Explaining engagement in Academic Entrepreneurial Activities: towards a conceptual framework

Abstract

This essay aims to put forward dialogues with the literature of academic entrepreneurialism by working with its gaps and loopholes. Along with transformations and new dynamics in higher education since the rise of neoliberalism worldwide in last decades of the twentieth century, the literature of academic entrepreneurialism developed in breadth and profound proliferation. Yet, the pattern and logic of how academic entrepreneurialism manifests in scholarly communities, where the heart of a University lies for new knowledge creation and dissemination, are far from sufficiently uncovered. The conceptual framework presented in this essay intends to fill in the gaps by examining and explaining the academics’ differential engagement in entrepreneurial activities, namely practically-oriented teaching, applied research and service outside of academy. Some classical sociological concepts such as roles, values, actions, systems and (hence) some implied and emerging new theoretical constructs like “locals vis-à-vis mobals” and “academic nationalism vis-à-vis academic internationationalism” are employed in the explanatory framework. Underneath the theoretical schema is a basic demand-supply thinking that the innovation systems of a political entity (or a nation-state) need the provision of knowledge and service from its higher education system - specifically for social and econ-technological developments amidst ever intensifying global competitions.