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Purpose: This paper investigates how academic teachers engage in identity work and make sense of entrepreneurship and academia in an entrepreneurship training programme. Design/methodology/approach: By employing a sensemaking approach, the paper inductively analyses materials from a business idea development camp organised for academic teachers. Findings: In collective sensemaking during the camp, non-academic facilitators strongly influenced the reflection-in-experience via normative ideas of entrepreneurship and their othering of entrepreneurship from academic work. In their post-camp individual essays, the academic teachers reflect-on-experience and draw parallels between entrepreneurship and academic work constructing sameness. Research limitations/implications: Longitudinal research is needed in identity work and sensemaking among academic teachers in relation to entrepreneurship. Practical implications: Universities need to offer arenas for teachers and other faculty to support identity work and sensemaking. Originality/value: This study generates new understanding of how academic teachers engage in identity work and make sense of entrepreneurship in training when interacting with others. It underscores the importance of time needed for reflection-on-action.

Employability is an increasing concern for university students. Our survey set out to examine university students' perceptions of their employability and the ways in which these perceptions relate to positions that subsequently connect students to working life: students' self-representational position or "ability self", and students' life-historical positions such as chosen field of study, phase of degree and working life experience. The participants comprised a sample of students (N = 1819) from two Finnish universities, representing diverse fields of study. It was found that apart from the field of study, the perceived proximity to graduation and working life was associated with the perception of employability. Furthermore, a set of self-attributed capabilities was associated with students' perceptions of employability, particularly extroversion, ambitious competitiveness, mental strength and the desired characteristics of a good employee; however, the attribution of academic skills showed opposing effects. It was concluded that both self-representational and live-historical positions are part of the construction of students' optimism regarding their employability.

As universities evolve through mission expansion and grapple with the increasing need to bridge academic work with practical relevance, researchers are finding themselves in the complex terrain of simultaneously embracing their entrepreneurial and academic identities. This study investigates the factors enabling hybrid identity centrality—a conscious recognition of being both an academic and entrepreneurial individual—among university researchers. Drawing on a sample of 312 researchers from two multifaculty universities, the findings show that researchers' perception of a university's entrepreneurship strategy implementation and their society—industry orientation significantly influence the likelihood of hybrid identity centrality. Notably, the society-industry orientation moderates the relationship between entrepreneurship strategy implementation and the adoption of a hybrid identity. The study contributes to the research on the complementarity of academic and entrepreneurial identities and adds novel insights to the organizational research on academic entrepreneurship by suggesting that entrepreneurship strategy alone may not suffice in promoting hybrid identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study was to examine what sort of ability expectations university students have about the requirements of working life, and how the perception of these expectations relate to students' perceptions of their own employability. The participants comprised a sample of students (N = 1819) from two Finnish universities, representing diverse fields of study. They were asked to describe themselves according to a set of abilities and to then indicate those abilities that would be particularly important for them in the labour market. It was found that being stable and getting along with others were the most commonly considered generic capabilities for coping in working life. Furthermore, those university students who identified entrepreneurial skills and extroversion as predominant ability requirements were prone to have relatively pessimistic perceptions of their employability possibilities. Accordingly, the results of the study suggest that students' views of their expected abilities tend to shape their perceptions of their employment prospects, particularly with regard to entrepreneurial skills.

