Fostering entrepreneurship in an international university collaboration

[EN] The European Union is taking action on enhancing entrepreneurship in Europe and recommends appropriate entrepreneurship training in schools and higher education institutions. Due to the globalization of businesses it seems to be appropriate to realize an international perspective on entrepreneurial issues and to develop international programmes for young entrepreneurs. In this case study, we examined an international university collaboration between two universities, one in Austria and one in the United States. The programme’s goals include the establishment of an international network for students and an awareness of the students of different cultural dimensions and entrepreneurial mindsets. Our findings show how this programme enables the students to work on their professional and behavioural skills, how these students work practice-oriented under the guidelines of experts from different entrepreneurial mindsets and how they become aware of cultural differences. Besides other aspects, it seems to be advantageous for international entrepreneurship programmes to remain open and flexible during the whole process and to offer a programme that allows students to integrate participation into their regular studies. Furthermore, it seems beneficial that students can tailor the programme to meet their specific needs.Rybnicek, R.; Gutschelhofer, A.; Bergner, S.; Seidenberger, A.; Taferner, R. (2017). Fostering entrepreneurship in an international university collaboration. En Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Higher Education Advances. Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. 991-998. https://doi.org/10.4995/HEAD17.2017.549299199

Die Grazer Gründungsschule. Ein interuniversitäres Kooperationsprojekt

Im Zuge einer universitätsübergreifenden Kooperation wurde eine Gründungsschule etabliert, die Studierenden aller Studienrichtungen unabhängig vom Studienfortschritt offen steht. Durch den modularen Aufbau und die Integrierung in bestehende Curricula in Form von Wahlfächern können Studierende Schwerpunkte setzen und sich mit der Umsetzung eigener Gründungsideen beschäftigen. Für die spätere Laufbahn werden die erworbenen Qualifikationen durch Zertifikate bestätigt. Im Rahmen des Beitrags werden Vorgehen, Struktur und Inhalte des Projekts erläutert. Durch die interuniversitäre Zusammenarbeit können auch jene Studienrichtungen erreicht werden, die für eine Entrepreneurship-Karriere atypisch erscheinen. 19.06.2015 | Robert Rybnicek, Matthias Ruhri & Alfred Gutschelhofer (Graz

Strategije upravljanja jezikov v avstrijskih in slovenskih MSP-jih

According to the ELAN study and a substantial body of previous research, a significant amount of business is being lost in the eu due to a lack of language skills. In our article, we analyse how Austrian and Slovenian small and medium-sized enterprises (SMES) adopt language management strategies (LMSS). We investigate, by means of a questionnaire sent to Slovenian and Austrian SMES, how aware they are of the elan findings, what language strategies they have adopted and whether the knowledge of English is sufficient for their successful business operations on global markets. The findings show that Slovenian exporting SMES are not completely aware of the benefits a language management strategy could bring to their business operations on foreign markets. In contrast, Austrian exporting SMES are more likely to provide language training for their staff, employ native speakers, and use local agents for their language needs considerably more often, as well as use the services of professional translators and interpreters almost three times more often

The Development of Prosociality: Evidence for a Negative Association between Age and Prosocial Value Orientation from a Representative Sample in Austria

While the ontogeny of prosociality during infancy, childhood, and adolescence has received substantial attention over the last decades, little is known about how prosocial preferences develop beyond emerging adulthood. Recent evidence suggests that the previously observed positive association between age and prosocial preferences is less robust than assumed. This study reports results on the association between social preferences, age, gender, and education from an Austrian representative sample (N = 777, aged 16–94 years) in which incentivized social value orientations (SVO) were measured along with various other sociodemographic characteristics. The analyses confirm that men are less prosocial than women, however, mainly during emerging adulthood (16–25 years). At the same time, the decline of prosociality is stronger among women leading to a convergence of prosociality between men and women as they age. Overall, we find that a prosocial value orientation is negatively correlated with people’s age. We suspect that the susceptibility of peoples’ social preferences to the preferences of others in their social environment is a critical factor unifying these different observations in the development of prosociality. We hypothesize that the opposite associations between age and SVO observed in two previous studies using unincentivized measures of social preferences are explained in parts by an age-related change in social desirability, measurement inaccuracy (continuous vs. categorical), and cross-cultural differences promoting competitive preferences among emerging adults in Japan. Moreover, we find that political orientations towards right-wing populists are consistently associated with less prosocial preferences, while education seems to be positively associated with prosociality. Overall, our study highlights the importance of conducting representative studies using incentivized measurements across cultures

CHANGES IN HIGHER EDUCATION: A COMPARISON OF KEY FACTORS CONCERNING UNIVERSITIES IN AUSTRIA AND SWITZERLAND

Society has changed sustainably and universities have thus faced new requirements. As a result of competition and globalization, education and knowledge management had to be adapted. Universities were forced to establish a modern management system primarily known from the private sector and governments had to reconsider their legal and economic relationship to universities. In recent years, many countries have implemented new rules for their universities. Two of these countries were Austria and Switzerland. But even when they pursued the same goals, they have chosen quite different approaches and as a matter of fact achieved very differing results. The objective of this study was twofold. Firstly, we analyzed the challenges and contradictions when implementing a modern university model. Secondly, we investigated specific characteristics of the university systems of Austria and Switzerland to identify factors that may have impacted the performance and success of the universities. Referring to our first objective, a literature review has revealed severe contradictions between modern university management and the traditional understanding of it. While the traditional scheme has focused mainly on research, teaching is becoming more relevant in the new demand orientated university. Also, the freedom of science and teaching is limited by the strong orientation on goals that have been agreed upon with the government. Further contradictions can be identified in autonomy, budgeting, leadership, hierarchy, and employee participation. To examine the second research aim, we reviewed national and international databases and reports. Our results emphasize the importance of monetary aspects, the student-teacher-ratio, autonomy, and the relevance of the universities’ reputation and acceptance within society and politics. Our findings can help to understand the different approaches which have been chosen to cope with global changes in higher education. They might serve as basis for decision-making in higher education policy