Entrepreneurship at Community Colleges: Linking Orientation to Practice

Abstract

The current study uses a sample of community colleges to explore the specific organizational practices that mediate the link between entrepreneurial orientation and performance. The study focuses on a set of practices known as strategic enrollment management and finds that a college's entrepreneurial orientation predicts its enrollment management orientation and the effectiveness of specific enrollment management practices for recruitment and retention. However, none of the constructs were associated with higher admission, graduation, or retention rates. The implications of these findings for theory, practice, and future research are then discussed.