Josef Langer

Intentions and Perceptions of the Entrepreneurial Career Among Croatian Students: Initial Results of a Longitudinal Empirical Study

In this paper, authors analyze the entrepreneurial intentions of the student population at the University of Split, Croatia and relate them to students’ general perceptions of entrepreneurship and its social role/desirability. As the longitudinal data have been collected during the recession in the Croatian economy, this study provides initial empirical results, related to general trends of economic and social treatment of entrepreneurship in South East Europe, in the specific context of a prolonged economic downturn. The empirical findings demonstrate that the perceived desirability of entrepreneurship, as related to students’ primary reference groups (family, friends, peers), influences their entrepreneurial intent. The other factors, which proved as empirically significant in determining the students’ entrepreneurial intent, include the perception of self-efficacy, as well as relevant knowledge and skills. The desirability of an entrepreneurial career in the wider society is not empirically relevant for the surveyed students. The obtained empirical results are discussed from the aspect of improving entrepreneurial education, as well as public policies, related to youth unemployment and the development of entrepreneurial culture among the population of young people in South East Europe.

STEERING PATTERNS IN THE AUSTRIAN UNIVERSITY SYSTEM

Inspired by Burton Clarks “triangle of coor‐dination” whereby a university is steered according to its relationship to “state authority”, the “academic oligarchy”, and the “market”, the author analyses the debate going on in Austrian higher education circles today about the proper way for the universities of the country to be steered. The general proposal is to supersede the University Organization Act of 1975, which had really been a reformulation of the traditional ministerial bureaucratic centralism typical of Austrian university governance, in favour of market‐oriented and decentralized approaches with many of the functions of the Ministry of Science and Research to be handed over to a buffer organization to be created. The chances are, however, that fundamentally very little of current practice will be changed because of the strength of set patterns and because of the inner contradictions within the principal reform proposals.

AUSTRIAN UNIVERSITIES IN TRANSITION: FROM MINISTERIAL CONTROL TO MARKET CO‐ORDINATION

The Austrian discussion on higher education does not use the term, buffer institutions; in fact, if one can generalize, the term is not used on the continent at all. If organizational elements of this kind do exist, they are not considered in this function. Nevertheless, the system of higher education of Austria is presently preparing a major transition in which institutional buffers will be the major organisational innovation The explicit intention of the reform is to move the system of universities in Austria from an increasingly geable bureaucratic steering to a more market‐oriented co‐ordination. This article describes and analyses this process in three steps: a short description of the history and the character of the Austrian university system (with some reference to the educational system in general), a presentation of theoretical reflections on the relationship between University and society including a definition of buffer institutions, and finally, a description of the ongoing developments in Au...