Abstract
Entrepreneurial universities (EU) have received much attention over the last few years. Although the well-articulated contributions in the literature, empirical evidence substantiating the EU's disruptive responses in challenging times is scarce (e.g., crises, natural disasters, pandemics, Belic conflicts, or wars). This study theorizes the EU's metamorphosis due to technological/emotional disruptions to respond to evolving COVID-19 stakeholders' needs. We design a two-step qualitative methodological design in twenty well-representative EUs across the globe by adopting a mixed theoretical approach. Our findings shed some light on two relevant insights: (a) how the EU disruptively re-oriented the core activities to respond to the stakeholders' needs during a shake-out event (the COVID-19 pandemic); and (b) how a disruptive shake-out event (the COVID-19 pandemic) re-stimulates an EU structural and identity metamorphosis. A proposed theoretical framework extends previous studies on understanding how the EU's metamorphosis could occur due to an external shake-out event. A provoking discussion and implications for theory, practice, and policymakers emerge from our findings.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Article number | 102584 |
| Journal | Technovation |
| Volume | 118 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Dec 2022 |
Keywords
- COVID-19 pandemic
- Emotional disruption
- Entrepreneurial universities
- Humanistic management theory
- Organizational identity
- Organizational metamorphosis
- Stakeholders theory
- Technological-digital disruptions
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- General Engineering
- Management of Technology and Innovation
Access to Document
Other files and links
Fingerprint
Dive into the research topics of 'Entrepreneurial universities’ metamorphosis: Encountering technological and emotional disruptions in the COVID-19 ERA'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.Cite this
- APA
- Standard
- Harvard
- Vancouver
- Author
- BIBTEX
- RIS
In: Technovation, Vol. 118, 102584, 12.2022.
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
}
TY - JOUR
T1 - Entrepreneurial universities’ metamorphosis
T2 - Encountering technological and emotional disruptions in the COVID-19 ERA
AU - Guerrero, Maribel
AU - Pugh, Rhiannon
N1 - Funding Information: The authors acknowledge the financial support received from Misum Stockholm School of Economics through the Mistra Foundation (Sweden). As Misum research affiliates, this support is greatly appreciated. The authors also acknowledge the constructive comments/suggestions from the Journal Editors, the Digital Entrepreneurship SI's Guest Editors, and the peer reviewers. Funding Information: The EU is seen as a key player within the entrepreneurial knowledge-based society, which is to say places where knowledge-based entrepreneurship has emerged as a driving force for economic growth, employment creation, and competitiveness (Audretsch, 2014). The EU has emerged as a “natural” incubator that provides support for fostering entrepreneurship and innovation in the university community (e.g., students, alumni, staff, academics) (Guerrero and Urbano, 2012). In this view, the EU has developed a socio-economic identity through three core activities: (i) teaching as a human capital producer that provides the industry with highly qualified graduates; (ii) research as a knowledge capital-producer that generates advanced knowledge and disruptive innovations; and (iii) commercialization or business engagement as an entrepreneurship capital-disseminator that provides graduates/academics who become job creators or intrapreneurs, and ideas to be capitalized upon via knowledge-exchange activities (Guerrero et al., 2015). The so-called social and entrepreneurial identity has been legitimized by social innovation and entrepreneurship, regional governance activities, and civic roles in their localities (Goddard et al., 2014; Benneworth and Cunha, 2015; Pugh et al., 2016, 2018; Waldman et al., 2021). Frequently, the “engaged university identity” gets used as an iteration on the EU to account for these wider than purely economic roles (Breznitz and Feldman, 2012; Guerrero et al., 2016a; Thomas and Pugh, 2020; Roncancio-Marin et al., 2022), or as Audretsch (2014) describes EU like the university for the entrepreneurial society.Although previous studies suggested that the EU are organizations with a faster response or adaptation to internal and external uncertainties (Clark, 1998; Romero et al., 2020), most universities have shown modest results by changing organizational structures, incentive systems, and strategic priorities (Guerrero et al., 2021;Gianiodis and Meek, 2020). Evidence suggests that only a few elite universities (e.g., Ivy league in the U.S. or Russell group in the U.K.) have successfully explored-exploited the generation of human capital, knowledge capital, and entrepreneurial capital to impact stakeholders' needs (e.g., students, alumni, faculty, employers, policymakers, society) (Guerrero et al., 2015; Gianiodis and Meek, 2020). The dialogue between the university and its stakeholders (students, staff, policymakers, businesses, third sector) is also critical along several lines, such as the identification of new opportunities (Roncancio-Marin et al., 2022), the development of innovative and entrepreneurial capabilities (Leonidou et al., 2020; Guerrero et al., 2021), the generation, diffusion of innovations (Troshani and Doolin, 2007), and the impact on sustainability (Lenssen et al., 2006). Anecdotal evidence provides a few insights about