The university’s role in sustainable development Activating entrepreneurial individuals as agents of change
Ingrid Wakkee, Peter van der Sijde Christiaan Vaupell, and Karminder Ghuman
Keywords: Entrepreneurial University; Regional development; Sustainability;
ABSTRACT
The role of (entrepreneurial) universities as change agents in regional economic development has been highlighted before, but how they can drive regional sustainable development in developing countries has been largely neglected hitherto. Using qualitative methods and building upon institutional perspective of sustainable change, we show how being confronted with adverse poverty and pollution in the local context, can drive an entrepreneurial university to develop a sustainability vision that accordingly becomes the driver of institutional change. We demonstrate how local campus leadership, a holistic teaching and research program, and student involvement ensued significant local effects in the short run.
Yet, we also show how liabilities of smallness hinders the creation of significant sustainable local impact.
Instead, the campus became an incubation space for novel institutional practices for regional
development. Indeed, the most promising initiatives were spun back into the original campus for their scale-up phase.
This study advances insights on the entrepreneurial university by, first, presenting universities as drivers for sustainable change through education and outreach rather than via traditional commercialization activities, notably in developing countries. Second, it shows the risks and value of creating a separate space for novel concepts for sustainable development to be tested out before bringing these back to the principal location.
1. INTRODUCTION
Universities have been recognized to play a key role (a catalyst) in regional development by supplying the regional entrepreneurial ecosystem with a skilled labor force, developing new knowledge and technology and making these available to local organizations and spinning off (new) companies (Abreu & Grinevich; D’Este & Patel, 2007; Grimaldi, Kenney, Siegel, & Wright; Miller, McAdam, &
McAdam, 2018) in an increasingly complex environment of stake- and shareholders. Indeed, the opening of new universities and research institutes has shown to boost a region’s economy in many places around the world (Kelly, McNicoll, & White, 2014). Furthermore, universities around the world have increasingly started to implement such activities and mechanisms and become known as that are
considered as being entrepreneurial (Gür, Oylumlu & Kunday, 2017)(Gür, Oylumlu, & Kunday, 2017).
Consequently, universities ceased to be isolated islands of knowledge, and are partnering in “business activities” (Zhang, MacKenzie, Jones-Evans, & Huggins, 2016). The label ´entrepreneurial university’ is currently far less distinguishing than it was about 20 years ago (Fayolle et al., 2017): from “third mission”
as just spinning out companies towards becoming a knowledge partner and catalyst (“capitalization of knowledge” – Brundenius, Lundvall & Sutz, 2009) (Brundenius, Lundvall, & Sutz, 2009) in a (regional) innovation system. Yet, this does not mean that universities are in control of such processes (Fayolle et al., 2017); rather they have manyare coping with questions issues regarding the strategies that enable them to create and disseminate (new) knowledge and take such a role(Giuliani & Rabellotti, 2012).
(Guiliani & Rabellotti, 2012). (Fayolle et al., 2017).
To date, most of the research in this field has focused either on the changes on in the university paradigm as such, the commercialization of knowledge or on the creation of (high tech) spin-offs (Mascarenhas, Marques, Galvão, & Santos, 2017), while often linking this to the aforementioned regional economic development (Bramwell & Wolfe, 2008; Galvão, Ferreira, & Marques, 2018;
Guerrero, Cunningham, & Urbano, 2015; Guerrero, Urbano, & Fayolle, 2016a; Trequattrini, Lombardi, Lardo, & Cuozzo, 2018; Trippl, Sinozic, & Lawton Smith, 2015). Regional development, though, is not only about economic growth, but rather sustainable development; (entrepreneurial) universities are now also seeking ways to interact with public and private sector partners and the community to make
contribute and make an impact in domains other development areas such as sustainability where effort are made to combine socio-economic concerns with increasing concerns about a healthy future for society, increasing environmental issues, poverty, and inequalities (Cohen, 2006; Hopwood, Mellor, & O'Brien,
2005). For lack of empirical studies on this particular phenomenon, there remains a gap in the literature when it comes to our understanding on how entrepreneurial universities may promote and become a strategic actor in e.g. sustainable development through its interactions with the local community and public and private stakeholders and this is particularly, the case for entrepreneurial universities in developing countries (Schiller, 2006). (Schiller, 2006).
However, especially in developing countries, where rapid population growth, economic production and consumption are causes acute environmental problems (Cohen, 2006) and a lack of commitment to this agenda from the private or government sector, entrepreneurial universities might (have to) take a leading role in more sustainable regional development. Altering the (individual and organizational) behavior in a way that benefits such sustainable development is not only a matter of investments or new technologies, rather it requires the changing of multiple institutions (and individuals), and involves a wide range of stakeholders. In developing countries, this process might be particularly complex due to the local environments inability to absorb university produced knowledge and practices (Etzkowitz, 2003).
Furthermore, it has been argued that in order to gain a better understanding of how
entrepreneurial universities create impact we need to consider the roles and practices of different types of university actors at the institutional level as well as the interactions between them, rather than focusing on one in particular (Clauss, Kesting, Miller, & Meerman, 2018). Indeed, studies from the field of
institutional entrepreneurship have pointed out that change requires collective action (Aldrich, 2011;
Lawrence, Suddaby, & Leca, 2011) thus warranting a more holistic or multi-level perspective. So far, however, few empirical studies have adopted such a multi- actor or multilevel approach ad those that have, tend to examine how the university level support affects entrepreneurial engagements of a single group of university actors such as researchers involved in spin-off creation (Fini, Fu, Mathisen, Rasmussen, & Wright, 2017) or students (Minola, Donina, & Meoli, 2016), thus leaving a gap in our understanding of the practices of entrepreneurial universities and the impact they (can) create.
