Entrepreneurial Competences and School Leadership As a Topic in Slovenian Bibliography

Janez Drobnič, PhD

UniversityofPrimorska, Faculty of Education

Koper, Slovenia

Entrepreneurial Competences and School Leadership as a Topic in Slovenian Bibliography

Entrepreneurial competences and school leadership in Slovenia

In Slovenia the concept of entrepreneurship only emerged at the end of the 1980s, with the change of the political and economic system, when after 50 years of statist social order the market system of economic functioning was re-established. The key legal foundation for the introduction of entrepreneurship was the Act on Enterprises[1], which was adopted in 1988.

In Slovenia the historical circumstances with socialist socio-economic system did not allow the development of entrepreneurship, as neither economic nor political conditions of entrepreneurship were fulfilled. Consequences show even today both in attitudes toward entrepreneurship and related topics as well as in the number of enterprises, the structure of businesses according to size,and also in the assertion of entrepreneurial properties in other, “non-economic” areas. Hagett (in Morrison, 1998, p. 7) claims namely historic events that allowed the development of individualistic or collectivistic mentalities characteristically show in the response (acceptance or rejection) of people to entrepreneurship and vice versa.

Entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial competences in the area of education, once a key system of the state, appear with a delay in time in Slovenia, because entrepreneurship first began in the business sector, and only later in the area of education. In comparison to western countries all this puts Slovenia into a slightly different position. This would mean a logical consequence in the bibliographical area: it could be expected at least in the first periods these topics, and particularly entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial competences in the school area in the context of school leadership, would appear less in publications.

The incidence of this topic might as well have been influenced by the value and cultural patterns in Slovenia. As analysis shows (Žnidaršič, 2003), in Slovenia we are not in favour of a reduced role of the social state and neither in favour of risk taking and of social differences. Besides, we could also speak about a specific national character, where primarily orientation towards oneself, psychoticism, neuroticism, diligence, discipline, etc. are expressed (Musek, 1994), which means only a few of the psychological characteristics of Slovenians coincide with psychological features of entrepreneurs (Ristič, 2004). Also other authors state among the factors that contribute to the development of entrepreneurship probably the most important ones are a set of social values and adequate social, economic, and political institutions which legally regulate and promote the detection of entrepreneurial opportunities (Reynolds, Hay, Camp, 1999, p. 43). In the case of Slovenia we can thus speak about the development of a national character that is less in favour of entrepreneurship and strives morefor social equality, existential security without risk, which might have consequences for the assertion of the attributes of entrepreneurship in the context of the school system, education and training, and in performing the role of headteacher in Slovenian schools. The consequence of the character and the features and preferences probably also shows in the specific structure of public and private schools, where we conclude among European countries Slovenia is at the top of the scale[2] (OECD, 2012, p. 19) concerning the representation of public schools in the whole structure of the school system.

Entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial competences in leading schools in Slovenia through a reflection of bibliographic units

Research in the outcomes of introducing entrepreneurship into school leadership is extremely scarce. We do not know the reasons for this. This is why we were interested in finding how entrepreneurial expressions are perceived in dealing with the topic of school leadership in literature and especially in professional magazines that deal with school leadership. An aspect of emphasising entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial competences in school leadership is also how these expressions are reflected in the literature on this field. Incidence of the topic in literature indicates the relevance of an individual topic in the perception of professional and scientific public of a certain area and how important this topic is for thispublic.

Methodology

The method of analysis of bibliographic units according to the criterion of frequency of incidence of individual terms or combinations of terms (2 to 4 terms) belonging to a reference frame of the characteristics of entrepreneurial leadership was applied. For the purpose of the research we formed two groups of combinations of terms, namely:

1. Core expressions of entrepreneurship and education with emphasis on leadership; this group includes expressions like:

-entrepreneurial leadership / schools,

-competences and leadership / schools,

-entrepreneurship / school,

-entrepreneur and headteacher,

-profit / schools,

-commercial leadership / school.

1. Non-core entrepreneurial terms referring to school leadership:

-Innovation / in school,

-autonomy / in school,

-efficiency / in school,

-responsibility / in school,

-proactive / leadership / in school,

-assuming / risk / in school,

-ethical leadership / in school,

-vision in leadership / in school.

We examined how these words (phrases) appear in Slovenian professional and scientific literature. We did this by filtering the application of the above words or phrases first filtering the key words of the bibliographical unit and as the second the title text of the unit. Based on this procedure we obtained the number of bibliographical units in which the term or the combination of terms is used.

The analysis of incidence does not show in what context the phrase appears nor whether it is defined with a positive or with a negative connotation.

