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Consensus study on factors influencing the academic entrepreneur in a middle-income country’s university enterprise.

Consensus study on factors influencing the academic entrepreneur in a middle-income country’s university enterprise.
Consensus study on factors influencing the academic entrepreneur in a middle-income country’s university enterprise.
Purpose
This study aims to ascertain the personal characteristics of a group of successful academic entrepreneurs in a South African university enterprise and the prevalent barriers and enablers to their entrepreneurial endeavour.

Design/methodology/approach
The authors used a Delphi process to identify and rank the characteristics, enablers, barriers and behaviours of entrepreneurial academics, with a Nominal Group Technique applied to establish challenges they encounter managing their enterprise and to propose solutions.

Findings
Perseverance, resilience and innovation are critical personal characteristics, while collaborative networks, efficient research infrastructure and established research competence are essential for success. The university’s support for entrepreneurship is a significant enabler, with unnecessary bureaucracy and poor access to project and general enterprise funding an impediment. Successful academic entrepreneurs have strong leadership, and effective management and communication skills.

Research limitations/implications
The main limitation is the small study participant group drawn from a single university enterprise, which complicates generalisability. The study supported the use of Krueger’s (2009) entrepreneurial intentions model for low- and middle-income country (LMIC) academic entrepreneur investigation but proposed the inclusion of mitigators to entrepreneurial activation to recognise contextual deficiencies and challenges.

Practical implications
Skills-deficient LMIC universities should extensively and directly support their entrepreneurial academics to overcome their contextual deficiencies and challenging environment.

Originality/value
This study contributes to addressing the paucity of academic entrepreneur research in LMIC contexts by identifying LMIC-specific factors that inhibit the entrepreneur’s movement from entrepreneurial intention to entrepreneurial action.
1409-1430
Farrell, Alfred A.
e99b76a9-a84a-4675-a2a8-19c3dcd84883
Ashton, James
643a4742-d240-4585-b928-9667392f9e23
Mapanga, Witness
75389e09-7cde-4cfe-89ef-ee2e456b7b1a
Joffe, Maureen
3ed05269-5b6b-4f1c-a46a-df4f249280bc
al, et
df099e87-31d7-4ccf-a9fa-b92a380537f9
Norris, Shane A.
1d346f1b-6d5f-4bca-ac87-7589851b75a4
Farrell, Alfred A.
e99b76a9-a84a-4675-a2a8-19c3dcd84883
Ashton, James
643a4742-d240-4585-b928-9667392f9e23
Mapanga, Witness
75389e09-7cde-4cfe-89ef-ee2e456b7b1a
Joffe, Maureen
3ed05269-5b6b-4f1c-a46a-df4f249280bc
al, et
df099e87-31d7-4ccf-a9fa-b92a380537f9
Norris, Shane A.
1d346f1b-6d5f-4bca-ac87-7589851b75a4

Farrell, Alfred A., Ashton, James, Mapanga, Witness, Joffe, Maureen, al, et and Norris, Shane A. (2024) Consensus study on factors influencing the academic entrepreneur in a middle-income country’s university enterprise. Journal of Entrepreneurship in Emerging Economies, 16 (5), 1409-1430. (doi:10.1108/JEEE-08-2022-0241).

Record type: Article

Abstract

Purpose
This study aims to ascertain the personal characteristics of a group of successful academic entrepreneurs in a South African university enterprise and the prevalent barriers and enablers to their entrepreneurial endeavour.

Design/methodology/approach
The authors used a Delphi process to identify and rank the characteristics, enablers, barriers and behaviours of entrepreneurial academics, with a Nominal Group Technique applied to establish challenges they encounter managing their enterprise and to propose solutions.

Findings
Perseverance, resilience and innovation are critical personal characteristics, while collaborative networks, efficient research infrastructure and established research competence are essential for success. The university’s support for entrepreneurship is a significant enabler, with unnecessary bureaucracy and poor access to project and general enterprise funding an impediment. Successful academic entrepreneurs have strong leadership, and effective management and communication skills.

Research limitations/implications
The main limitation is the small study participant group drawn from a single university enterprise, which complicates generalisability. The study supported the use of Krueger’s (2009) entrepreneurial intentions model for low- and middle-income country (LMIC) academic entrepreneur investigation but proposed the inclusion of mitigators to entrepreneurial activation to recognise contextual deficiencies and challenges.

Practical implications
Skills-deficient LMIC universities should extensively and directly support their entrepreneurial academics to overcome their contextual deficiencies and challenging environment.

Originality/value
This study contributes to addressing the paucity of academic entrepreneur research in LMIC contexts by identifying LMIC-specific factors that inhibit the entrepreneur’s movement from entrepreneurial intention to entrepreneurial action.

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More information

Submitted date: 19 August 2022
Accepted/In Press date: 20 May 2023
e-pub ahead of print date: 19 July 2024
Published date: 4 August 2024

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 503533
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/503533
PURE UUID: 2e1bfb8d-18d3-45c6-9e41-3a085cd62324
ORCID for Shane A. Norris: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0001-7124-3788

Catalogue record

Date deposited: 04 Aug 2025 16:56
Last modified: 22 Aug 2025 02:27

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Contributors

Author: Alfred A. Farrell
Author: James Ashton
Author: Witness Mapanga
Author: Maureen Joffe
Author: et al
Author: Shane A. Norris ORCID iD

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