The aim of this paper is to explore how an entrepreneurial university in a developing country becomes a driver of the process of sustainable development by examining the role of various university actors through the institutional efforts it develops. Using an embedded and longitudinal case study approach, this study scrutinizes the early stage engagements of a (new, second) university campus located in a rural part of Northern India that as a result of its confrontation with adverse poverty and pollution in its immediate environment, wanted to promote and implement sustainable development in that region. To guide the investigation we build on a three-phase model of institutional change developed by Battilana,
Leca, and Boxenbaum (2009). This model, which had so far only been conceptually formulated rather than tested empirically consists of the phases creating a vision, mobilizing allies, and motivating others to achieve and sustain the vision and allows for longitudinal developments to be studied. We apply this model to examine how entrepreneurial university actors, ranging from the campus director, to faculty members and students, play different entrepreneurial roles throughout these phases and to gain deeper insights as to how their embeddedness within the university as well as in their local community collectively determines the outcome and impact on sustainable regional development.
This study advances the literature on entrepreneurial universities in several ways. First, it
contributes to the literature by extending the debate about a entrepreneurial university’s role in economic regional development towards their role in regional sustainable development, and particularly so in the context of a developing country. Indeed, while there is a rise in studies focusing on entrepreneurial universities in developing countries (Bano & Taylor, 2015; Guerrero, Urbano, & Salamzadeh, 2014;
Saad, Datta, & Razak, 2017), ideas about the behavior and impact of entrepreneurial universities from developed country contexts remain dominant (Sam & Van Der Sijde, 2014).
Second, it contributes to the literature on entrepreneurial universities by exploring the role of various university actors and their interactions, rather than by focusing on a particular type of actor thus generating a more holistic view. As such we follow Clauss et al. (2018)’s call for multi-level approaches to study the phenomenon of the entrepreneurial university.
Third, while focusing on the role of various actors, our findings especially direct attention to and advance our insight into the students’ role in entrepreneurial universities. Whereas students have received considerable attention in the literature on entrepreneurial universities through research on the effect of entrepreneurship education or student start-ups (Boh, De-Haan, & Strom, 2016; Jansen, van de Zande, Brinkkemper, Stam, & Varma, 2015; Wright, Siegel, & Mustar, 2017), the importance of engaging students as agents of change has hitherto been neglected. This study’s findings, however, provided us with a new perspective by showing how common practices such as education and outreach activities towards the local community effectively contribute to sustainable regional development.
Finally, this study extents the notion of university incubation as a process. Many studies on the entrepreneurial university have pointed to the presence and importance of university incubators where scientists or students can test out ideas for commercializing novels products and services generated from research and education in a relatively safe environment including in developing countries
(Wonglimpiyarat, 2016). These studies generally focus on the incubator as a separate organizational unit within or associated with a university where individuals or team work on specific projects. Surprisingly
this conceptualization of incubation space an environment for learning (Englehardt & Simmons, 2002) has not yet been linked to the debate on the entrepreneurial university, whereas our findings show clear evidence of this.
The remainder of this study is organized as follows. First, a comprehensive literature review in which we integrate relevant debates from the field of sustainable development, academic entrepreneurship and institutional entrepreneurship is presented in the context of the entrepreneurial university. Second, we will detail our case study methodology and empirical approach. Subsequently, research findings are presented. To that end we first introduce a timeline of the relevant entrepreneurial activities that have been organized throughout this period. Next, the focus will shift towards three critical events, to get a more in-depth understanding of their purpose related activities, stakeholders and outcomes. These finding will then be discussed in terms of the literature before finally, conclusions and recommendations for further research are put forward.
2. THEORY
Entrepreneurial universities and Sustainable development
Over the past three decades entrepreneurial universities have been conceptualized in several ways, of which the narrow view focusing on the multiple ways by which a university can commercialize the knowledge it has produced being still the most dominant one. In this study we however follow the broader view advocated by (Guerrero et al., 2015; Guerrero, Urbano, Fayolle, Klofsten, & Mian, 2016b) that conceptualizes an entrepreneurial university as one that “adopts an entrepreneurial management style, with its members (faculty, students, and staff) acting entrepreneurially and that intern interacts with its outside environment (community/ region) in an entrepreneurial manner….” (Guerrero et al., 2016b:
556) and that is both affected by and affects the institutional environment in which it is embedded in its efforts to meet regional economic and societal needs in a sustainable way.
Sustainable development practices should contribute to economically lengthening the use of non- renewable resources for the coming generations, and using renewable resources where possible (Hall, Daneke, & Lenox, 2010; Hopwood et al., 2005). The literature on sustainable development typically argues that systemic transitions (Geels, 2010) are required and that these do not come about easily, because they are generally stabilized by lock-in mechanisms that relate to sunk investments, behavioural patterns, vested interests, infrastructure, favourable subsidies and regulations (Unruh, 2000) often called regional socio-technical regimes (McCormick, Anderberg, Coenen, & Neij, 2013).
There are various actors that can engage with sustainable development practices and make contributions, including entrepreneurial universities (OECD, 2008). According to Cortese (2003), entrepreneurial universities do not only have the opportunity to make a change, but they also have the moral responsibility to develop and spread the necessary knowledge, values, skills, and awareness to create a sustainable and fair future. According to UNESCO (2005) this can be achieved by bridging the gap between knowledge generation and the transfer of this knowledge to society via service and outreach as well as by implementing sustainable practices internally via financial management, alternative
transport, innovative teaching practices and curriculaums, building maintenance, research, consultancy, and natural resource reduction – in other words, being entrepreneurial and seizing opportunities. As shown by (Guerrero et al., 2014) in their study on the practices of Iranian entrepreneurial universities this not just the case in developed but also in developing countries. They argue however that in order to achieve this the promotion of a more entrepreneurial culture in society, including the reinforcement of entrepreneurial and the building of stronger relationships with industry are needed as well as the reinforcement of relevant rules and regulations.
Yet, how to engage in such processes has however received very little attention in the debate about entrepreneurial universities (Blume, Brenner, & Buenstorf, 2017). There are however some notable exceptions: .Focusing particularly on the role of education, Blewitt (2010) emphasizes the need for more explicit attention on changing students’ attitudes towards sustainability and enabling them to recognize sustainable opportunities through teaching. Trencher, Yarime, McCormick, Doll, and Kraines, ( 2013) notes that such education stresses creativity, innovation and divergent thinking as critical components to enable students to implement novel practices.
