Conceptualising the entrepreneurial university: the stakeholder approach

Abstract

This study uses the stakeholder perspective to knowledge spillover theory at university to explain how various characteristics of internal and external university stakeholders will affect its entrepreneurial outcomes. Acknowledging the heterogeneity between entrepreneurial universities, we theoretically developed and empirically tested a model for four types of stakeholders (knowledge enablers, knowledge creators, knowledge codifiers, knowledge facilitators) across three university types (Russel group, teaching-based and polytechnic universities). To test our hypotheses related to the role of stakeholders in entrepreneurial outcomes of a university we used panel data on 139 UK universities that achieved entrepreneurial outcomes during 2010 and 2016. The results demonstrate significant differences in the role that stakeholders play in knowledge spillover entrepreneurship at universities with the effects vary across three distinct university types.