Academic entrepreneurship in South Africa: testing for entrepreneurial intentions

Abstract

Recognising the importance of academic entrepreneurship, which has been steadily increasing, we empirically test and extend the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) by incorporating institutional and organizational factors. We assemble a sample of research scientists in South Africa and administer a survey to empirically test the study hypotheses with structural equation modelling. Importantly, what sets this study’s results apart from comparable studies in entrepreneurial intentions is the dominance of attitude towards behaviour over the other antecedents. This effect demonstrates that awareness of, and exposure to, different aspects of entrepreneurship are likely to play an important role in shaping beliefs and attitudes towards academic entrepreneurship. By integrating various predictors of entrepreneurial intentions into one cohesive framework, policy makers may better understand the complementary nature of the different individual and contextual variables effecting entrepreneurial intentions. A further contribution of our study relates to evidence of the consistency of the TPB in explaining entrepreneurial intention in the South African academic entrepreneurship context. Such evidence is particularly relevant when considering that past research typically assumes but does not test that theories can be transferred from developed to emerging country contexts.