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Fostering an
Fostering an entrepreneurial entrepreneurial
attitude – challenging in attitude
principal leadership
Maj-Lis Hörnqvist 551
Department of Political Sciences, Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden, and
Received 8 May 2013
Eva Leffler Revised 17 June 2013
Department of Education, Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden Accepted 29 July 2013

Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to uncover the meaning of entrepreneurship in schools and
a school leadership which aims to nurture an entrepreneurial attitude. The authors will also discuss
what challenges there could be for principals to lead activities to develop an entrepreneurial attitude to
learning and teaching.
Design/methodology/approach – The paper integrates policy documents and scientific material
concerning entrepreneurial attitude, leadership and school culture.
Findings – In Sweden as well as internationally there are clear policy intentions for renewal of
schoolwork in a more entrepreneurial direction. The most striking challenges for principals are to be
enough creative within the boarders set by school authorities when setting vision and goals for the
development of their schools to enhance an entrepreneurial attitude, building trust and distributing
power among staff, along with having courage to think outside “the box”.
Research limitations/implications – The point of departure is entrepreneurial attitude in education
as understood in a Swedish context. International policies as well as research are discussed.
Practical implications – The paper illuminates strategic ways of thinking and acting according to
leadership in an entrepreneurial learning school context.
Originality/value – The role of principals as well as the significance of culture in a school context
focused on developing an entrepreneurial attitude is quite often discussed in research. School differs
from business in that there are more restrictions set by school authorities. The paper shows an
undeveloped area which can be useful to identify and problematize challenges for leadership.
Keywords Leadership, Policy, Challenges, Principal, Entrepreneurial attitude
Paper type Viewpoint

Introduction
Entrepreneurship as a concept is a concern in many countries’ policy documents and
curricula. However, entrepreneurship can be a somewhat controversial issue in schools,
as the concept has ideological and political connotations ( Johannisson et al., 2010),
although big implementation efforts are made on national and international levels.
Our aim is to uncover the meaning of entrepreneurship in schools and a school
leadership that aims to nurture an entrepreneurial attitude. We will also discuss what
challenges there could be for principals to lead activities to develop an entrepreneurial
attitude to learning and teaching.
Given that western societies in the twenty-first century are characterized by rapid
changes that are hard to predict, one of the major tasks of schools is to provide young
Education þ Training
Vol. 56 No. 6, 2014
The authors are grateful to Professor Elisabet Nihlfors, University of Uppsala, Sweden and pp. 551-561
r Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Professor Paul Bredeson, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA, for important comments and 0040-0912
challenging questions. DOI 10.1108/ET-05-2013-0064
ET people with the knowledge and requisite skills to be able to cope with these changes.
56,6 Burns (2008) argues that the educational goal for a successful education is to prepare
students for future life and the skills they need in order to create a good life in
the world. Arguments that are usually expressed are on the one hand increased
employment and on the other greater motivation and deeper learning among students.
Throughout the ages, learning has been a prerequisite for survival, so the development
552 of knowledge and skills is a subject that in various ways engages many people. A large
number of citizens are in different ways involved in the education sector, and there
is an ongoing discussion in the western countries about schools and students’
knowledge development. The epistemological discussion today has developed into no
longer understanding learning as mainly an individual cognitive phenomenon. Focus
has shifted towards seeing the entire learning person in a context. In school it is about
the importance of the learning environment both inside and outside the classroom.
One assumption is that teaching is contextually grounded and that school culture
is implicitly present in parts of what has been written about entrepreneurship in
education with the purpose of developing enterprising people through the process of
learning (Gibb, 1993). In this respect, we consider school principals to be important,
because they are ultimately responsible for creating a supportive culture and learning
environment. This is also supported by Maslowski (2006) when he states that to
understand the context in which an entrepreneurial attitude is supposed to take place,
school culture is of special interest because it guides the behaviour of principals and
teachers working there, and also their attitudes to change.
We will start by setting the policy context and then continue with a brief overview
of some significant concepts relating to learning, before we discuss entrepreneurial
attitudes in relation to leadership and school culture.

