The Architecture of Stakeholder Collaboration: Unpacking Institutional Enablers and Constraints in University Entrepreneurship Education

Entrepreneurship education (EE) has gained global prominence as a driver of innovation, employment, and economic development. In Nigeria, however, its implementation remains constrained by inadequate policies, weak coordination, and misaligned stakeholder priorities. These challenges are not merely operational but conceptually interconnected. Fragmented policy frameworks generate regulatory ambiguity, which in turn weakens coordination among universities, industries, and government actors (Bunmi and Taiwo, 2017). This misalignment shapes the design and delivery of EE, often resulting in overly theoretical curricula, limited industry engagement, and a gap between entrepreneurial learning and venture creation. Although collaboration is widely recognised as essential to effective EE ecosystems, much of the existing literature conceptualises collaboration through narrow dyadic lenses, such as university–industry or university–government partnerships, thereby overlooking the multi-actor dynamics through which institutional pressures and stakeholder incentives interact to shape educational outcomes (Fayolle and Gailly, 2015). To address this gap, this study integrates institutional theory (Scott, 2014) with stakeholder collaboration perspectives (Freeman, 1984) to examine how regulative, normative, and cultural cognitive forces structure the design, delivery, and outcomes of EE in Nigerian universities. Adopting an interpretivist paradigm, this study employs a qualitative methodology comprising semi-structured interviews with twelve stakeholders and four focus group discussions with thirty one students across four universities in Southwest Nigeria. Thematic analysis reveals complex relational dynamics between institutional pressures and stakeholder interests. Fragmented policy implementation and regulatory ambiguity contribute to organisational silos and limit coordinated engagement across the EE ecosystem. Divergent stakeholder expectations expose role and value misalignments, while limited awareness and legitimacy perceptions signal a fragile cultural cognitive foundation for EE. By linking institutional pressures to patterns of stakeholder collaboration, this study advances EE scholarship through a context-sensitive qualitative framework. The findings suggest that strengthening EE requires not only curricular reform but also the alignment of institutional incentives and collaborative governance mechanisms capable of sustaining integrated stakeholder ecosystems

Name dc:type.qualificationname

PhD

Level dc:type.qualificationlevel

Doctoral

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

De Montfort University

Year dc:date.issued

2025

Author dc:creator

• Akinboro, Olajumoke Tayo

Licence

• https://dora.dmu.ac.uk/bitstreams/75d890a0-5fa1-4eb3-9bbb-b5c9428cfb6c/download