Brenner and Pflitsch (2017) have examined why research on sustainability occurs strongly in some places and not in others. Using a multi-method approach they concluded that intrinsic motivation of individual scientists offers the strongest explanation. Factors such as university management and regional innovation activity did not significantly affect the level of sustainability. Also, the actual level of
collaboration with partners from the region as part of the research or in order to translate research findings into practice locally, turned out to be limited. However, some factors likesuch as regional attitudes towards sustainability might trigger scientists to translate their intrinsic motivation into action. Based on a study set in Pakistan(Bano & Taylor, 2015) have, in this respect, pointed out that in a developing country both broad social change as well as the development of a deep-rooted research culture, supported by appropriate incentives and rewards for academic staff and the management of intellectual property remain crucial in order to achieve such goals.
Trencher, Bai, Evans, McCormick, and Yarime, 2014 have examined university-business collaboration for advancing sustainability in urban settings, and arrived at a more optimistic conclusion about the level of collaboration. They found that these collaborations are generally directed at domains such as energy and buildings, but also at governance and social systems which lead to the creation of very tangible outcomes like technological prototypes of new ventures with significant sustainability impacts but less economic contributions. Set in a similar context, Radinger-Peer and Pflitsch (2017) also explored the possibilities and limitations of the involvement of entrepreneurial universities in sustainable
development process. They found that a university’s impact on this process is highly dependent on the entrepreneurial actions of highly engaged individuals, or ‘frontrunners’ who engage in sustainability oriented teaching, research and or outreach activities, as well as on the, often absent, leadership exhibited by the management of the university. Indeed, the authors observed that while “several rectors engage themselves in sustainability related activities in the region, sustainability as a leading principle has not yet found its way—with few exceptions—into the mission statements, development plans or strategies”
(p181-182).
Combined, these studies suggest that to date entrepreneurial universities to engage in
sustainability efforts but mostly as the result of initiatives taken by (entrepreneurial) individuals. Very few examples of collective effects undertaken by universities have been identified thus far and even less integrated ones (university and individuals); this requires . Also, while the studies emphasis a need for leadership and , strong commitment to sustainability at the university management level. seems to remain rare. This observation as well as the small number of studies focusing on this matter seems surprising given that “innovation will flourish in an institution that is united under a shared vision and culture, that does not allow managerial systems to suffocate for lack of new ideas” (Fayolle et al., 2017: pp.2)
In this study we investigate how such a(n entrepreneurial) mission statement as a starting point for institutional change, impacts the activities of the all members of a university (for this we use the three stage model developed by Battilana et al. (2009)) towards its region to foster sustainability.
Sustainable development through institutional academic entrepreneurship.
As argued by Geels (2004), efforts to gain a deeper understanding into how regional systems (or socio-technical regimes) can change over time, and why such change is incredibly difficult to achieve may benefit from insights from institutional theory. In short, institutional theory sheds light on the deeper and resilient aspects of specific institutions (or social structures) and how these become firmly established
and construct reality for individuals and organizations, govern their behavior and clarify what can be acted upon and what cannot (Hoffman, 1999). Institutions are generally persistent to change; change usually only happens over longer periods of time or after a significant exogenous shock. The subfield of institutional entrepreneurship explores how particular actors transform existing and prevalent norms, rules, structures, and routines and create novel ones regardless of path dependencies and complexities that are incorporated (Hardy & Maguire, 2008, 2017; Jolly & Raven, 2015; Tracey, Phillips, & Jarvis, 2011).
According to Garud, Hardy, and Maguire (2007), by combining the concepts of entrepreneurship and institutions insight can be generated into how change is enacted despite pressures towards continuity and
“how and why certain novel organizing solutions – new practices or new organizational forms, for example – come into existence and become well established over time” (p.961). Opportunity recognition and entrepreneurial capabilities are vital elements of these processes (Phillips & Tracey, 2007) as they allow institutional entrepreneurs, such as the entrepreneurial university, to create value for others (individual staff members and students) by creating space for and implementing changes.
Battilana et al. (2009) built upon Lewin (1947) a three phase model of change to describe how institutional entrepreneurship may result in divergent change over time. These three stages of change are developing a vision, assembling people behind the vision, and motivating people to accomplish and maintain it. Overcoming political opposition and transforming potential opponents with different
organizational goals and ambitions into allies that are willing to embark on the same process of change is seen as the critical challenge in each of these stages (DiMaggio, 1988).
For Clark (1998) an institutional vision is an important asset of an entrepreneurial university and according to Battilana et al. (2009) developing a vision forms that starting point for institutional change.
It means that institutional actors as entrepreneurs must be able to argue and narrate change in ways that persuade other actors to collaborate (Child, Lu, & Tsai, 2007; Suddaby, Bitektine, & Haack, 2017;
Suddaby & Greenwood, 2005), they should form collaborations and alliances, and mobilize allies to implement their vision (Greenwood, Suddaby, & Hinings, 2002; Lee, Struben, & Bingham, 2018). This includes presenting the envisioned change in such a way that it addresses the problem it helps to solve, why it is preferred to the current situation (Demil & Bensédrine, 2005; Markard, Wirth, & Truffer, 2016), and what are the compelling reasons behind the vision and desired change (Khan, Munir, & Willmott, 2007). This entails the de-legitimating current practices to convince stakeholders to abandon these (Creed, Scully, & Austin, 2002; Greenwood & Suddaby, 2006). However, the use of discourse and narratives is not sufficient; like in any entrepreneurial process, resources need to be mobilized as well (Battilana et al., 2009). The deployment of resources can help persuade the targeted actors to support the vision for change, and the implementation of it (Levy & Scully, 2007). Institutional entrepreneurs typically have
two kinds of resources at their disposal: financial and human resources (Misangyi, Weaver, & Elms, 2008; Onishi & Wales, 2015). When looking at entrepreneurial universities, the human resource (labor and knowledge embedded in people) is likely to be the only resource that is available for the institutional entrepreneur, as universities they typically do not have funds to subsidize, sponsor or otherwise fund actors’ external activities.
