quick links
The Debate
Some of our experts in the field have given their thoughts on the Debate Piece Entrepreneurship Education: Embedding Practitioner Experience by Lester Lloyd- Reason et al. If you would like to join the debate please email chris@isbe.org.uk and your comments will be placed on the website.
Responses by:
Matthew Draycott
Laura Galloway
Pauric McGowan
Response to Entrepreneurship Education: Embedding Practitioner Experience
By Matthew Draycott
Having been invited to reply to this piece, I found it interesting that for the second issue in a row the debate has focused on the perceived inadequacy of business schools to deliver enterprise education; I refer you to Kathryn Penaluna’s Comments in the autumn 2009 issue discussing ‘business school thinking’.
I believe these articles are symptomatic of a trend (coined by a colleague of mine at ISBE2009) towards ‘Business School Bashing’ which seems to occur when enterprising people find themselves constrained and infuriated by what they view as outdated bureaucratic forms of education.
As an entrepreneur who was educated and later worked in a business school I recognise from experience the points that both these articles make. There are endemic cultural and pedagogical issues affecting the focus of education in some business schools; this ‘Physics Envy’ (Bennis and O’Toole, 2005) endangers those in these business schools obsessed with bureaucratic, loco-scientific academia by pushing them to forsake ‘enterprising’ practitioner based research and education as ‘less worthy’’
However these issues of a pedagogy and culture resistant to enterprising education exist across the educational landscape from sociology to the sciences and even the arts (a succinct discussion of this being provided in Gibb’s 2002 work Creating Conducive Environments for Learning and Entrepreneurship), business schools are not the worst offenders, nor is it every business school. Where in this article are the examples of best practice, of the business schools getting it right and implications of their work for others?
If we truly are the enterprise educators then let’s have less ‘bashing’ and more action, let’s facilitate cultural change by highlighting the best practice examples of enterprising business schools (of which there are more than one or two) and work with our colleagues, in those that may need a hand, sharing our knowledge to help them change so that they are ready for the challenges they face.
Matthew Draycott
Response to Entrepreneurship Education: Embedding Practitioner Experience
By Dr Laura Galloway
The article by Lester Lloyd-Reason, Roger Mumby-Croft and Leigh Sear provides a robust summary of the prevailing tension and mismatch between what universities and business schools currently provide in terms of entrepreneurship education and the real needs of industry in terms of skills for employment and skills for entrepreneurship. An additional element is the demands of students, who are increasingly aware, especially during this current recession, of the need to be able to demonstrate a skills set and experience broader and more practice-based than that characteristic of traditional higher education. Certainly, in my own institution it seems to be this demand from students that is prompting action to a greater extent than industry, government and agency calls for greater enterprise, employability and practice in curricula, especially in business schools.
For vocational educators, such as those in engineering and many of the sciences, accreditation from their professional institutes has demanded that commercial application be addressed in curricula. In many cases these disciplines have turned to their business schools to provide this. The response has been, in many cases, inadequate in terms of what is actually required, with some business schools using very loose interpretations of ‘business’ and ‘enterprise’ in order to offer vocational-discipline students some teaching and learning provision from the current business school offering. But in many cases it is this current offering that is wanting in terms of developing the skills and competencies required of industry and the economy and desired by students. The authors of the article are, in my opinion, spot-on when they identify that the tendency is to bolt onto rather than properly adapt or replace “the pervading corporate model”.
That said, there are many initiatives being tried and tested in universities. The ever-present issue of resourcing is always going to be the limiting factor in developing good (and useful) entrepreneurship education though. Despite this, since industry and students are identifying skills associated with ‘enterprise’, ‘employability’ and ‘commercial awareness’ as desirous there is some focus in many places in delivering this and entrepreneurship specialists are increasingly involved as they have the nearest equivalent specialist knowledge about the skills sets associated with these somewhat opaque headings. However, the opaqueness of, and indeed the number of, terms in current parlance used to refer to skills enhancement has led to variation in interpretation and response from one institution to another and this hardly improves the development of entrepreneurship (or enterprise) as a discipline in itself in business schools. Further, in many cases entrepreneurship specialists become regarded as those who can provide a panacea to a wide range of student and industry demands, thus reducing the focus on entrepreneurship as a worthy educational output. Reactions to these demands, modified by availability of specialists, availability of other resources, and even variability in the marketing practices of different institutions, along with variation in the focus of messages from governments and agents (often within the same country) has led to much variation in terms of quality and quantity of educational provision that addresses the various agendas identified. Not the least of these is the entrepreneurship agenda, and the authors correctly identify that in many institutions, other than bolting on the business creation context, little has been done throughout disciplines or within business schools to develop the needs for and the needs of entrepreneurs in western economies further.