Limitations and conditions for the performance of the analysis:

All the bibliographical units both in materialised and in electronic form that appear in all collections of COBISS[3] were included in the analysis. Only the bibliographical units that were published in the period 1990-2015 were included in the analysis, with a comparison also made in the second part of the analysis to 2005 with the bibliography between 2000 and 2015.

We only analysed Slovenian literature, as through creating professional and scientific works this the most directly indicates the reflection of the topic of entrepreneurial school leadership in Slovenian area.

Filtering on the basis of basic terms is rather complicated in Slovenian, as the Slovenian knows declension of nouns and adjectives and comparison of adjectives, which means different suffixes to the words that define entrepreneurial leadership. This selection is more sensitive in titles, as here the declension of words occurs and thus the variation of suffixes. We solved this by allowing variation, which means all nouns and adjectives with all modifications are included. In the selection of key words of the texts of bibliographical units there are fewer problems of this type.

Results and interpretation

Incidence of core terms of entrepreneurial leadership in the area of education and schools

Table 1: Search area: Selected key words of the content and selected words of titles of bibliographical work in the period 2000-2015

On 14 August 2015 the interactive database COBIB.SI – the cooperative bibliographical catalogue database contained 4662329 bibliographical records. This means a 0.37 % share of bibliographical units have terms related to school leadership in the list of key words.

First we were interested to examine, how in the lists of key words of bibliographical units the group of more “core” terms in the area of entrepreneurship and school leadership appears. We decided to choose six terms, namely: entrepreneurship, competences, profit, entrepreneur, headteacher, and commerce. These are the terms that in connection with other attributes belong to the core – hard entrepreneurial framework.

The share of core terms of entrepreneurship in the school or educational area is on average 4.31 %. This means in twenty bibliographical units in the area of entrepreneurship an individual term also appears among the key words in the school or educational area, which points to the level of intensity of transfer of these terms to school or educational area. An assessment whether this is a lot or little could be made by comparing the results with those in other countries, but according to the relevance of the topic reflected in the programme and political documents at EU level we could claim it is relatively low, as it does not even reach a 5 % share of incidence in literature in general, without judging about the relevance of entrepreneurial features for leading school (public) institutions.

The highest proportion of incidence of typically entrepreneurial terms in literature that also deals with school and education area was found with the terms “entrepreneurship” (13.13%), which is relatively well represented also in Slovenian bibliography after 2000. Here a more in-depth analysis would be needed to find what this means in detail. Entrepreneurship as such appears namely at all levels of education, especially of economists, entrepreneurs, etc., last but not least also as learning topics in public schools and only certain part of it is related to school leadership.

Another relatively high proportion of words, 8.64 % incidence of words related with entrepreneurial leadership among the key words of bibliographical units, was determined with the combination of words “competences AND leadership”. This combination of words is perhaps less “hard entrepreneurial” and more general, but it does speak about competences that are necessary for leading schools, as headteachers obviously need them to be able to lead schools in the challenging and dynamic business environment.

The combination of words “entrepreneur and leader/headteacher” is also above the measured average value (6.31%), which indicates a light emphasis of this topic directly in the area of school leadership.

Very low shares of incidence of terms from entrepreneurship among the key words in the bibliography, which refers to schools, weredetermined with the phrase “entrepreneurial leadership” (1.23%) and especially with “profit” (0.57%) and “commercial leadership” (0.26%) that show a less significant level of incidence below 1%.

Incidence of words in bibliographical units – less core properties

In Table 2 below we display the expressions that are related to entrepreneurial leadership, but are more universal and “non-core” entrepreneurial, appearing in Slovenian bibliographical units from 2000 to 2015 (criterion: key words).

First we are interested in the period from 2000 to 2015.

Table 2: Incidence of non-core expressions of entrepreneurial leadership in Slovenian bibliographical units (key words)

The average shares of non-core terms from the area of entrepreneurial leadership in schools among the key words of bibliography are more than three times larger (M=17.75%) than with core words of entrepreneurship (4.31%). The share is the largest at the term responsibility (55.58), which in education appears even more than in other areas, pointing to a very high relevance of these properties in organisationalleadershipin school area. In the bibliography of education significantly lower, yet still high, incidence of the terms autonomy (22.44%) and vision (20.00%) was determined, which means in the context of education these terms appear in every fourth or every fifth bibliography. Below the level of the computed average values we find “ethical leadership” (13.46%), and the least frequently efficiency (5.59 %) and networking (3.95%) with the latter attribute not reaching the 5 % incidence in the context of school leadership and leadership in education, which has been set as a kind of limit.

Comparison of the periods 1990—2005 and 2000—2015

Now we would also like to know how the terms related to the concepts of entrepreneurial school leadership appear in Slovenian bibliographical units; let us first have a look at core terms.