The final stage of this institutional change model consists of the motivation of others to achieve and sustain the vision; although it is formulated as a linear process, in practice, as this study will show, the process is cyclical. According to (Battilana et al., 2009) the activities initiated in this stage have been not studied extensively thus far. Two concepts are useful to explain how institutional change can be sustained before the institutional arrangements and context is changed altogetherby entrepreneurial universities (Maguire, Hardy, & Lawrence, 2004): First, entrepreneurial universities institutional
entrepreneurs should haverequire formal authority and legitimacy (Hasanefendic, Birkholz, Horta, & van der Sijde, 2017) or be able to mobilize actors who have. Second, social capital can be used as a source of power. The network position of the institutional entrepreneurentrepreneurial university can provide access to stakeholders and the desired political support or . The social capital can also be used to influence others, by disconnecting or connecting different groups (Leca, Battilana, & Boxenbaum, 2008; Qureshi, Kistruck, & Bhatt, 2016) .
Thus far, few empirical studies have been undertaken to develop insight into how these processes unfold in practice, let alone in the context of sustainable development and with an entrepreneurial
university being the focal institutional entrepreneuractor. Additionally, empirical studies have usually been conducted through retrospective analysis of successful institutional entrepreneurial endeavors which may lead to biases when interpreting findings (Battilana et al., 2009). Few studies have concentrated on the nascent phases, not knowing whether the institutional entrepreneurentrepreneurial will be successful or not in instigating regional sustainable development and which initial activities will be abandoned for lack of success or scaled up when yielding promising returns.
3. METHOD
This study aims to inductively develop insight into how an entrepreneurial university seeks to promote and implement sustainable development in its local environment. To that end qualitative inquiry is used to allows for multiple observations on complex processes, making it appropriate for theory building (Eisenhardt, 1989; Eisenhardt & Graebner, 2007). In particular, the study focuses on the longitudinal and extreme case (Yin, 2011) of a business school set in a province in the north of India, which will further be referred to as UNI.
The context of India
India is witnessing a slow and steady depletion of all the natural resources partly due to the so-called developmental process (Dhara, 2009). India makes up 2.4% of land in the world, but its inhabitants make up around 16% of the world’s total population, leading to environmental degeneration caused by
enormous overpopulation (FSD, 2016). In line with the preceding observations, the connection between sustainable development and environmental degradation has been widely recognized in India (Singh, Panackal, & Venkataramani, 2018; Tudor et al., 2016). However, the practices that have led to this situation, and are responsible for maintaining it, are seen as the normal way of behaving and changing this situation will require massive efforts from a variety of actors.
Our particular case scrutinizes the initial four-and-a-half years of engagements of a (new, second) university campus located in a rural part of Northern India, that wants to promote and implement
sustainable development in its region. It constitutes an exploratory case that was selected to "yield the most information and have the greatest impact on the development of knowledge" (Patton, 2002: pp.279) The case was identified through informal interactions with key informants in the very early stages of the process when it became apparent that the university’s activities would fit our research interests. Hence the selection process might be classified as a combination of convenience but purposeful sampling. Founded in the year 1956, the University has been ranked amongst the top 30 engineering institutions in the country in the rankings conducted by the Ministry of Human Resource Development, government of India in 2017. Times Higher Education ranked the University in the top 20 amongst the 42 institutions ranked by it in India and figures amongst the top 1000 world Universities (801-1000 category) in the 2018 rankings. Together both campuses of the university offers a basket of undergraduate engineering program as well as postgraduate programs across all engineering and science disciplines and an MBA program. The University is accredited by the national accreditation agencies and its engineering program are also accredited by ABET.
Data and data collection
Data collection consisted of three phases: the exploratory stage (which started in January 2015 but included an account of the previous year and a half since the campus was founded), a field investigation phase (conducted in the spring of 2016 but covering a period from early 2015 till summer of 2016) and a debriefing phase (winter 2017, covering the period from summer 2016 – fall/winter 2017). Early on in the exploratory phase, an unstructured interview was conducted with the university’s campus director. He provided insights, meanings, and explanations related to the research subject and helped the principal
field investigator to establish contacts with other potentially relevant interviewees. Besides the director, three informal interviews were held with faculty members to develop a further sense of what was going on and around the campus; these we complemented with two weeks of observations during which the researchers became more familiar with the work and life on the campus. Next, in the field investigation stage, formal, semi-structured interviews were conducted with six faculty members, three owner/
managers of local business and the senior project manager of a local NGO were interviewed using a semi- structured interview format. By interviewing both faculty members and external stakeholders’ multiple perspectives were collected and contrasted. In addition, documents (n=54, see Table1) were collected to complement the interviews, to establish timelines of activities and to corroborate particular details from the interviews. This allowed us to shed light on the formation of the vision, the change initiatives, and the interaction between the university and its stakeholders, and covered the two and a half years the
relocation of the campus and the final weeks of field work. Informal observations also formed an important part of the field investigation phase as it sensitized the researchers to the local context, and helped to develop an in-depth understanding of the intricacies of campus life, activities and practices.
Finally, the researchers remained in contact with students and faculty members over the following 2 years during with 2, one-week visits to the campus were scheduled to keep track of ongoing developments.
During the final visit, a series of debriefing meetings were held with local faculty members and the campus director. These informal meetings were both reflective in nature and provided an outlook towards the future.
== Table 1 overview of the data collected ==
All interviews in Phase 2 started with a clarification about the nature of the study and a brief discussion on the meaning and definition of sustainability. Also, confidentiality and anonymity were ensured, and participants were asked for permission to record the interviews for later transcription. The interviews were organized around the three phases of institutional entrepreneurship: creating a vision, mobilizing allies and motivating others to achieve and sustain the vision and the specific questions are derived from Battilana et al. (2009)’s model (see Table 2). Additionally, faculty members were asked to share all the events related to sustainable development that occurred within their university, what their involvement was, how they involved students as well as external network members and why. External stakeholders were asked to relate how they became involved in the university’s sustainability activities, and why as well as what their role was in these activities and how it affected their organization.
