Charlotte Silander

Commissioning the University of Excellence: Swedish research policy and new public research funding programmes

In many countries, current research policy is dominated by managerialism and excellence, manifesting the aim of making universities into national strategic assets in the globally competitive knowledge economy. This article discusses these policy trends and their mirror in recent developments in public funding for academic research, with special attention to Sweden. A review of the language in three consecutive Swedish governmental research bills from the past 10 years shows a clear policy shift towards the promotion of excellence and strategic priority on the level of higher education institutions. Reforms to the funding system, especially the launch of specific strategic excellence funding programmes, are introduced to put the policy in practice. While the policy shift itself might be discursive, the changes to the funding system clearly show a determination on behalf of the Swedish government to increase strategic profiling and the pursuit of excellence in research on behalf of universities.

Gender Equality in Swedish Higher Education: Patterns and Shifts.

In most European countries, more women than men attend undergraduate Higher Education (HE) and more women than men obtain degrees. In Sweden the proportion of female students has long been in the vicinity of 51–60%. The number of doctoral entrants and degrees meet a “balanced gender criterion,” defined as no sex constituting more than 60% of the population. Still the unequal gender structure of higher positions persists: men tend to hold the top positions, especially as professors. Explaining this inertia is the main theme of this article. Differences between horizontal and vertical analyses are focused on, and changes due to gender balance during 1999–2007 are shown. Variations in career patterns over research areas are highlighted. Finally, hypotheses are formulated and approaches for further studies on gender balance in HE are discussed.

Political Entrepreneurs and Women´s Entrepreneurship

Women as entrepreneurs are on the political agenda in most European countries. The creation of businesses is considered to be an important way to keep the economy growing. Women are especially targeted as a potential group in order to increase the number of self-employed on the labour market since they are comparatively few. Policies to promote entrepreneurship have rapidly been more and more directed towards higher education. This approach has resulted in an increase in the number of entrepreneurship education programmes at universities and a higher expectation for graduates to become self-employed. There is, however, limited empirical research into how political entrepreneurs in Sweden pushed for, and succeeded in, promoting employment and entrepreneurship among women. Political entrepreneurs in the area of women’s entrepreneurship act within a policy frame that almost exclusively limits policy and action to the individual; that is, it focuses on ‘changing the women’ in order to fit them into the expectations of society, and lacks structurally oriented actions to really change the possibilities for women’s entrepreneurship. How these political entrepreneurs act and interact to support female entrepreneurship needs to be studied more closely in the future in empirical studies at the micro level to provide greater knowledge of political entrepreneurship.

Introduction: the political entrepreneur for regional growth and entrepreneurial diversity

Using social science and economics perspectives, the goal of this study is to complement the dominant business administration research on entrepreneurship by increasing our knowledge about the economic-political context in which entrepreneurship and private enterprise are conducted. This book explores the role of political entrepreneurs for regional growth and entrepreneurial diversity in Sweden. We define a political entrepreneur as a politician/bureaucrat/officer/department within the publicly funded sector who with innovative approaches encourages entrepreneurship/business and where the goals are growth, employment and the common good. The approach of this book is to enrich the established research on entrepreneurship with in-depth knowledge of the conditions for entrepreneurship in Sweden. The main focus of study is the role that the political entrepreneur might play in promoting entrepreneurship, enterprise and entrepreneurial diversity in the Swedish economy.

Political entrepreneurship: final remarks

This book has explored the role of political entrepreneurship in promoting growth, entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial diversity in Sweden. The different chapters have contributed to a greater understanding of one or more themes of the book: (1) political entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship; (2) political entrepreneurship and regional growth; and (3) political entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial diversity. Although several chapters referred to Nordic, European and European Union (EU) conditions, the analytical focus was on Sweden, with the book providing several case and comparative illustrations on Swedish political entrepreneurship in regional and local settings. By exploring political entrepreneurship in Sweden, we believe that this book has contributed to broader insights on favourable and unfavourable conditions for entrepreneurship that transcends Swedish borders.