Academic’s Motivation for Entrepreneurial Engagement: A Systematic Literature Review

The role of faculty in making a university Entrepreneurial is crucial, so is the research on what motivates the faculty to be entrepreneurial. This article is a Systematic Literature Review (SLR), done to find out factors motivating faculty to be ‘entrepreneurial’. Initially bibliometric analysis was done to understand the extent at which research is done on the topic. In all, 59 relevant articles (1995–2023) were selected for SLR. ‘Entrepreneurial motivation’ of faculty is considered to be a niche and less explored area of study due to which building strong propositions becomes a challenge. Majority of studies are of advanced and resource rich economies and applying those to resource constraint situation cannot be considered as an ideal situation. These research gaps are located by this article. Factors motivating faculties to get engaged in entrepreneurial activities were analysed. Existing research has classified motivational factors as intrinsic and extrinsic, in ‘resource constraint’ (push forces) and ‘resource-rich’ (pull forces) environment. The literature states that academicians tend to do explorative activities rather than commercialization related activities. This study has informed about various factors of entrepreneurial motivation which can be used for building instruments for measuring motivation of academic entrepreneurs. The study findings have a strong proposition for the need of empirical research on entrepreneurial motivation of faculty members which is the future scope of research.