== Table 2 about here ==
Data analysis
Using a critical incident analysis approach (Flanagan, 1954; Serrat, 2017), we first describe the sequence of events and explain their underlying purposes. Using visual maps (Langley, 1999; Olesen, 2017) we show how the university became aware of the regional sustainability needs and how this lead to the creation of a vision that was subsequently translated to a series of internally and externally oriented projects aimed at the reduction of waste, decreasing illiteracy amongst the local population and
strengthening ties with local businesses. The use of visual maps facilitates the researcher in the analytical development as well as presentation of the data and has been recognized as a valid approach to analyzing processes (Olesen, 2017). We used a timeline as the basis for our visualization and following Langley (1999)’s suggestions, in our analysis we sought to make sense of this timeline by exploring underlying processes and a interpretations of the key actors (see Figure 1). Next, we detailed how three critical events affected the institutional entrepreneurial process and its intermediate outcomes
1. the foundation of the Centre for Sustainability, Strategy, and Society (3SC)
2. the start of the Sustainable Business Strategies (SBS) and experiential learning course 3. the decision to transfer the location of the Venture Lab from the business school campus to
the main campus
These events were selected as they involve interactions with both external and internal stakeholder and because they were crucial and exemplary initiatives undertaken by three types of university actors; the first represents activities that can be classified as faculty-driven change initiatives, while the second concerns student-driven change initiatives, the third constitutes as management driven change. All are aimed at supporting sustainable change, the first and third aims at a strategic/ tactical level and addressing business and community leaders, the second is more operational in approach and focusses on local SMEs and villagers.
The data collected in the first two stages was analyzed by using an inductive coding approach using Atlas.ti (Muhr & Friese, 2004). As stated by Flanagan (1954) this stage in the process is the most complex and important step, which goals is to “create a useful categorization scheme of the data while also sacrificing as little as possible of their comprehensiveness, specificity, and validity” (p344).
Following Butterfield, Borgen, Amundson, and Maglio (2005), we inductively derived categories from our data and determined the scope (general to specific) of those categories using insight, experience and judgement (p.479). Data collected during the debriefing stage had a more narrative character and was stored in the form of field notes. This information was not coded separately but compared against previously established patterns and insights in an integrative manner.
4. FINDINGS
Embarking on the Sustainable Development Path
Our case starts in December 2013, when the university relocated its business school to a new location about 70 km north east of the main campus and in the vicinity of a large metropolitan area. According to university board, this relocation would enable the business school to attract better business faculty and students, and allow the business school greater autonomy. Soon after the relocation, the key constituents were confronted with a harsh local reality: located in close proximity of the new campus (further called UNIc) were many polluting small and medium-sized enterprises (SME’s) producing processed meat, pharmaceuticals and chemicals.
Under the leadership of the campus director, UNIc’s faculty members soon recognized that if they wanted to live and work healthy on the campus, they had to take the initiative: “[O]ur director came from US, and he has been in Europe, so his standards and his approach and his philosophy with respect to sustainability and social entrepreneurship were at a higher level than us” (UNI2). Initially, they decided to focus their efforts on what was under their control namely improving the living conditions of campus residents (students, support staff, and faculty members and their families). Therefore buildings were air-tightened and an eco-wall was constructed around the campus.
Within months, however, UNIc faculty realized and became frustrated that this approach improved campus living conditions only marginally. They became concerned that “the current air and water quality was not just bad for the students, staff, and faculty, but it is equally bad for the 20.000 villagers in the region” (UNI1). Soon, campus residents shared the conviction that “around the campus should be a lot of greenery, there should be clean water available to villages” (UNI4). Furthermore, they presumed that local SMEs would have the potential to meet clean air, and water standards when properly supported.“[T]he ideal scenario should be that we can work with the SMEs, and find ways of saving money by process improvements, through better marketing, market expansion, and all sorts of things.
Generating more profit, and using a portion of the profit to take care of pollution” (UNI1). So, rather than trying to simplify the problem by stressing what could be controllable, UNIc actually up-scaled the issue and embarked on a process of institutional entrepreneurship by engaging with and helping the community, companies, politicians, and students through social entrepreneurship. This paradigm shift permitted UNIc to develop a shared holistic diagnoses of its environment: the lack of sustainable
development is not just about air, water, and soil pollution, but also about health and hygiene, low wages, and lack of education for the entire region.
After formulating this vision, UNIc began to implement it through a combination of several categories of entrepreneurial activities some of which focused on educating students to become sensitive
scholarly practitioners with a social entrepreneurial mindset (UNI3) and involving them in the change process while other activities were aimed at activating the community and or local business. To achieve this social entrepreneurial mindset in students, amongst others, a series of theoretical and practice oriented courses were developed from 2014 onwards and the Sustainable Business Strategies (SBS) course as a case in point. In collaboration with a Dutch university, a Venture Lab-incubator was established in 2014 to encourage and support students to start small firms aimed at solving regional problems like water & waste management of food processing, through capacity building and seed money.
In 2015, four faculty members established the Centre for Strategy, Sustainability, and Society (3SC) as a center of excellence on sustainability education.
An overview of all activities is presented in Figure 1. To gain a deeper understanding of the initiatives, the stakeholders involved, and what has been the impact, three critical incidents namely the foundation of the 3SC, the introduction of the SBS course and the relocation of the Venture Lab will be elucidated in further detail.
== Figure 1 about here ==
Faculty driven change: Centre for Strategy, Sustainability, and Society (3SC)
The 3SC was established on the 26th of January 2015 as a designated ‘Centre of Excellence' to create a cohesive group of faculty members with a common and shared interest in the domain of strategy, sustainability, and society. It aims to pursue excellence in the domain of sustainability and provide knowledge in the form of best practices, research, education, and training, as well as innovation space for entrepreneurial activities. Simultaneously, the Environment & Sustainability Club (E&SC) was
established as the student wing of 3SC to assist the 3SC in executing some of the initiatives and to provide student with the opportunity to organize their efforts related to environmental and sustainability issues.
