Pressure is growing for presidents of small independent colleges and universities to become more entrepreneurial in generating revenue for their schools. This study examined the entrepreneurial orientation of such presidents and how their orientations relate to their institutions revenue-generating activities.
Forty-seven presidents of small independent institutions were surveyed to determine their self-ratings on 10 characteristics of entrepreneurial orientation: innovative, risk taker, creative, change agent, team builder, competitive, opportunist, visionary, proactive, and persuasive. They also reported their institutions revenue-generating activities, their education and professional preparation, and their schools enrollments and endowments. Follow-up interviews were conducted with four of the presidents to gain further insights into the results.
All of the presidents considered the 10 entrepreneurial characteristics to be, overall, somewhat to very self descriptive (mean 4.11, range 3.10-5.00). There were no relationships between entrepreneurial orientation and previously held position or undergraduate education. Presidents believing they had been sufficiently prepared for their fundraising activities perceived themselves as more entrepreneurial than those believing they had not.
Of 54 activities in 8 categories, the presidents institutions carried out a mean of 21.19 (range 9-38). Larger institutions generally carried out more educational programs, retail sales activities, and intellectual property activities than smaller schools. Institutions with endowments of less than 10 million dollars invested in fewer types of securities than those with larger endowments.
Entrepreneurial orientation of the president was positively correlated with total revenue-generating activities, and with Fundraising, Small Business Development, Intellectual Property and Off-campus Real Estate activities. Presidents entrepreneurial orientations were not related to their institutions reported financial strength.
Conclusions based on both surveys and interviews include the following:
Most presidents of small independent educational institutions have at least a fairly high entrepreneurial orientation, but they exhibit considerable differences in this respect.
Most small independent schools engage in a fairly large number of revenue-generating activities, but some engage in considerably more such activities than others.
Institutions led by presidents with higher entrepreneurial orientations tend to engage in more revenue-generating activities.
Becoming more entrepreneurial in developing revenue-generating activities is important to the financial well-being of many small colleges and universities.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:PITT/oai:PITTETD:etd-08232005-095345 |
| Date | 30 August 2005 |
| Creators | Riggs, Diana Gaye |
| Contributors | Dr. John C. Weidman, Dr. Richard Artman, Dr. John L. Yeager, Dr. R. Tony Eichelberger |
| Publisher | University of Pittsburgh |
| Source Sets | University of Pittsburgh |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.library.pitt.edu/ETD/available/etd-08232005-095345/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University of Pittsburgh or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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