Explaining differential engagements in academic entrepreneurial activities: A conceptual framework

The current study aims to propose dialogues with the literature of academic entrepreneurialism by working with its gaps and loopholes. The literature of academic entrepreneurialism has developed in breadth and profound proliferation along with transformations and new dynamics in higher education since the rise of neoliberalism worldwide in last decades of the twentieth century. However, 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 being fully uncovered. The conceptual framework presented in the current study intends to fill in the gaps by examining and explaining the differential engagements of academics 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 such as “locals vis-à-vis mobals” and “academic nationalism vis-à-vis academic internationalism,” 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 ecotechnological developments amidst the intensifying global competitions. Copyright © 2011 Office of Research, Faculty of Education, University of Hong Kong.