. In line with the intentions-based theories, the greater the perception of possessing the attributes associated with a successful entrepreneur by an individual, the greater the belief by that individual that he or she has the capacity and competence to become an entrepreneur, which in turn will influence their entrepreneurial intentions. Against the background of the literature overview, several hypotheses were formulated and subjected to empirical testing. A quantitative research approach was selected, the sample consisting of all undergraduate business students studying at three South African universities as well as two international universities. Convenience sampling was implemented in this study. The validity of the measuring instrument was determined by means of a factor analysis, and the reliability by means of calculating Cronbach alpha coefficients. The statistical techniques used to analyse the data included calculating descriptive statistics (the mean, standard deviation and frequency distributions), t-tests and Cohen’s d, a multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA), an analysis of variance (ANOVA), Chi-squared statistic, and Cramer’s V. The results of the study show that NMMU students regarded the attributes Commitment, High energy level, Planning and perseverance and Overcoming failure as the four most-developed attributes, while they regarded Continuous learning, Knowledge-seeking, Initiative and responsibility and Communication ability as the least-developed. With the exception of the attributes Commitment and Overcoming failure, the level of development of the entrepreneurial attributes of NMMU students showed significant improvement between the 2001 and the 2010 studies. With the exception of Continuous learning, no significant differences were reported in the levels of development of the various entrepreneurial attributes between students at NMMU and students at the other South African universities participating in the study. When comparing the significant differences in the level of development of the 16 entrepreneurial attributes between NMMU and the international universities, a large practical significance was found for the attributes High energy level, Continuous learning and Knowledge seeking. For the attributes Planning and perseverance, Communication ability, Overcoming failure, Initiative and responsibility, High energy level, Creativity and flexibility, Knowledge seeking, Continuous learning, Financial proficiency and Business knowledge, students with entrepreneurial intentions reported significantly higher mean scores than students without entrepreneurial intentions. In other words, students with higher levels of development of these attributes are more likely to have entrepreneurial intentions. It was also found that significant differences in the levels of development of entrepreneurial attributes were reported for the demographic variables Levels of study, Gender and Age. No significant differences were found to exist between the demographic variables Level of study, Gender and Self-employment status of parents and the Entrepreneurial intention of NMMU students. This study has contributed to the field of entrepreneurship research by identifying several entrepreneurial attributes that are more likely to be found in students with entrepreneurial intentions than those without them. This study has also shown that certain demographic factors are related to the levels of development of certain entrepreneurial attributes, as well as to entrepreneurial intentions. Furthermore, through the assessment of entrepreneurial attributes of NMMU students and by making comparisons with other universities, this study has contributed to entrepreneurship education at NMMU as well as to entrepreneurship education in South Africa and abroad. Educators of entrepreneurship have been given insights into the levels of development of several entrepreneurial attributes among their students. In addition, recommendations have been made on how to improve the levels of development of the attributes investigated in this study.

Creating spinout companies (USOs) from university research is one focus of innovation policy. The phenomenon features in two main fields of enquiry: academic entrepreneurship studies, and literature on academic capitalism and the entrepreneurial university. Studies have explored the academic entrepreneur, the development stages of these nascent ventures, and the tools universities can provide to encourage and assist in the spinout process. This literature is however limited in that it is overwhelmingly concerned with resources, and little is known about how the USO relates to the parent research institution over time. The purpose of this study is therefore to explore social forces in research linked to a USO, and the main research question is: how can a social lens help us to understand some of the forces at play in research commercialisation, specifically through the early development of a USO from a parent research organisation? The case study is based on interviews and observations of university researchers, USO actors, and representatives from state agencies and a multinational corporation involved in a technology demonstration project. The sociologist Robert Park’s concepts of social groups, the individual within the collective, and social forces are used to explore the experiences of actors involved in academic research and industrial development throughout the changing relationship of a research group and USO. Five social forces were identified around the border between academia and industry, based on some of the concepts that seem to inform the actors’ understandings of the case at hand. An exploration of these forces helps to develop an understanding of how actors experience and negotiate various forces, and positions the results of the study in relation to the dominant models in academic entrepreneurship and academic life. Park’s concepts of specialised roles moves the discussion forward by considering how social forces might be handled within research and research commercialisation, and how such forces might in turn motivate the movement of individuals within and out of a particular social group. This discussion leads into the metaphor of the theatre, connected to project management literature, and research commercialisation as a performance by actors to safeguard the collective’s interests.

