Impact of Human Resource Management Practices and Culture on Promoting Academic Entrepreneurship in Sri Lanka

Abstract

Academic entrepreneurship has been identified as the third mission for the universities, and recognized that there are opportunities for earning extra income through commercialization of university research and innovations. Many universities in the world adopt different academic entrepreneurship strategies and to promote them internal organizational environment has a major influence. Specially the human resources management practices and the entrepreneurial culture of the universities. Sri Lanka is a developing nation interesting in promoting academic entrepreneurship in public universities. In promoting academic entrepreneurship in these universities, authorities needs to identify how the internal environment will impact on it from Sri Lankan context. However, there is a lacuna of research which have been done to identify this relationship. This study intends to fill this gap by identifying the impact of present human resource management practices and university cultural on promoting academic entrepreneurship strategies adopted by the public universities in Sri Lanka. The study used deductive methodology and developed two declarative hypotheses on human resource management systems and organizational culture to identify its impact on entrepreneurial strategies adopted by universities in Sri Lankan. This quantitative study was conducted using four public universities in the western province, Sri Lanka. Primary data were used for the analysis and the primary data collected through structured questionnaires and interviews. Finally, outcomes of this research identified that human resource management systems and organizational culture contribute to promote academic entrepreneurship in Sri Lanka public universities.