Entrepreneurship may be the only viable solution for finding employment in rural areas because of their limited labor markets. However, how curricular and extracurricular entrepreneurial activities can support the entrepreneurial potential of rural youth remains a question. Using a mixed-methods approach, we investigate the impact of curricular and extracurricular entrepreneurial activities on rural adolescents' entrepreneurial self-efficacy (ESE) and desirability. Our findings show that extracurricular entrepreneurial activities, especially inventive and commercial ones, enhance both ESE and entrepreneurial desirability, but formal curricular entrepreneurial activities do not. Our study highlights how extracurricular entrepreneurial activities can support young people's perceptions of their entrepreneurial potential while allowing them to explore and exploit local entrepreneurial opportunities. These activities are vital for rural areas to enable rural youth to see opportunities in their local surroundings and consider entrepreneurship as a career option early in life. The implications suggest that rural entrepreneurship education could leverage naturally occurring opportunities for leisure-time entrepreneurial activities in rural areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The preoccupation within executive education with addressing relevance and resource constraints, with developing the capacity of participants to become reflexive practitioners, and with sustaining long-lasting change in organizations calls for new innovations and formats for executive education. Building on theories of the collective creation of value and learning communities, and employing a methodology based on narrative ethnography, we empirically investigate how collective creation is facilitated to develop a learning community in executive education with a longitudinal study of learning camps. The study and its findings demonstrate how improvisational theater activities can strengthen collective creation to foster the development of a learning community, and how the sense of community supports collective creation. The study develops a framework for developing executive learning communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates how fatherhood (or the prospect thereof) shapes entrepreneurial masculinities. Drawing on constructivist grounded theory, we analyze 22 life story interviews with Finnish men technology founders and identify three entrepreneurial masculinities enacted by men to accommodate concurrent normative ideals at the intersection of work and family life. These entrepreneurial masculinities alternatively maintain, restructure, and resist entrepreneurial and parental hegemonic masculinities and are subject to generational and situational scripts. We contribute to the gender and entrepreneurship literature by revealing that the neoliberal new father discourse blurs hegemonic masculinities leading entrepreneurial masculinities to emerge as hybrid hegemonic masculinities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore how self-employed entrepreneurs commit themselves to an entrepreneurship training programme and how such commitment relates to their perceptions of learning. Design/methodology/approach: The data were collected through qualitative, inductive methods by interviewing and observing six entrepreneurs who took part in an entrepreneurship training programme. Findings: The study reveals that entrepreneurial activities and a strong attachment to entrepreneurship may detach entrepreneurs from an entrepreneurship community. Generally, participants appreciated the social aspect of learning, peer support, and confidence-building provided by the programme and the learning community. Nevertheless, the participation was a double-edged sword: it allowed those who were not active in entrepreneurship to explore entrepreneurship, but for those who were active in entrepreneurship and in professional communities, their participation represented a potential liability and a threat to their image as a credible entrepreneur. Research limitations/implications: More research is needed on the social aspect related to training programmes particularly focusing on potential adverse outcomes, such as over-embeddedness in the community. Practical implications: Training programme organizers could benefit from understanding the social aspects of learning in emphasizing the role of peer support but also of the potential dark sides of socializing. Originality/value: The study offers insight into the relationship between commitment and learning in micro firms, and it contributes to a deeper understanding of the way community and social relationships facilitate or impede learning by self-employed entrepreneurs. There is a risk that the social aspect of peer support and the community replaces entrepreneurs' need to "go out there" and expose themselves to learning from experience.

Purpose: This paper aims to address the impact of a person's motivation to study entrepreneurship on their subsequent levels of performance in terms of the generation of business ideas, while taking into account the effect of student team behaviour. Design/methodology/approach: The paper hypothesises that both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation as well as team behaviour influence the learning outcome and that team behaviour moderates the relationship between motivation and learning outcomes. A survey was used to generate data. A total of 117 students, who participated in pre-programme, and post-programme surveys, provided the sample data. First, explorative factor analyses were employed to examine the latent variables. Second, hierarchical lineal regression analyses were carried out to test the proposed hypotheses. Findings: It was found that intrinsic motivation has a negative effect on the learning outcome while extrinsic motivation had a positive one. However, the team (and in particular the resources that become available) positively moderates the relationship between the intrinsic motivation and the outcomes. Research limitations/implications: The paper contributes to the evaluation and research practices of different entrepreneurship education initiatives. The data are derived solely from business students, a factor that may cause bias in the results. In addition, the paper relied on self-assessed perceptions of learning outcomes, since the stakeholder evaluations were team-level measurements. Practical implications: Students on entrepreneurship education programmes have different forms of motivation for studying entrepreneurship, and those tend to affect their satisfaction with the outcome of their studies. Using teams on an entrepreneurship course seems to generate more positive outcomes for students with both low and high intrinsic motivation, but particularly among the latter group. Ultimately, the results suggest the need for greater flexibility in course design. Originality/value: The paper contributes to the theoretical understanding of how entrepreneurial learning outcomes are affected by student motivation and team behaviour. It makes an original contribution in distinguishing between an extrinsic and an intrinsic motivation to study entrepreneurship, and highlights the effect on learning outcomes of resources acquired through team behaviour. It also illustrates an opportunity to study the impact of entrepreneurship education, particularly when the creation of a new venture is not an immediate objective of the course. (Contains 4 tables and 2 figures.)