Abstract. Entrepreneurship and increasing entrepreneurial activity are topics of high interest for several groups in a society. Due to various benefits generated by entrepreneurship, governments and policy makers are interested in mechanisms and activities enhancing entrepreneurial activity. This has led to creation of a phenomenon called Entrepreneurial University, which emphasizes the role of universities in generating new innovations and future entrepreneurs and contributing to regional development. The purpose of this study is to examine the current state of entrepreneurship education and innovation activities at the University of Oulu. The study aims at identifying the primary activities and educational approaches of different organizations and activities contributing to entrepreneurship education at the University of Oulu and drawing a comprehensive understanding of the current state of the activities. This research is a qualitative study. Data is gathered by semi-structured theme interviews and altogether five interviews were conducted covering the operations of six organizations or activities. All the interviewees were either in the role of planning or implementing the activities and were experienced in their tasks after several years of working in their positions. The results reveal that entrepreneurship education and innovation activities at the University of Oulu are rich in nature and complementary to each other. All three areas forming the entrepreneurial university phenomenon were found, meaning entrepreneurship training, technology transfer and innovation support mechanisms. From the results it can be stated that after few years of iterative development, the case organizations and activities have found and adopted the best practices to their activities and formed a solid basis for operations. The study also reveals that the major challenges related to operations were shared by the organizations. The greatest challenges related to operations concern reaching and engaging Finnish students, which is caused by other smaller challenges such as lack of motivation, lack of credibility and language barriers. High levels of improvement of operations may be received by focusing on the issues revealed in this research and enhancing co-operation between the organizations. The results of this research provide the University of Oulu with valuable information about the current state of the entrepreneurial activities and reveal some development areas. This study contributes also to the growing body of research in the field of entrepreneurial university verifying some of the findings of previous research. The study serves also other higher education institutions and organizations planning of conducting similar activities and provides suggestions for further research.

This dissertation adopts a career theory approach as a research lens to explain the choice to become an entrepreneur. As opposed to intentional theories, which are general psychological theories applicable to a range of human behaviors, career theories deal specifically with how individuals form career goals and convert them into action. Adopting a career perspective, this study looks at entrepreneurship as one of several careers individuals pursue during their lifetime. In particular, the aim is to understand the conditions in which individuals enter entrepreneurship, and to what extent individuals’ entrepreneurial intentions are translated into action. To answer these questions, this study extends career theory to the realm of entrepreneurship, proposing that the environment is an important explanation to illustrate why some individuals and not others engage in entrepreneurial action. The research is conducted in the under-investigated context of student entrepreneurship, which considers the creation of new ventures by students and university graduates. A unique dataset has been created that concerns entrepreneurial intentions and subsequent behavior for almost 1/3 of all students who graduated from 64 Italian universities in the fall of 2014. This dissertation provides a new perspective on the phenomenon of entrepreneurship, focusing on new connections among previous concepts and exploring the practical information of these concepts. The purpose is to contribute to a current conversation that looks at entrepreneurship as a career choice that an individual can pursue during his or her lifetime. In building on existing models of career choices, we aim to extend this growing stream of literature, and in doing so, we contribute in different ways to the entrepreneurship theory.

The aim of the thesis is to identify what is an entrepreneurial university and how this new form of entrepreneurship is spread in Italy. In particular we want to investigate how universities encourage and stimulate students to embark on an entrepreneurial career. In the first chapter we review the literature about the third mission highlighting the difficulties in its description. We provide different frameworks to analyse the specific activities of the third mission and the indicators needed to measure it. Then we introduce the concept of entrepreneurial university and its connection with the third mission. The aim of the second chapter is to understand how universities encourage students’ entrepreneurship; we provide a useful framework to describe this process that could be subdivided in three phases: the stimulation of students’ intention, the education of students and the incubation of innovative ideas. The last chapter presents a deeper analysis of the Italian situation; in particular the analysis is subdivided into two parts. First of all it has been done a direct collection of data through an analysis of all Italian universities websites. Then it has been analysed an important and recent survey about entrepreneurial intentions and behaviour of students attending Italian universities. Conclusions are drawn from the comparison of the data collected and the information taken from the survey.