The launching event, called the Environment & Sustainability Awareness Campaign sought to
"spread awareness among common people in the rural areas" (Document 5, p.1). The campaign day started with a briefing by the founding members, followed by the students heading to several villages.
There, they handed out information leaflets in the local language and engaged in discussions with the villagers in the hope of sensitizing them about issues related to cleanliness, pollution, clean food, energy, safe agriculture, education, and health, and making them more aware about actions they could take to improve their living conditions, thus reaching over 100 villagers. While participating UNIç members
expressed confidence in the learning experience of the local villagers, no impact measurements were undertaken thus far.
The second event (5/2/2015) of the 3SC was a workshop on Clean India – Green Industry which constituted the first attempt to establish connection with industry. In total 30 professionals from the industry association, SMEs, government, and other educational institutions participated. The day started with keynote speeches from academia and industry experts, followed by discussions on pollution, environment, and waste management in the afternoon. The academics emphasized how business should get rid of, or at least minimize, their negative externalities. The industry, in turn, shared their challenges, the initiatives they have already undertaken, and how they normally deal with sustainability issues. The industry representatives argued that promoting sustainable development in their practices requires additional capital investments that they are not able to provide by themselves. As the government was also involved, district level officials responded by assuring the industry that the government is considering stimulating sustainable initiatives. From its side, 3SC offered facilitation in organizing several student projects in which these students analyze SMEs production processes and advise them on how to make these more sustainable. While students were indeed sent, a lack of available time and resources prevented the 3SC faculty members to take a coordinating role and hence the collaboration has so far remained below the aspired levels. Also, faculty members did not know whether the government officials had indeed implemented policies or subsidies to support activities undertaking by local businesses and if this has had any effects.
Finally, the Management Development Program (MDP) was introduced by the 3SC. This two- day program, in which 15 local SME managers participated, consisted of learning through the
presentation, provocative debates, and simulations on how to leverage sustainability as an opportunity.
According to one of the participating managers "So what we learned in the program is that sustainability does not necessarily have to cost money but it can also generate profit" (NGO1), while another added "[I]f we reduce the wastage, then we can sustain in the market. Then we can sustain our company" (Manager 1). Indeed, some impact was created, the owners of a paper company indicated that they had been able to improve their production process after attending the MDP. In a participating paper production company, after the MDP, the highly polluting method of adding chemicals using gravity was replace by a fixed pump providing consistently doses and limiting the wastage of chemicals as well as a reduction of water consumption of 20-30 percent was realized..
Student driven change: Sustainable Business Strategies
The mandatory course Sustainable Business Strategies (SBS) was introduced in January 2016. SBS is practical in orientation and aims to “[T]o inculcate the understanding of sustainability in their daily lives. How people are living in this community, and how we can make their lives and everything more sustainable. That was the core idea. We wanted to have students really understand what sustainability is all about” (UNI9). The course was organized in two phases: the first in-class phase offers students a general outline of the concept sustainability and a framework for guiding the project execution consisting of six sustainability pillars: energy, expectancy, essentials, environment, ethics, and economics (the E’s).
The second phase concerns project execution during which students are coached individually and in small groups by the lecturers. The projects focused on either education (of the local population), environment (notably making the UNIc’s own website and waste management systems more sustainable), or
sustainable industry. As an illustration of the projects Table 3 provides a summary of the four projects that were undertaken under the sustainable industry theme.
== Table 3 about here ===
Inspired by the perceived success and recognizing that the timeframe of the course is limiting the potential impact, UNIc has decided to introduce a second, elective, course ‘Sustainability in Practice’ to allow students to continue their initiates for the SBS over a longer period and to create more impact as part of their study program. Because of the results achieved with the MBA students, in this course, in 2017 it was decided that a version of this course would be offered to all UNI students, regardless of their discipline, both on a new campus as well as on the main campus.
Management driven change: Venture lab.
In 2014, a Venture Lab was created for the stimulation and support of student startups in the domain of sustainable development. The idea was that students on the campus would start small (social or
commercial) enterprises domains such as Water and Waste Management, Resource/Technology Management, Organic Food: Market Linkages, Regional Food Processing, and Small Tech for Small Farmers” (Document 15, p.1). The Venture Lab, which was modeled after a Dutch example, would offer capacity building resources and provide promising startups with facilitation, incubation, mentorship, and seed capital. In the first two years of its existence the Venture Lab supported several early stage social ventures, developed seeding competitions, and organized workshops on several subjects.
However, it soon became apparent that the Venture Lab was hindered in its development by two related factors: first the lack of engineering staff and students resulted in a type of service based ventures with limited scaling potential. Second, as the campus only offered a two-year master program the turn-
over of students was actually rather high. Few ventures set up by these students had been able to develop to a level that they could either be spun-out or were sufficiently attractive for next generations of students to take over.
Reflecting and acting upon these concerns, in December of 2016, UNI management decided to relocate the Venture Lab back to the main campus in order to benefit from the presence of a larger pool of (engineering) students who are staying on campus for longer periods of time. Consequently, the idea is that these students will have technical competence and relatively more time to develop their ventures before they graduate, while also benefitting from the available infrastructure and resources. By the end of 2017, 20 initiatives were being supported in the Venture Lab, which included ventures for eradicating street begging through re-employment, enhancing milk productivity in the cattle by employing electronic sensor, better management of stubble, which is being burnt by farmers and is causing significant air pollution.
5. Discussion
The findings offer a unique insight in the way in which an entrepreneurial university engages in early stage sustainable development. We showed how frustrations about the living conditions on campus and the limited control over improving these actually escalated to a desire to spur regional sustainable development on much larger scale in the first phase of the development. During the second phase the university’s constituents came to realize that real impact would however only be possible when relocating back to the original campus. The process that unfolded is was visualized in Figure 1.