The authors claim that the current status-quo is unsatisfactory and will impede competitiveness potential. My own position is that while many business schools may in good faith make some attempts to address the demands of the current economy, there is a need to have clarity about what (and why) priorities are and some identification of how associated cultural changes and their structural implications can be resourced properly. This can only be brought about by proper engagement of the three interested bodies – the universities, the policy-makers and the students themselves.
Dr Laura Galloway, Heriot-Watt University
Response to Entrepreneurship Education: Embedding Practitioner Experience
By Pauric McGowan
What business has enterprise in higher education anyway? A commentary
In recent years successive governments in the UK have recognised the need for a greater investment in nurturing innovation and entrepreneurship nationally. A series of government reports and strategy documents over the past decade has sought to highlight the need for radical action to change the attitudes prevailing within higher education institutions with respect to entrepreneurship and to encourage a greater engagement with it. In these publications the need for culture change to one that is distinctly more entrepreneurial and that supports new venturing activity in particular has been emphasised. The European Commission too has suggested that Europe needs to foster the entrepreneurial drive more effectively and has identified education as key to achieving this objective of fostering a greater spirit of enterprise. Higher education has a core role to play "…by raising awareness of career opportunities as an entrepreneur or a self-employed person, and providing the relevant skills". (p4). In addition governments have emphasised the need for higher education institutions to build stronger links with “business”. It is hoped that by such interventions students leaving our universities will be better equipped to meet the challenges that they face in the new world of work, characterised by Gibb and Hannon (2006), by growing uncertainty and complexity, fluid organizational structures, greater probability of self-employment and wider responsibilities in family and social life.
Higher Education Institutions are being forced to face up to new demands upon them. Factors pressing those demands, in addition to the emerging new world of work, are the influence of the market-place, pressure to contribute to economic development, and demands from business and wider society. In response Universities have had to reflect on how their mission needs to develop to embrace a third wave; building on, even complementing, core activities of teaching and research to become entrepreneurial, Etzkowitz (2004). In reflecting the entrepreneurial environment so prevalent today, by even becoming more entrepreneurial themselves universities can be better placed to respond to the challenges of preparing their students not just as good citizens but as enterprising people, or the types of people who start businesses, who grow businesses, and engage in social enterprise.
.
Our universities are already deeply engaged with the business community, through industrial placements, KKTP projects, visiting faculty or guest speakers, as members of advisory boards, as mentors, in case study research, as participants on programmes and as event sponsors, to mention a few examples. Most business practitioners are graduates of our universities. So “business” is not a foreign land, but is, in reality, along with other constituencies in the wider society, an ally of our universities in developing and maintaining their relevancy.
In an earlier commentary, Professors Lloyd-Reason and Mumby-Croft along with Leigh Sear, reflecting on the effort to promote the enterprise agenda within higher education in the UK point out however that, with a few notable exceptions, there has been little real progress with that undertaking. Despite the considerable effort in recent years to promote the agenda for enterprise outside of its traditional homeland in Business and Management faculties or Business Schools in universities across the UK and into other faculties such as Science, Engineering and Technology, (SET), such progress as has been made remains fragile. There remains some concern as to whether or not the agenda has really taken root, that the level of awareness of or engagement with enterprise has risen by any significant degree. Certainly no “tipping point” has been reached yet where the agenda has finally taken on “a life of its own”. While for some the advent of the entrepreneurial university remains a deformation of the “traditional” role of the university, for others it’s emergence may actually resonate with early ideas of the university as a centre for imaginative and creative use of knowledge. There remains a need for an effective and meaningful culture change which is heavier on committed action and lighter on mere rhetoric therefore. There may be a need for a debate on whether or not the “Business School” is actually the appropriate home for the entrepreneurship agenda in the first place. In addition there needs to be a recognition amongst academics in faculties such as Engineering and Science that in preparing their students to be technically capable they must also prepare them in developing other aspects of human capital that will indeed prepare them for the challenges of the new world of work. The emergence of the third wave is increasingly a fact, though it is happening slowly. There are, doubtless, real threats inherent in the changes that are happening, but there are real opportunities too. Ultimately we must recognise, in the words of Machiavelli, “There is nothing more difficult to carry out, nor more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to handle than to initiate a new order of things” But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.
Pauric McGowan, Professor of Entrepreneurship and Business Development, University of Ulster