Table 3: Key words in Slovenian bibliographical units in the selected periods 2000—2015 and 1990—2005 that possess the characteristics of core attributes in the topic of entrepreneurial school leadership

The key finding based on the above data is the number of core expressions of entrepreneurship in bibliographical units have increased over the last fifteen years (17094 /11400). This relation was found in all expressions.

In the compared periods 1990—2005 and 2000—2015, however, the trends are the opposite in the area of education – they have prevailingly decreased (1526 and 2036). Concerning entrepreneurial leadership in the area of education the relationships are not the same as in general, because recently its relevance has obviously decreased seen comparatively with the situation in general; only with the term entrepreneur / leader / headteacher it has obviously increased (other data indicating increase not being reliable, because the frequencies are 0, 1, or 2). With other terms it has remained at the same level or has decreased.

With non-core expressions of entrepreneurial leadership in general we conclude its incidence in bibliographical units has been significantly increasing in recent years (1566035913).

Table 4: Non-core entrepreneurial expressions in Slovenian bibliographical units in selected periods 2000—2015 and 1990—2005

Even greater growth is identified when these expressions are placed into the topic of school and education leadership, as the total growth over the compared periods is nearly five times

(9394571).The largest levels of growth were identified with autonomy (146.17) and responsibility (6.48) and the smallest with vision for leadership (1.20), which is still 20% growth.

Summary of interpretations

Based on the analysis of incidence of expressions of entrepreneurship in the area of school leadership we can draw some key conclusions:

-Core expressions of entrepreneurship in the area of education such as commercial, profit, entrepreneurial leadership appear less frequently in recent periods, which indicates these expressions and ideas have been becoming less interesting as research and analytical topics of authors and researchers, who reluctantly and less frequently include them into their research topics.

-Less core expressions such as autonomy, responsibility, proactivity, innovation, have, recently been gaining on relevance and therefore appear more frequently in the topics of bibliographical units in Slovenia.

Incidence of these contents of entrepreneurial leadership in the area of education has recently indeed been more noticeable, yet only of those that are not directly related to basic elements of entrepreneurship. This indicates Slovenian authors include the “hard elements of entrepreneurship” into the area of education to a lesser extent.

Conclusion and implications

With the analysis of incidence of some attributes of entrepreneurial leadership we have determined to what extent entrepreneurial behaviour or entrepreneurial approaches in the area of school leadership have been established in Slovenia. This is indeed only one of the possible approaches, which can be relevant in addition to others that would be useful to be performed.

The analysis has indicated that classical and core entrepreneurial aspects have been established less than the softer ones, which become recognised through the expressions of innovation, creativity, proactivity, autonomy, etc. All the latter properties also represent the basis for establishment of greater shifts in the area of schooling that are set in the current strategy of the EU on education policies and are also binding for Slovenia.

With these conclusions probably a majority of those involved in education would agree. We are asking, however, what extent and what kind of entrepreneurial approaches are appropriate in the field of compulsory education. It has proved, namely, introduction of some elements of entrepreneurial leadership is necessary and urgent, as it increases the successfulness and efficiency of schools. Concerning this we can conclude Slovenian environment and national character do not support the introduction of harder entrepreneurial attributes into the area of school leadership. If the entrepreneurial character is desired in education, we can ask withHentschke (2009) should thenthe present school leaders start introducing a personal vision of school, personal leadership and personal identification with public school, the way it is done in private companies.

The question could also be formulated in a different way: would the processes of innovation, creativity, flexible response, taking account of desires of individuals and of other unquestionable goals of education be achieved on the basis of classical administrative school leadership? With what interventions could this be achieved if it is necessary to guarantee the necessary change defined in the strategies for education in EU member states? The tendencies towards schools with such quality attributes have also been set in EU strategies and programmes, it has, however not been specified what circumstances are needed for these goals also to be really achieved and not just to remain at declarative level. If it is not necessary to take account of the circumstances, could then the conclusions of our analysis be interpreted in the way, for the implementation of restructuring of schools and increase in their quality the establishment of “soft” entrepreneurial properties will do—without establishing the entrepreneurial environment identified via the attributes of core entrepreneurship—and the processes of innovation, autonomy and responsibility will be released, then?

This is why it is about the issue of feasibility – is it necessary to provide for stimulating environment to achieve shifts in education, which means it is also necessary to change the environment in which schools will operate? Kurilsky and Hentschke (2003) support the way of real entrepreneurial environment. They speak about the question of the so-called social constraint, which strengthens new legal forms of schooling, or that more difficult circumstances guarantee the flourishing of entrepreneurial behaviour in education. They group these constraints roughly into increase of demand and increase of supply – increase of requirements in the sense of better quality of schools for students. This is actually the process where individuals in the market environment rather than one client—public, state, or local institutions—become contractors and customersof education services.