This study explored how international offices engage in entrepreneurial internationalization. Thirty Senior International Officers (SIOs) at public U.S. universities were interviewed to understand why and how their offices seek to generate revenue through their international strategies and activities. This study found that SIOs are engaging in entrepreneurialism for the following reasons: funding cuts, expectations of their institutions, and growing student demand for international services. These drivers have resulted in targeted international activities, such as the delivery of U.S. credit to foreign students in their home country (without a branch campus) and the growth of dual degree programs. International offices are also developing strategic partnerships with enrollment management in trying to attract more international students to campus. This study found entrepreneurialism to largely align with the educational priorities of international offices, though a misalignment of incentives and priorities seems to exist within many international offices.

We see an increasing need for more entrepreneurs to match the changing nature of the globe in this dynamic world. In 2012, the Swedish government considered entrepreneurship to be a theme running throughout the entire educational system. The university is one place to develop the entrepreneurial spirit, especially among students. Universities play a very important role in enhancing national development because of their central role in the production of high-level manpower and research that are necessary for achieving national goals. Through research, universities generate new knowledge and understanding that are instrumental for developing new technology and promoting information transfer. Most international students experience three levels of shock: culture shock, language shock and academic shock. Sohrabpour et al. (2013) defined these shocks as a disease suffered by those who enter a new cultural environment. In this paper, we discussed the role that the university plays in supporting international students to develop entrepreneurial ideas and become established at Linnea University in Växjö. We believed that if being an international student poses challenges, launching an entrepreneurial venture is sure to have even more complex constraints that will potentially kill their entrepreneurial spirit. Thus, we examined the support facilities that are available to help international students start their entrepreneurial ventures and how they are experiencing these facilities at universities. We took Linnea University in Växjö as a case study.

The purpose of this paper is to test the ability of Ajzen’s theory of planned behavior and Shapero's model of the entrepreneurial event to predict entrepreneurial intent (EI) among Swedish university students. A conceptual framework was developed where attitude towards entrepreneurial behavior was constituted by perceived self-efficacy, perceived social norms, and independence and serves as a mediator for the EI.A comparison between three focus groups composed of non-business students, business students and participants from the 'Enterprising & Business Development' (EBD) program at Linnaeus University was undertaken. The results show all three studied variables are significant determinants of EI, which in turn is a precursor of the attitude toward entrepreneurial behaviour. However, evidence suggests a negative relationship between the perceived social norms and the EI among EBD and business students.This paper contributes to the entrepreneurship literature by testing how certain factors affect the EI of university students. Its originality arises from combining the two most significant models for EI and applying them to three groups with different prerequisites. Although the study is subject to some limitations, they can be overcome by further studies.

A private, nonprofit university in Mexico invested millions of U.S. dollars in a strategic initiative to build and operate technology-knowledge transfer parks (TKTP) with the mission of supporting the development of Mexican society's entrepreneurial capabilities. The university, however, lacked an assessment policy for gauging the effectiveness of the TKTP initiative. The purpose of this study was to explore stakeholder values about TKTP effectiveness in order to inform future assessment of TKTPs. The triple helix conceptual framework of collaboration between universities, business and industry, and government informed the design of this study. The central question for this study sought to clarify what stakeholders perceive to make TKTPs effective. The study employed stratified random sampling and cross-sectional stakeholder survey data (N = 129). Data analysis included descriptive statistics to present common themes about TKTP stakeholder values, as well as ANOVA to discern significant differences in TKTP valuations between the stakeholder groups. A key finding was that stakeholder groups lack enough information to assess whether the university achieved its original objectives by using the TKTP initiative. Other findings revealed that the stakeholder groups agreed on several criteria for TKTP assessment. A policy recommendation for TKTP assessment, based on the research findings, is provided as part of the project component of this study. This project study supports positive social change by encouraging the region's transformation into a more entrepreneurial, innovative, and knowledge-based economy through continued but more accountable use of TKTPs in Mexico.

