Organisational preparedness for academic entrepreneurship: a case of a science council and universities in South Africa

Abstract

This paper investigated organisational preparedness for academic entrepreneurship post the promulgation of Intellectual Property Rights from Publicly Financed Research and Development Act (IPR-PFRD) in 2008. This study sought to understand whether strategic renewal in universities and research organisations accommodates the mission of academic entrepreneurship. Academic entrepreneurship mostly takes place in an environment that facilitates commercialisation of research. Universities’ first mission is education, followed by research and development. For commercialisation to be successful there has to be a change in the environment, such as a new strategy to create a culture and climate that is conducive for commercialisation. Through academic entrepreneurship, universities and research organisations have a crucial role to play in the South African economy. This research study employed strategic renewal constructs; top management support, time allocation and rewards for academic entrepreneurship and academic entrepreneurship constructs; licences and start-ups to test the relationship between the two variables. The hypothesis was tested by analysing the data that was collected at two universities and a science council. The results suggested a positive relationship between academic entrepreneurship and rewards for academic entrepreneurship and no relationship between top management support and time allocation, even though these have been shown in literature to have an effect on academic entrepreneurship. This study is the first of its kind to use the Corporate Entrepreneurship Assessment Index to test the relationship between organisational preparedness and academic entrepreneurship in South Africa. As such, it advances the body of literature on academic entrepreneurship in South Africa by looking at the environment climate and culture that enables academic entrepreneurship.