Impact of groups on academic entrepreneurs in Sri Lanka

Abstract

The intention of this paper is to explore the types of groups that academics involve in and their impact towards the entrepreneurialism of individual faculty members in Sri Lanka. Plenty of prior researches were conducted to analyze the academic entrepreneurship phenomenon based on developed countries, but not many studies were in developing countries like Sri Lanka. Primary data were collected through semistructured, face-to-face interviews with thirty faculty members from selected three universities in Sri Lanka. The results were analyzed through qualitative approach and findings depicted a variance in group impact according to the demographics of the universities such as age and proximity to the highly industrialized urban area of the country and the years of working experience of individual university lecturers. Finally, seven research propositions were posited to shed light on future research of academic entrepreneurs in developing countries with inadequate university-industry linkages.