how the EU has responded to external shake-outs (e.g., economic crises, natural disasters, pandemics, wars) or have supported their stakeholders' needs (e.g., students, academics, employers, policymakers, society) during these shake-outs (Guerrero et al., 2016b). We assume that, in turbulent technological environments, the EU especially becomes more innovative, risk-taking, and proactive in fostering entrepreneurial and innovative initiatives in their students, professors, managers, and staff (Guerrero and Urbano, 2012, 2019) and their engagement with their stakeholders (D'este and Perkmann, 2011). In this assumption, the EU implicitly re-focuses core activities, business models, and develops technological as well as other disruptions to respond to stakeholders' needs, resulting from external shake-out effects (economic crises, natural disasters, or pandemics).Digital disruptions have facilitated the development of international collaborative projects among multiple scientists from research centers, labs, or schools worldwide (Paulus et al., 2017). Our results show that although the majority reported benefits of the widespread embracing of digital technology in their research activities (e.g., not having to travel to interviews and being able to complete them in a much shorter time), colleagues did not feel that the online and digital shift could completely replicate or replace the in-person interacts that are a key part of their research process. It is important to highlight that not all colleagues conducted research related to the COVID-19 pandemic. A few colleagues applied digital technologies for developing COVID-19 pandemic research projects sponsored by diverse government agencies in the UK (EU09a), UAE (EU17a), and US (EU04a, EU19a). However, research activities have largely remained the same according to some respondents, albeit with research time severely squeezed to the point that it has been largely on hold for most colleagues.Since its conception, the EU has been considered an eco-system that provides multiple infrastructures and support programs to foster innovation and entrepreneurship in its community (Guerrero and Urbano, 2012), as well as recently has implemented numerous digital platforms that connect multiple eco-systems agents (Sussan and Acs, 2017). In this regard, during the COVID-19 pandemic, our results show that the online mode of delivery was much better for colleagues involved with the external stakeholders regarding the attendance of people who had to fit their participation around the working day (EU18a, EU20a). Several colleagues also recognized that their university digital platforms provided free mentoring with business owners, SMEs, graduates' entrepreneurs, and academic entrepreneurs during the COVID-19 pandemic (e.g., SOS apps). Other colleagues combined teaching activities and supported the local business COVID-19 pandemic challenges through final assignments and virtual students' practices (EU02a, EU03a, EU11a, EU13a, EU16a). Indeed, almost all interviewees were involved in specialized webinars, online university-industry debates, or online symposiums to be rapidly connected with their stakeholders’ needs. In this vein, the EU has continued developing digital/technological infrastructures to support their entrepreneurial community (students, alumni, researchers) and business engagement activities during the COVID-19 pandemic.Technological disruptions are also part of the (digital) entrepreneurship phenomenon evolution (Nambisan, 2017) and were strongly related to providing solutions to the global health crisis provoked by the COVID-19 pandemic. In this regard, all colleagues enrolled in EU with health schools have highlighted the health faculty's outstanding participation with local agents to support the COVID-19 stakeholders' needs (EU04a, EU11a, EU19a). Especially in the Latin-American context, the EU has actively participated with local governments to define the COVID-19 pandemic protocols (e.g., Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Mexico) while in the EU allocated in developed economies actively participated in testing and other vaccination schemes. Indeed, all EUs prioritized their R&D resources and technological capabilities for developing vaccine tests (EU02a), treatments (EU15a, EU19a), medical equipment (EU11a), and others. It means that academic entrepreneurship and commercialization activities were basically focused on achieving the COVID-19 pandemic stakeholders' needs, conditioning the future of non-COVID-19 pandemic research projects. These results demonstrate that the EU entrepreneurial community actively generates new technological/digital disruptions associated with coronavirus' PCR testing, vaccines, medical equipment, sanitization products, and other initiatives to support civil people. Indeed, the most plausible collaboration example between the university-industry was the Oxford University and AstraZeneca alliance for developing the COVID-19 vaccine (Siegel and Guerrero, 2021).The second wave hit with new lockdowns and restrictions, summarized by the EU08a. Indeed, for those who only have developed online teaching, their emotions were strongly influenced by their students' emotions and demands (e.g., worried about their mental health problems or their effective learning process) and by their family members’ demands and health (e.g., partners who tested positive in COVID-19, caring responsibilities or kids that demanded more time/support in their home-schooling processes), and the accumulated digital fatigue (e.g., many hours in front of a computer without physical activity