The importantce of leadership in systemic or institutional change has previously been addressed by a several authors (Maskell & Malmberg, 2007; Sotarauta & Pulkkinen, 2011; Stimson, Stough, &
Salazar, 2009) and is evidenced in ourthe findings presented here as well: it was the campus director’s continuous emphasis on as well. While all UNIc constituents recognized the need to do something about the current situation, this was particularly true for the campus director. As shown on the left side of Figure 1, acting as a sustainability champion, the campus director was emphasizing the importance of sustainability at every possible occasion both internally and externally and talking about it at every opportunity and the need to act entrepreneurially to achieve this that caused the other . In doing so, within the course of a few months, all campus residents to follow suit and implement the sustainability agenda in shared his vision. They began to talk, much in the same way as the campus director, of how change would indeed be possible and how their own actions could lead to improvements in the current situation and who
might all benefit from these changes (shown in the middle of Figure 1: spreading the vision). This had its implications in entrepreneurship education (courses and students) and , research (3CS) as well as nd outreach activities (MDP-program).
As such, the process was very much in line with what was already proposed by Battilana et al.
(2009). The use of narratives (as was suggested by (Battilana et al., 2009) and (Battilana et al., 2009);
Suddaby and Greenwood (2005) became an important aspect of how this entrepreneurial university sought to achieve the earliest stages of UNIs paths toward sustainable development. andIt proved to be extra powerful internally as faculty members and students were confronted, on a daily basis with the sustainability problems most notably in the form of air pollution (dirty smells and smog) and excessive littering beyond the campus walls. As such, there was an obvious match between the story that was told and the reality surrounding them (Misangyi et al., 2008).
In terms of enacting change In the second stage of the change process (right side of Figure 1), the mobilization of allies and implementing the envisioned change a number of issues have come to the front.
First, we noticed a sense of joint responsibility amongst the different internal stakeholders on campus.
Sustainability quickly became part of the values and practices on campus as was evidenced from the waste reduction and renewal energy efforts as well as from the broad and voluntary participation of faculty members and students alike in various types of internal and external activities. The social entrepreneurship and sustainability courses that were offered were also generally appreciated. When it came to involving and mobilizing external stakeholders, faculty members and students engaged in different types of activities with different outcomes. The literature suggests that formal authority and social capital are important vehicles for mobilizing external allies to the change process (Maguire et al., 2004). This would suggest that faculty driven activities will likely have a larger impact compared to student driven activities. However, our findings show that, in our case, the student-driven activities are at least in the short run more effective outside the campus walls. Several factors might explain this. First, in comparison to the faculty members who focused on university-business collaboration, the student activities, that could be classified as university-society interaction were aimed at “low hanging fruit”.
They did not require extensive financial or time investments from the targeted stakeholders and . Theirthe benefits of their interventions were directly observable activities showed the benefits of their
interventions directly. This helped to convince the stakeholders to participate and continue the proposed new behavior. Alternatively, the activities undertaken by the faculty members were much more
ambitious in nature, and called upon external stakeholders to take sustainability seriously. While verbally endorsing UNIsc quest, it seems that most external stakeholders were not yet able toor willing to invest substantiallyactually make the required investments. However, it might not just be the scale of the
activities that made the students more effective in the short runIn addition, in a country where power distances are high like in India (Hofstede, 2018), the student’s relatively lower status might have caused their actions to have come across as less . One might argue that precisely because the students have a relatively lower status position compared to the faculty members they might benefit from a goodwill factor within the community. Specifically because their status is lower, their actions might be considered to be less threating making it easier for and hence community members to could be more likely to getbecome involved when asked for it.
While the concept of goodwill has often been suggested as an important contributor to the success of implementing institutional changes, so far few studies have specifically looked at how having a relatively lower status may affect the development of goodwill for institutional entrepreneurshipin an entrepreneurial university or for institutional entrepreneurship in general. A notable exception in the latter domain is the work of Van Bockhaven, Matthyssens, and Vandenbempt (2015) who focused on the role of soft-power and coalition building in legitimizing innovations in the electro-technical installation sector.
Further, Lindeman (2012) showed the importance of having access to devices and support for a group of extremely poor slum-dwellers in Tanzania to become a legitimate player in and change agent of the housing market of Dar-es-Salaam. Lindeman (2012) findings are particularly relevant to our case: like in her case we saw that although the students have been more effective in their activities compared to the faculty members, they could only achieve these results as they were being actively mobilized supported by these same faculty members. First, as a result of the narratives they were being sensitized to the issue.
Second, as a result of being offered academic courses in the domain of (social) entrepreneurship they obtained relevant knowledge to act upon their vision. The faculty members enabled students to spend study-time on their entrepreneurial activities and, in many cases, organized access to the SME’s where the students could conduct their projects. Further, the faculty members actively support the students in setting up their student ventures, associations and social clubs by offering facilities and mentoring.
One might question the value of aiming for low hanging fruit as these are usually quickly depleted (Phelps, 2013). However, arguably the could also serve as stepping stones towards more ambitious and ostentatious activities as they offer participants the possibility of testing the water and learning from experience. And indeed as was already shown by (Guerrero et al., 2014), a focus on outreach activities is critically important for entrepreneurial universities in developing countries to sustain their competitive positions with respect to core missions.
As such, our study shows that an entrepreneurial university is enacted institutional entrepreneurship is really the result ofthrough the collective actions of both students, staff and
management individuals – in this case faculty members and students of UNIc - sharing an identity (being part of the UNIc community) and goals (living and working in a healthier more sustainable environment) rather than being an individual ‘hero’ (Aldrich, 2011).
The findings also provided a unique insight in how the campus struggled with the liability of newness and smallness (Battisti & McAdam, 2012; Stinchcombe, 1965) but proved to be a real entrepreneurial university in that is found innovative ways to create value. In particular, to overcome these liabilities, some of the most promising initiatives were actually spun back into the main campus for their scale-up phase. As such, the new campus inadvertently acted as an incubator space for novel institutional practices for regional development. Our case also shows that the three-phase model of Battilana et al is not just a linear model, but also have iterations.
