اهداف کارآفرینی دانشگاه های دولتی در ترکیه :آنسوی آموزش و تحقیقات؟

Today, universities play a fundamental role in establishing and developing an entrepreneurship-oriented economy as they represent the main source of new knowledge. Roles of universities in economic growth have evolved in time and grew beyond their traditional teaching and research tasks. Universities are anymore expected to introduce solutions to social and industrial needs by exploiting the knowledge that is created by research. Universities even strategically aim to create wealth by investing in business, by building linkages, partnerships with technological enterprises or by creating new firms through academic entrepreneurship. Evolution of roles of universities in economic growth received close attention of scholars and found place in multiple disciplines like business management and economics literature and research for decades in developed countries. However there is still a significant need for research about the entrepreneurial intentions, activities and contributions of universities to economic growth in developing countries. Findings of this sort of studies can be very helpful to policy makers of these countries in academy, industry and government for utilizing entrepreneurship for economic growth, employment and increasing welfare of their people. In this context, study aims to determine the entrepreneurial intentions of public universities in Turkey by exploring their strategic postures, cultural and organizational units that supplement and support entrepreneurial activities and collaborations. Major characteristics of universities that determine their entrepreneurial intentions are derived from theoretical background. By conducting a qualitative content analysis, these characteristics are searched through Web sites of public universities in Turkey in academic year of 2011-2012. Findings regarding entrepreneurial intentions of universities that are reflected in their strategies, culture, institutional infrastructure, collaborations/partnerships can provide evidence about not only current but also potential entrepreneurial behaviors of public universities in Turkey.

Entrepreneurship is considered to be a core competence for growth, employment and personal fulfillment (EC, 2004, 2006a). Besides governments and industry, higher education institutions play a fundamental role in establishing and developing an entrepreneurship-oriented economy as these institutions represent a main source of new knowledge and hold a constantly regenerating stock of students and scientists ( ). Roles of universities in economic growth through contributing to creation of entrepreneurship climate in a country have evolved in time and grew beyond being just educators and disseminating the existing knowledge. Universities naturally generate new ideas, to contribute to innovation by creating knowledge and developing technology as an output of their research activities. However, today to overcome the challenges that the financial crisis brought, mission of universities evolved beyond their traditional roles. Teaching entrepreneurship and innovation in higher education should stay as the basic step, but besides for supporting theoretical learning with tailor-made practices, building links, creating projects in collaboration with regional industry would highly serve to creation of required human resources and knowledge for raising regional entrepreneurship capacity (Binks et al., 2006). Besides, universities are anymore expected both to introduce solutions to social and industrial needs and exploit the knowledge that is created by research. This new mission includes improving wealth by investing in business, by building linkages, partnerships with technological enterprises or by establishing new firms through academic entrepreneurship. Evolution of roles of universities in economic growth received close attention of scholars and found place in multiple disciplines like business management and economics literature and research for decades in developed countries. However there is still a significant need for up-to-date and multidimensional research and studies about the entrepreneurial intentions, activities and contributions of universities to economic growth in developing countries. Findings of this sort of studies can be very helpful to policy makers of these countries in academy, industry and government for utilizing entrepreneurship for economic growth, employment and increasing welfare of their people. In this context, study aims to determine the entrepreneurial intentions of public universities in Turkey by exploring their strategic postures, cultural and organizational units that supplement and support entrepreneurial activities and collaborations. These characteristics of the universities are critically important as they provide a knowledge and practice basis for performing and supporting entrepreneurial activities. Major characteristics of universities that determine their entrepreneurial intentions are derived from theoretical background. By conducting a qualitative content analysis, these characteristics are searched through Web sites of public universities in Turkey in academic year of 2010-2011. Findings regarding entrepreneurial intentions of universities that are reflected in their strategies, culture, institutional infrastructure, collaborations/partnerships can provide evidence about not only current but also potential entrepreneurial behaviors of public universities in Turkey. In the second section theoretical background and literature review of entrepreneurship and dimensions of entrepreneurship intensions of Universities are presented. Third section covers method and research details of the study and then presents the data analysis and hypothesis tests. Finally, results of the analysis and findings are discussed in conclusion section together with recommendations for further studies.

Strategic intentions of universities on acting as entrepreneurs and teaching entrepreneurship is important for understanding the orientation of universities about expanding their roles in economic growth and development. This study analyzed the strategies and organizations of public universities in Turkey for contributing to the expansion of entrepreneurship in the country. Study showed that vast majority of the public universities in Turkey does not emphasize entrepreneurship in their strategic statements; Entrepreneurship education has received higher (but still not sufficient) attention in strategies, hence public universities in Turkey has a higher intention of teaching entrepreneurship rather than acting as entrepreneurs. Another important fact is that universities that emphasize both entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship education in their strategies are very few, although universities that have strategic intention on entrepreneurship are expected to focus on entrepreneurship education naturally. On the other hand, strategic intentions of academic units on entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship education are hig terms of strategic intention on entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship education has to be explored for developing a deeper understanding on the difference between the orientation of units and universities that they are a part of. As strategic management process requires the diffusion of broad/organization wide strategies into functional unit strategies and policies, it is expected that the units in universities that have strategic intentions on entrepreneurship or/and entrepreneurship education have higher intentions on entrepreneurship and/or entrepreneurship education. However, most of the academic units that have strategic statements on entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship education are not in the universities with similar strategic intentions. Therefore, strategic management practices in the studied universities needs to be explored for understanding the related obstacles. Regardless of having strategies on entrepreneurship, significant part of the public universities has entrepreneurship centers. Hence it is concluded that existence of entrepreneurship centers is not dependant on the existence of strategies on entrepreneurship or on entrepreneurship education in these universities. Similarly, more than half of the universities have student entrepreneurship clubs. While entrepreneurship clubs are more common in universities that have strategic statements on entrepreneurship education, existence of these clubs is not dependent on the strategic intentions on entrepreneurship in universities. Majority of public universities in Turkey offer outreach training activities on entrepreneurship in Continuing education/Life Long Learning Centers. Most of the universities that have strategic statements on entrepreneurship or entrepreneurship education are among these universities. However it is still not possible to conclude that offering outreach training activities on entrepreneurship is dependent on the strategic intentions on entrepreneurship or entrepreneurship education, because majority of universities without such intentions also offer similar trainings. Expanding this research to cover also private universities in Turkey will be very useful to see the big picture of entrepreneurial intentions of all higher education institutions in Turkey. Besides research on the other topics showing entrepreneurial intentions and also processes and outcomes of entrepreneurial activities (nr. of ventures, patents, licenses, publications etc.) of universities shall clarify whether these intentions can be effectively realized or not.