Academic Entrepreneurship: the Role of Intrapreneurship in Developing Faculty Job Satisfaction

The academic literature is replete with evidence of the positive benefits associated with nurturing and maintaining an intrapreneurial culture within organizations. However, there is a gap in the literature as to the role intrapreneurship plays within academic institutions, which have historically been reticent to foster and embrace intrapreneurial activity. This study segments the professorate into two groups: Academic entrepreneurs and traditional faculty members, and captures the perceptions of each group relative to the pay, co-worker, supervisor, opportunity, work, and job-in-general dimensions of job satisfaction using the Abridged Job Descriptive Index and Abridged Job-in-General scales. The author defines academic entrepreneurship as engaging in the process of creating and exploiting new opportunities from within the confines of an academic institution. ANOVA was utilized to determine if there were statistically significant differences in the aforementioned dimensions of job satisfaction between academic entrepreneurs and traditional faculty. The findings reveal that 42.5% of respondents view themselves as academic entrepreneurs.