Institutional Factors Affecting Academic Entrepreneurship: The Case of University of Tehran

The role of universities has been highlighted in the social and economic development of communities with the addition of entrepreneurial mission to the educational and research missions of the universities. Thus, the subjects related to the academic entrepreneurship and commercialization of knowledge has recently been taken into consideration by many researchers and politicians in various countries. In Iran, concept of academic entrepreneurship is newly established and is in its initial stages of formation and institutionalization. Considering this gap in the literature, identifying institutional factors which affect academic entrepreneurship in Iran is the main objective of this study. For this purpose, the Institutional Economy theory of North (1990) was used to investigate the formal and informal institutional factors that foster academic entrepreneurship in Iran. In this study a mixed approach was implemented, taking advantage of interviews and a questionnaire to collection the data from the experts involved in academic entrepreneurship activities in University of Tehran. For sampling purposes, the objective judgmental method was used as a non-probability sampling approach. Data collection and analysis continued until theoretical saturation was reached. Then, 41 semi-structured and open interviews were conducted. The quantitative sample size was calculated based on the Cochran’s Formula (60 persons). Findings revealed that main formal institutional factors that affect academic entrepreneurship in Iran include as follows: (i) rules, structure and governance of the university, (ii) entrepreneurship and business training programs, (iii) university-industry relationship, (iv) governmental policies and regulations, (v) intellectual property laws, and (vi) educational and research structure of the university while principle informal institutional factors include: (i) method of enforcing rules, (ii) political considerations, (ii) role models and academic reward system, and (iii) academicians' attitudes toward entrepreneurship

Subjectivism, Interactivity and Creative Action in Austrian Economics

Subjectivity and its interactive relation to socio-institutional context have been recently brought to attention in new approaches of social and economic theories that seek to analyze human action. The shortcomings resulted from naïve versions of methodological individualism, which make explanation of social phenomena regardless of inter-personal interactions and relations, call for more interpretative approaches in explaining such phenomena. This article attempts to make a better understanding of the concept of intersubjectivity, through questioning subjectivism and its ontological dependency to social context. To this end, in addition to examining the implicit themes in epistemological contributions of some of the greatest minds of Austrian school of economics, we try to embed the creative entrepreneurial action in an interpretative-institutional framework, and to bring intersubjectivity, as an important explanatory position in analyzing such action, into the theoretical attention

Rationality and Chaos in Planning: An Emphasis on Goulet's Theory of Rationality

Many years have passed since the adoption of planning mechanism in the development process of Iran. However, Iran has been failed to achieve this goal. The investigation of different levels of decision making in Iran shows that two factors are among the main reasons that lead the planning structure of Iran to be interwoven with a circle of underdevelopment. These two factors are lack of attention to the element of goal orientation, which means lack of proper understanding of concept of development in the planning process, and ignoring the element of rationality, which means not paying attention to the nature of man, his way of thinking and the collective identity of his decisions and actions. In this study, we have used the theoretical foundations of Goulet's classification of rationality and two criteria of coordination and commitment in the implementation of programs to study the interaction between rationality of different planning groups. Then, we have represented some experiences of decision-making in Iran to identify the dominant rationality in planning system of Iran. Our findings show that decision-making priorities in Iran have been derived from a reductionist interaction rather than an efficient interaction between rationalities and it was political rationality that dominated at various levels of decision-making

Extending the potential of Baumol’s entrepreneurial allocation theory: Toward the entrepreneur-institution nexus

Purpose - The underlying assumptions of Baumol’s theory of entrepreneurial allocation limits its potential to answer some key questions related to the entrepreneurship allocation. Hence, this paper aims to highlight the inherent limits of Baumol’s theory and suggest a new approach for understanding the entrepreneur-institution relationship and their functions.Design/methodology/approach - This is a conceptual paper with a narrow focus on the literature.Findings - The paper argues that Baumol’s adherence to neoclassic economics assumptions about entrepreneur and institution, such as entrepreneurs as rational choice taker with predetermined goals or institutions as exogenous, limits the potential of his theoretical framework to explain productive entrepreneurship in weak institutional settings. As such, underlying on Austrian economics assumptions about entrepreneur and his/her agency, this paper proposes a reconceptualization of productive entrepreneurship as an outcome of the interaction between entrepreneur and context.Practical implications - Going beyond Baumol’s main proposition of one-sided influence of institutions on entrepreneurship allocation, this research highlights the influence of individual factors and entrepreneurial action on choosing entrepreneurial paths by entrepreneurs. So, future policies to stimulate productive entrepreneurship should consider these factors and go beyond Baumol’s mere focus on institutional improvement.Originality/value - Going beyond one-sided influence of institutions on entrepreneurship allocation, this paper suggests an interaction centric approach which considers the role of actors and institutions as the co-creator of each other in the social process and argues that any effort for explaining the entrepreneurship should consider the co-creative nature of the actors and institutions as well as the endogenous nature of institutions. The proposed approach will help expanding entrepreneurship literature through finding answers to some key under-examined questions in the promising research stream of entrepreneurship allocation

The effect of innovation on growth aspirations and internationalization in firms: Africa compared to the Protestant Europe

The aim of the current study was to investigate if and how context accounts for differ- ences in the innovation, growth and export in African firms compared to firms in protestant Europe. Data extracted and recoded from a sample of firms in 20 countries (7 Protestant Europe and 13 African countries) participated in Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) surveys from 2001 to 2013 and this yielded a sample of 10981 firms. Analyses were done applying hierarchical linear modelling (HLM) due to the use of vari- ables in different levels of analysis (firm level and regional level). Interestingly, the re- sults showed that African firms don’t differ in terms of their innovation, growth and in- ternationalization level with the Protestant world but, if innovate, African companies expect less growth and internationalization from their innovation. Indeed, the results indicated that innovation exerts a significant positive influence on growth expectations and internationalization of the firms. The paper contributes to the existing literature by contextualizing the interplay of firm innovation, growth and internationalization. Keywords: Innovation, growth, export, internationalizatio

Institutional factors affecting the transformation of entrepreneurial universities

Entrepreneurial universities are the third generation of the universities which are well-known as the engines of regional development. Their transformation from conventional/traditional universities is of paramount importance, since it could be studied as a critical area of research to help universities become more entrepreneurial. On the other hand, institutional economics offers an integrated framework to study the institutional factors affecting such transformations. In this study, we use new institutional economics to identify those factors, and also we suggest that public private partnership and new public management practices could moderate the effect of these factors. To do so, we followed a qualitative approach, and used grounded theory to identify the factors