QUT Foundry is a university coworking space that is actively involved in supporting and promoting entrepreneurship for students, staff and alumni to develop entrepreneurship and innovation to grow on campus. This thesis explores the role of the QUT Foundry in promoting entrepreneurship and collaborative learning activities among its members, through interviews with QUT Foundry staff and members. Using qualitative methods approach, this study identified that combining the concept of place, people and system can provide greater opportunities to generate creativity and innovation within university coworking spaces.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Cincinnati, 2007.
Title from electronic thesis title page (viewed Aug. 21, 2007). Includes abstract. Keywords: entrepreneurial teams; entrepreneurship; organizational emergence; social networks; demography; high technology Includes bibliographical references.

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD
In many parts of the world and in South Africa in particular, there is a growing body of literature supporting the opinion that intentions play a crucial role in the decision to become an entrepreneur. Models of entrepreneurial intentions around the world have been developed, but in South Africa studies in this regard are still inconclusive, especially among the youth. This research study primarily aimed at investigating how social, cultural and socio-economic factors of entrepreneurship students in the universities of the Western Cape Province shape their entrepreneurial intentions. Entrepreneurial intentions, social factors, cultural values, as well as socioeconomic factors, were reviewed in the literature and are presented in this dissertation. The study adopted a mixed-methods approach through the amalgamation of both qualitative and quantitative research methodologies. A survey questionnaire was administered to the respondents — entrepreneurship students from the University of Cape Town (UCT), the University of Stellenbosch (US), the University of the Western Cape (UWC) and the Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT). Data collected was coded by means of the Statistical Program for Social Sciences (SPSS), version 22. Six variables out of nine of the instrument had a coefficient Alpha (Cronbach) of more than 0.7, while the remaining three had a coefficient Alpha of between 0.5 and 0.7; this extended its reliability. The study discovered that most of the items of the instrument had a positive relationship with their variables, leading to the variables being considered as having an influence on entrepreneurial intentions. In fact, the study found that social factors, as well as cultural values and socio-economic values, impact on self-efficacy and entrepreneurial intentions. The result of the research is that the study suggests a model of entrepreneurial intentions among university students, and in the final chapter concludes with recommendations and suggestions for future research.

