Does university entrepreneurial orientation matter? Evidence from university performance

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Research Summary: As a firm‐level attribute, entrepreneurial orientation (EO)'s beneficial relationship to firm performance has been established in the corporate sector; however, its implications in other sectors including university settings remain a rather underexplored area. Based on a sample of 107 universities in the United States, we examine the impact of EO on a wide range of university performance measures from commercialization of intellectual property to more comprehensive university performance metrics. Our findings underscore the critical importance of EO in the context of universities and also reveal the moderation effects of university characteristics such as size and the presence of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) focus. Managerial Summary: This study examines the impact of EO on university performance. Our findings can be of significance to higher education administrators in several ways. First, we draw attention to the need to recognize university EO as the glue that binds resources together for discovery and exploitation of opportunities. Furthermore, the evidence connecting EO to the U.S. News and World rankings demonstrates that leveraging university EO has potential to impact metrics that many of its stakeholders pay attention to. In addition, our findings suggest that large universities and those with a STEM focus are able to better leverage the EO shift upward in their rankings, which provides guidance for university administrators on how to strategically create and develop new academic programs.

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