Making sense of entrepreneurship: Blurring boundaries between academic and entrepreneurial work. Presentation at the 3E conference in Cork, Ireland, May 2017
Kirsi Peura; Ulla Hytti
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi-fe2021042717442
Tiivistelmä
Purpose – The paper focuses on how participants in a 24-hour
business idea development Camp organized for university faculty make sense of
entrepreneurship and academic work, and of their own abilities in
entrepreneurship.
Design/methodology/approach – Drawing from an ethnographic research methodology,
the paper makes use of inductive analyses of the videotaped sessions, students’
reflective notes after the Camp in combination with the researcher’s field
notes.
sensemaking reflection-in-experience is strongly influenced by the Camp
facilitators producing normative ideas of entrepreneurship and ‘othering’ it
from academic work and lived experience of the participants. It is in the
individual reflective essays, where the reflection-on-experience is
strengthened giving the opportunities for individualised accounts of drawing
parallels between entrepreneurship and academic work, and thus enabling
‘constructing sameness’.
limitations/implications – Longitudinal
research is needed for developing understanding of sensemaking and for example
formation of entrepreneurial identities in the university context. Further
research is
also needed on how entrepreneurial universities are co-constructed between the
different internal and external stakeholders.
Practical
implications – (Multidisciplinary)
universities consisting of several perspectives and viewpoints of (academic)
entrepreneurship need to offer arenas for their faculty to support sensemaking.
Facilitators knowledgeable of the university context may be better-equipped to
support the faculty in their sense-making than external facilitators.
Originality/value – Research focuses on generating understanding how
university faculty make sense of entrepreneurship in the university beyond a
narrow focus on research commercialisation or entrepreneurship in teacher
education.
Keywords Academic entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial
university, sensemaking, faculty, entrepreneurship camp, ethnography
Kokoelmat
- Rinnakkaistallenteet [19207]