or work pressures). Tiredness was strongly related to negative emotions such as anxiety, stress, fear, frustration, and many concerns amongst (female) colleagues living the global pandemic. This mentioned duty of care is vital to follow-up because all of our respondents experienced this one way or another, adjusting their work, taking on additional responsibilities, and making extra efforts to enact care and compassion for colleagues, students, and junior staff. In the Latin-American context, several students are from vulnerable rural areas and suspended their studies to help their parents that lost their jobs due to the COVID-19 pandemic (EU03a, EU13a, EU14a). In the developed economies, all analyzed EU also implemented several initiatives to support their student community with 24hrs mental health specialized attention and extra facilities for achieving the semester tasks. Indeed, several colleagues experienced very positive feedback and gratitude expressions from their students at the end of both semesters (EU02a, EU10a, EU11a, EU19a).The COVID-19 pandemic has intrinsically multiple emotions in many entrepreneurs who have experimented with concern about their employees' health and well-being and anxiety about their business's future. Some colleagues were involved in programs to support their local businesses with training and professional development to help create resilient and sustainable businesses through and beyond the pandemic. In this scenario, emotions also emerged when they were in touch with vulnerable regional communities from rural areas in Mexico (EU03a) or the Amazonian regions of Brazil (EU13a). Online networking/mentoring proved popular for some colleagues who experienced very high sign-up rates where many local businesses were interested in taking part, given the positive results on managing challenges and emotional empathy (EU02a, EU03a, EU08a, EU11a). The EU has been very empathic and proactive in supporting its students/academic start-ups but also local entrepreneurs. Specifically, all colleagues experienced emotional needs/demands during their engagement with business school activities during the pandemic, suggesting that the third core EUs' actions became more important and emotional during this time. The most interesting issue was the trust that interviewees expressed to their EU for the agile response and protecting the well-being of the university community and the stakeholders. Indeed, colleagues highlighted how the EU is paying attention to preserving diversity, equality, sustainability, and integrity of the entire university community.Given the digital and emotional disruption provoked by the COVID-19 pandemic, the analyzed EU experimented with a structural metamorphosis by re-configuring workplaces through flexible, hybrid, and digital scenarios, as well as incorporating a humanistic leadership perspective by providing well-being and inclusive scenarios for all university communities to support/respond to the needs of local businesses, policymakers, and local communities during the COVID-19 pandemic. Consequently, the EU organizational structures have been lightly transformed into an adaptative and pro-equality leadership, a diversified global business model, sustainable development, and new scientific commercialization processes (Laffineur et al., 2020; Guerrero et al., 2021; Siegel and Guerrero, 2021; Purcel and Lumbreras, 2021).This study also has some limitations that at the same time open up avenues for future research. First, we awarded a selection bias issue in our methodology that led to us having interviewed those who are naturally more comfortable with Zoom and online interactions, probably excluding those colleagues uncomfortable with the digital tools. It demands robust methodological (digital) methods for reducing selection bias in future studies. A natural extension of this study will include participants from different university departments and schools to evaluate particularities between business, medical, and STEM participants. Second, we had representative EU academic/leaders participants per gender, academic status, and regional presence. This study contains some insights related to the participants' profiles, but potential similitudes/differences among participants and their EU responses should be exploited in-depth in future studies. An additional extension will be considering these profiles with the entrepreneurial evolutionary stages across the analyzed universities. For instance, we have details about each entrepreneurial university's nascent, growth, and consolidated stage. However, we did not find differences among the themes analyzed in this study. Future studies should consider universities' dynamic and evolutionary cycles and local eco-systems capacities. Third, our study focused on three academic debates related to the lack of studies about the impact of exogenous shake-out events on how the EU responds to stakeholders' needs and how the EU manages digital and emotional disruptions. Given the complex nature of the phenomenon, future studies should adopt multidisciplinary lenses (e.g., economic, technological, psychological, sociological, institutional) for re-conceptualization of the EU identity (Guerrero and Urbano, 2019; Roncancio-Marin et al., 2022) and re-thinking of the university-industry-government-society relationships (Rajalo and Vadi, 2017; Guerrero et al., 2020; Schaeffer et al., 2021). Indeed, the disruptive and transformation intensity could vary across organizations, countries, and types of shake-out events. Fourth, the EU would face multiple managerial challenges in the