Mestrado em Marketing
A relevância do empreendedorismo e inovação é cada vez mais evidente devido ao papel fundamental que desempenham na sociedade e economia, o que tem tornado esta temática num importante alvo de estudo. A procura pela compreensão do espírito de iniciativa desde a sua origem tem sido crescente, no sentido de perceber qual a melhor forma de estimular cada vez mais e melhores empreendedores. Neste sentido, impõe-se a necessidade de perceber os fatores que levam à intenção de empreender e também de refletir sobre a inserção desta temática desde cedo na vida académica dos indivíduos, como parte complementar da sua aprendizagem. A universidade empreendedora torna-se assim um ponto incontornável nesta temática e um alvo de estudo devido ao papel central que desempenha no empreendedorismo e consequente necessidade de adaptação a tamanha responsabilidade. Perante a frequente dificuldade das universidades de adequar a sua oferta nesta área, no sentido de se tornarem mais empreendedoras, este estudo teve como objetivo principal a compreensão do potencial empreendedor dos alunos de uma Instituição de Ensino Superior específica. Com base na teoria sobre a formação de intenções empreendedoras, foi realizado um estudo de caso que permitiu avaliar o percurso da instituição nesta área, aferir o potencial empreendedor dos respetivos alunos, perceber a relação entre ambos e sugerir medidas para a adaptação da estratégia organizacional de acordo com o potencial de empreendedorismo verificado. O estudo baseou-se numa entrevista semi-estruturada, para perceber a dinâmica interna da instituição, e num inquérito dirigido aos alunos. A partir deste último foi possível perceber o forte potencial empreendedor dos alunos da instituição e a sua relação com o ensino do empreendedorismo. Verificou-se o papel positivo da instituição no fomento do empreendedorismo mas foi possível detetar falhas ao nível da comunicação e oferta de formação nesta área, assim como alguns pontos de melhoria em termos de organização e iniciativas a implementar. A análise do potencial empreendedor dos alunos provou ser um método que permite a adequação da estratégia de ensino às necessidades do seu público, no sentido de vir a proporcionar melhores resultados para ambas as partes: a escola e os seus alunos.
The relevance of entrepreneurship and innovation is increasingly obvious due to the key role they play in Society and Economy, which has made this subject a major focus of study. The search for understanding the entrepreneurial attitude from its origin has been increasing, in the sense of understanding which is the best way to stimulate more and better entrepreneurs. In this regard, it is imperative the need to understand the factors that lead to the entrepreneurial intentions and also to reflect on the inclusion of this issue in an early stage of the academic life of individuals, as a complementary part of their learning. The entrepreneurial university thus becomes an unavoidable point in this matter and a study target, due to the central role it plays on entrepreneurship and consequent need to adapt to such responsibility. Given the frequent difficulty of universities to adapt their offerings in this area, in order to become more entrepreneurial, this research was aimed at understanding the entrepreneurial potential of the students of a specific higher education institution. Based on the theory of formation of entrepreneurial intentions, a case study was carried out to the course of the institution in these matters to measure the entrepreneurial potential of its students, to understand the relationship between both, and finally to suggest measures to adapt the organizational strategy according to its measured entrepreneurial potential. The study was based on a semi-structured interview, to understand the internal dynamics of the institution, and on a survey directed to the students. From this survey it was possible to perceive the strong entrepreneurial potential of the institution’s students and its relation with the entrepreneurship education. The positive role of the institution in promoting entrepreneurship was verified but it was possible to detect some flaws regarding communication and education offering in that area, as well as to suggest some improvement tips regarding management and some initiatives to implement. The assessment of the entrepreneurial potential among students has proven to be a method that allows the adequacy of the teaching strategy to its public’s needs, in order to provide better results in the future for both parties: the school and the students.

Clark (1998) argued that university transformation was not accidental or incidental and cannot happen as a result of the establishment of several innovative programmes within an organization. This view leads him to believe that such approaches can be sealed off as minor enclaves. This thesis ‘tests’ this claim through a study of entrepreneurialism within a traditional university, The University of the West Indies, St. Augustine Campus and challenges Clark’s argument by presenting evidence that ‘bottom up’ activities in a combination of units, rather than being limited to minor enclaves, were in fact involved in what can be seen as a bottom-up approach that drove entrepreneurialism at the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine Campus, Trinidad. As well, arising from the study, a ‘recipe’ for the transformation of traditional universities into entrepreneurial organizations was derived. The body of the thesis is concerned with the investigations carried out into the entrepreneurial activities of five units within the institution. Key personnel from each of the five ‘enclaves’ were interviewed and a textual analysis of relevant historical data was undertaken. Presented in chapters one, two and three of the thesis are the introduction and background to the study, the literature review and the methodology. The findings and discussion of each unit are presented separately in chapters four to eight, while chapter nine is a comparative chapter of the five units based on identified themes, which were generated from the four research questions. The conclusion and recommendations based on the overall findings and discussions are presented in chapter 10.

In order to extend the literature on predicting entrepreneurial intentions this study aims to test a model incorporating cultural, social, and psychological factors. We investigate the factors behind the entrepreneurial (i.e. starting-up their own business) intentions of Chinese Exchange Students (CES) at Halmstad University College, Sweden. We specifically question “to what extent individual (personal) backgrounds, preferences and knowledge/perception of CES about the Swedish industrial/business environment may play a role in their entrepreneurial intentions”. CES share generally similar views on motivations and barriers to entrepreneurship, but with some interesting differences. Further, while cultural and social dimensions explain only a small portion of intentions, psychological self-efficacy (skills, competence) overcoming the local barries are seen as important predictors. The study was restricted to university students. It generated focused conclusions and recommendations which may not be more widely generalizable. Yet the study suggests directions for continued work on the relationship between cultural and psychological factors in entrepreneurship.