The Influence Of University’s Internal Organizational Environment On Academic Entrepreneurial

Academic entrepreneurial is an effective strategy for university to cope the challenge of the knowledge economy in recent years. Academic entrepreneurial activity aims at the direct transformation and application of knowledge production by university itself. Universities that take academic entrepreneurial as the main way to its development is known as entrepreneurial Universities. As in China, the government calls on the construction of an innovative country in this century. Then university’s capability to cooperate with firms in technological innovation process is becoming more and more seriously. So academic entrepreneurial is also popular in China universities. Faculty in university is the main part of academic entrepreneurial. Faculty’s activity is deeply affected by the university’s organizational environment. This study aims to ascertain the influence factors and the influence mechanism of university’s organizational environment to academic entrepreneurial performance. It also proposes suggestions for domestic university to optimiz their organizational environment to promote academic entrepreneurial.We discuss the relationship between academic entrepreneurial and the academic production in university at first. Then we systematicly explore the influence factors of university’s organizational environment to academic entrepreneurial by literatures review. Then we propose a theoretical model to explain the internal relations between academic entrepreneurial, organizational environment and entrepreneurial efficacy. To verify the hypotheses, we carry out a survey to 149 faculties who have academic entrepreneurial experiences from 42 universities in ZheJiang, JiangSu, GuangDong and ShuangHai. This dissertation draws the following main conclusions:Firstly, theoretically clarify the relationship of individual faculty’s academic entrepreneurial activity and the whole university’s academic production. We take academic entrepreneurial as a natural extension of university’s knowledge production chain in historical context. Academic entrepreneurs make the university integrate the whole prosess from knowledge discovery to knowledge application and capitalization. There are mutual promotion and mutual conflict coexistence between university’s academic entrepreneurial and its’ academic production. The main purpose of optimization of the organizational environment to academic entrepreneurial is to strengthen the mutual promotion factors and reduce the conflicts by organizational reform.Secondly, summarize 4 dimensions of university’s organizational environment to academic entrepreneurial: supporting structure, social capital, organizational culture and incentive policies. By combing the relevant literature, we found these 4 dimensions can completely include various factors mentioned in previous studies. And there are clear boundaries between each dimension. So this 4 dimensions division of organizational environment is acceptable.Thirdly, verify the fact that university’s organizational environment has significant positive impact on academic entrepreneurial activity. Supporting structure has a positive impact on sustainable performance. Organizational culture has a positive impact on both sustainable performance and development performance. Incentive policies have a positive impact on development performance. Social capital does not have a significant impact on either sustainable performance or development performance that different with the results of previous abroad studies. It may due to the fact that academic entrepreneurial mostly be individual behavior in China rather than cooperative behavior between individuals and organizations in US. So faculty’s entrepreneurial activity relys less on directly organizational support factors in China.Fourthly, it is also confirmed that entrepreneurial efficacy plays a partial mediating role between university’s organizational environment and academic entrepreneurial performance. We introduce the concept of entrepreneurial efficacy from business management research area into this research and consruct a theoretical mechanism model by it. It turns out that entrepreneurial efficacy does plays a partial mediating role between university’s organizational environment and academic entrepreneurial performance. Organizational culture especially basic academic organizations’ culture plays a major role in it.Fifthly, according to the result of the empirical research, we provide 3 main policy orientations for domestic university to optimiz their organizational environment to academic entrepreneurial.(1)Promote the transformation of faculty’s academic entrepreneurial activity from individual behavior to cooperative behavior by individuals and organizations.(2)Cultivate entrepreneurial culture in university’s basic academic organizations.(3) Strengthen the university’s social capital and incentive policies’ positive effect on individual level.Finally, we points out the deficiencies that exist in this research and problems to be solved in further research.