post-pandemic era related to financial difficulties (e.g., unexpected costs, uncertain budgets, students financial aid), admission and enrolment challenges (e.g., students abroad and international students), students support challenges (e.g., mental health problems, campus housing), and R&D commercialization challenges (e.g., rescuing non-COVID-19 pandemic research projects, patents, licenses). Given the purpose and data limitation, future studies should also pay attention to the EU strategic management post-pandemic. Concretely, to test our proposed model to identify new trigger disruptive mechanisms and organizational transformations that could emerge during the recovery period. Fifth, we interviewed several university managers to understand their perspectives about the EU structural and identity metamorphosis. However, we did not exploit the specific challenges or leadership styles that emerged during their management of the COVID-19 pandemic. An extension of this study will focus on the EU leadership and management of internal crises generated by external ones. For instance, leadership behaviors and emotions are crucial while managing external and internal crises; therefore, it is another research line that emerges from this study. Finally, we have implemented a qualitative methodological design that allows an in-depth understanding of the analyzed phenomenon (Gioia et al., 2013; Aguinis and Solarino, 2019; Dodd et al., 2021; Van Burg et al., 2022). However, this methodology has restrictions in terms of generalization but allows it to be replicated in other research settings or build a qualitative instrument to explore potential relationships among the analyzed dimensions. A natural extension of this study is testing, qualitatively or quantitatively, our proposed theoretical framework in another recent shake-out event (e.g., natural disasters, crises, war, or post-conflict scenarios) where the technological and emotional disruption could play a critical role in the adaptation of EU core activities to the new stakeholders' needs; consequently, identify similar trigger mechanisms or new pathways that intensify the EU's metamorphosis during and after any external stake-out event. For instance, the Ukrainian and Russian conflict represents another shake-out event facing the university community with unique restrictions, particular penalties, inherent risks, and multiple societal consequences. The EU of these countries is rapidly responding to these uncertain conditions that also need to be documented in the near future. Publisher Copyright: © 2022 Elsevier Ltd
PY - 2022/12
Y1 - 2022/12
N2 - Entrepreneurial universities (EU) have received much attention over the last few years. Although the well-articulated contributions in the literature, empirical evidence substantiating the EU's disruptive responses in challenging times is scarce (e.g., crises, natural disasters, pandemics, Belic conflicts, or wars). This study theorizes the EU's metamorphosis due to technological/emotional disruptions to respond to evolving COVID-19 stakeholders' needs. We design a two-step qualitative methodological design in twenty well-representative EUs across the globe by adopting a mixed theoretical approach. Our findings shed some light on two relevant insights: (a) how the EU disruptively re-oriented the core activities to respond to the stakeholders' needs during a shake-out event (the COVID-19 pandemic); and (b) how a disruptive shake-out event (the COVID-19 pandemic) re-stimulates an EU structural and identity metamorphosis. A proposed theoretical framework extends previous studies on understanding how the EU's metamorphosis could occur due to an external shake-out event. A provoking discussion and implications for theory, practice, and policymakers emerge from our findings.
AB - Entrepreneurial universities (EU) have received much attention over the last few years. Although the well-articulated contributions in the literature, empirical evidence substantiating the EU's disruptive responses in challenging times is scarce (e.g., crises, natural disasters, pandemics, Belic conflicts, or wars). This study theorizes the EU's metamorphosis due to technological/emotional disruptions to respond to evolving COVID-19 stakeholders' needs. We design a two-step qualitative methodological design in twenty well-representative EUs across the globe by adopting a mixed theoretical approach. Our findings shed some light on two relevant insights: (a) how the EU disruptively re-oriented the core activities to respond to the stakeholders' needs during a shake-out event (the COVID-19 pandemic); and (b) how a disruptive shake-out event (the COVID-19 pandemic) re-stimulates an EU structural and identity metamorphosis. A proposed theoretical framework extends previous studies on understanding how the EU's metamorphosis could occur due to an external shake-out event. A provoking discussion and implications for theory, practice, and policymakers emerge from our findings.
KW - COVID-19 pandemic
KW - Emotional disruption
KW - Entrepreneurial universities
KW - Humanistic management theory
KW - Organizational identity
KW - Organizational metamorphosis
KW - Stakeholders theory
KW - Technological-digital disruptions
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85132745813&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85132745813&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.technovation.2022.102584
DO - 10.1016/j.technovation.2022.102584
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85132745813
SN - 0166-4972
VL - 118
JO - Technovation
JF - Technovation
M1 - 102584
ER -