London Review of Education (Nov 2012)
The entrepreneurial university in the twenty-first century
Abstract
Burton Clark's 1998 monograph, Creating Entrepreneurial Universities: Organizational Pathways of Transformation, has become seminal in the literature on entrepreneurialism in universities. In this paper I re-examine the validity of Clark's analysis through an interview study of one of his original entrepreneurial universities, namely Warwick University; at the same time, I seek to remedy some of the defects in Clark's original study. The study affirms that the entrepreneurial culture that Clark identified some 15 years ago still persists at Warwick University. I speculate on the reasons why this culture has persisted, discuss the suitability of the entrepreneurial university in the post-2012 era and stress the importance of distinguishing between commercialism and Clark's concept of entrepreneurialism.
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