Contributions and Limitations
Our study has contributed to the literature on the entrepreneurial university (Audretsch, 2014; D’Este &
Perkmann, 2011; Foss & Gibson, 2015; Mascarenhas et al., 2017) and the importance of an
(entrepreneurial) vision and leadership, especially in our case, on sustainable regional development.
Previous studies in this domain has emphasized the importance of universities in this process and
typically focused on their role in providing a regions human capital and make knowledge and technology available to create business (Grimaldi, Kenney, Siegel, & Wright, 2011). We have shown that this is not the only way in which an entrepreneurial university can make a difference. Rather we’ve shown that a entrepreneurial university can actually act as a change agent towards sustainable regional development in a developing country when motivated by a sense of urgency and moral obligation when supported by a shared institutional vison (see also: Clark, 1998). Through this we show the value of the theoretical model developed by Battilana, et al. (2009) for empirical research, realizing that the empirical reality shows that the process that is modeled is an iterative one. Further research should elaborate this.
Furthermore, whereas most empirical studies on systemic and institutionalsustainable change and the role of entrepreneurial universities are conducted in developed countries (Radinger-Peer & Pflitsch, 2017; Trencher, Bai, Evans, McCormick, & Yarime, 2014; Trencher, Yarime, McCormick, Doll, &
Kraines, 2013), ours is set in the developing world. Especially in countries such as India, where the living conditions for the poor are dreadful, and there is a dangerously unsustainable use of natural resources, sustainable development is of vital importance (FSD, 2016). The OECD (2008) and UNESCO (2005)
have stressed the important role of entrepreneurial universities in promoting and implementing sustainable development and we have shown how this can work in practice.
Additionally, this study finger points to the role of “location”. First, the relocation of the campus gave an enormous impulse to the entrepreneurial activities of the entrepreneurial university and lead to the development and implementation of a number of new and innovative activities in the domain of sustainability and social entrepreneurship, both by students and staff members, under the leadership of the campus director. When being confronted with the liabilities of newness and smallness (Rao, 1994;
Stinchcombe, 1965), however, campus and university management again showed leadership and began to spin the most promising initiatives back into the main campus with fertile grounds for further
development thus . As such the campus unintentionally making the campus became an incubator space for new sustainable entrepreneurial practices. While the concepts of academic incubators and
entrepreneurial universities have often been studied concomitantly, most previous studies have
conceptualized incubators as separate organizational units (Audretsch, 2014; Kolympiris & Klein, 2017;
McAdam, Miller, & McAdam, 2016). Our study shows however directs attention to the notion of
incubation as a process of experimentation and learning at an institutional level (Englehardt & Simmons, 2002). While unintentionally, the novel campus became a place where new initiatives could be explored in a relatively safe environment without being scrutinized too closely by the directorship of the main campus. The most successful initiatives were later spun back into the main campus. This notion of spinning out and spinning in has been described in the literature on corporate venturing (Ford, Garnsey, &
Probert, 2010; Gold, 2018; Kolaković, Mikić, & Felak, 2014) but is yet to be explored in the literature on entrepreneurial universities. While setting up a new campus remotely, may not be an avenue that many universities can explore, but our findings do call for further exploration into alternative incubation practices at universities.
This study also contributes to the literature of entrepreneurial universities as a particular type of multi-actor organization: a university in which campus management, faculty members and students each played a role towards initiating institutional change. While the role of organizational leadership has received some attention in previous studies (Brenner & Pflitsch, 2017; Radinger-Peer & Pflitsch, 2017), the role of students as agents of change, other than through the formation of new (student) startups (Boh et al., 2016; Wright et al., 2017) has, so far, been overlooked in the literature of entrepreneurial
universities. We have shown however that their role can be of crucial important to involve external stakeholders in a process of change. We’ve argued that the students’ hands-on approach and their limited status position enabled to engage external stakeholders in a more effective manner than the higher status faculty members have been able to achieve. We’ve also shown how this was made possible by the
commitment of faculty members to enable and support students to perform such a role in their
community. Involving actors of different quality in the university system can strengthen the impact of the university and make change happen as an entrepreneurial university.
As any study ours has a number of limitations that may affect the credibility and dependability of the findings. First, by design we focused on the early stages of the institutional change process aiming to adopt a longitudinal design. Two of the researchers had been in contact with UNIcs stakeholders from the very start and could thus track the developments from the start, a third researcher was added to the team at a later stage. Usually, having the opportunity to track developments from such an early stage is highly beneficial and prevents biases due to hindsight and memory loss. In this case however, some of the interviewees felt the urgency of the envisioned change, to the extent that they found it difficult to reflect upon the possibility of potential failure or the lack of support from external stakeholders. As such
theHence the findings may be biased by the over-optimism of these interviewees. To counter these biases several non-UNI informants have been interviewed as well. Yet, these external informants were generally selected by our UNI contacts who may have consciously or unconsciously selected stakeholders who are on the same page. Also, for lack of established ties between UNIc and local governments we did not have the opportunity to interview policy makers on their views of UNIc’s initiatives and how these fit with government agenda’s. We thus have to be aware of potential selection biases and over-optimistic perspectives.
Second, the outcomes of the process are yet to be determined. At this moment, the institutional change process initiated by UNI is still ongoing. Internally, sustainability has become one of the dominant themes in both education and research, but also in the daily lives of the people working and living on campus. The importance of sustainability is beyond being questioned and it is institutionalized in the values and practices that can be observed. Beyond the campus walls however, the institutional change can at best be seen as work-in-progress. Our findings show that UNIthis entrepreneurial university has creating some initial impact in promoting and implementing sustainable development in the region, but it seems clear that external stakeholders have a only a reactive approach. Both the villagers and local SME owners acknowledge the importance of sustainability, when asked and they are willing to listen to the information presented and support offered by UNIc. Suggested behavioral changes seem to be taking a foothold, but only when they do not require additional financial investments upfront, even when they might lead to savings in the future. Possibly, this will simply require more time to take effect, however it seems that most SME’s are prioritizing firm survival and raising a decent personal income when making
investment decisions. Continued research is necessary to track the developments and results. These future investigations would preferably involve more external actors, ideally reflecting multiple perspectives.
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