Theoretical context
Entrepreneurship research and policy have presented entrepreneurship education as
a magical means to change attitudes among schools to working towards development
and long-term growth in society (cf. Holmgren and From, 2005). Unemployment among
young people as well as changing needs of societies are presented as reasons why
the concept of entrepreneurship has been raised on the education policy agendas of
most European countries (European Commission, 2004). At the supranational level, the
European Commission, OECD, The World Bank and UNESCO, as well as the national
level, in this case the Swedish National Agency for Education (Skolverket), have all
produced policy documents for entrepreneurship in the education system. The Swedish
school policy for entrepreneurship is based on the Strategy for Entrepreneurship in the
Area of Education (Government Offices of Sweden, 2009). The purpose of this policy is
to stimulate creativity among young people and to encourage them to develop new
ideas and to transform these ideas into practice, although the main focus in this
strategy is on starting and running businesses. However, development in this area has
not yet been successful even though entrepreneurship in this case has become a
concern for schools since the end of the last century (Sjøvoll, 2011).
The background to the Swedish strategy can be found at the European policy level
(Mahieu, 2006) but there are also counterparts outside Europe (Leffler et al., 2010).
In policy documents such as those issued by OECD and EU, entrepreneurship
is mentioned as a concern for schools and education from the end of the 1980s. This is
done with reference to the acceleration of social transformation and the changing
skill requirements that these documents impose on the individual (OECD, 1989).
The European Commission (2004) states, for example that entrepreneurship should Fostering an
not be viewed simply as a way of creating new businesses, but should also be entrepreneurial
considered as a general attitude that everyone can benefit from in their daily lives and
in all types of work. That is a reason why entrepreneurship is described as one of eight attitude
key competences for lifelong learning (European Communities, 2007). One basic
assumption made at the policy level is that entrepreneurship can be taught and that an
entrepreneurial approach in school has a positive impact on students’ motivation and 553
learning. In Europe 2020 entrepreneurship is also emphasized as a perspective that
should be included in the member countries’ policies in relation to education (European
Commission, 2010). Several discussions indicate a cultural adoption of the concept of
entrepreneurship of what can be described as a global curriculum, although there are
significant contextual differences between the countries (Kyrö, 2005; Leffler et al., 2010).
Internationally as well as nationally, there is a big coherence between the curriculum
and the entrepreneurial approach in other policy documents for schools (European
Commission, 2002, 2004; Government Offices of Sweden, 2009; OECD, 1989; QAA, 2012).
Our interpretation is that these core attributes could have implications for principals’
leadership and building an entrepreneurial school culture.
In an educational context entrepreneurship can be understood in two ways ( Johnson,
1988; Erkkilä, 2000); entrepreneurship education, or a narrow approach, i.e. education
in starting and running businesses and enterprise education, or a broad approach,
with a focus on abilities that characterize entrepreneurs, like “opportunity seeking,
initiative taking, making things happen independently, problem solving and risk taking,
commitment to work and tasks, and ability to cope with or enjoy uncertainty and
ambiguity” (Gibb, 1993, p. 14). In general, the broad approach is targeted at younger
students, i.e. students should be given opportunities to develop an entrepreneurial
attitude. In Sweden as well as in other Nordic counties, entrepreneurship is described
in a broad way where the emphasis is on the process both at an individual and a public
level (Sjøvoll, 2011). In several countries there seems to be a general agreement that
entrepreneurial learning and teaching should include both a broad and a narrow
understanding (Leffler, 2009). In some countries, for example in USA, Great Britain and
South Africa, the emphasis is primarily placed on the narrow understanding, although
discussions have been held about paying greater attention to the broader understanding
(North, 2002; Hill, 2003; Jones and Iredale, 2010).
Also in the new Swedish Education Act (2010:800, 2010), the Swedish Government
suggests that the concept of knowledge should be given a broader meaning so that the
education should also promote children’s and students’ all-round personal development
towards becoming active, creative, competent and responsible individuals and citizens.
That could be development of the willingness to be creative and be able to recognize
opportunities and the ability to take initiative and transform ideas into action, abilities
that are central for developing an entrepreneurial attitude. The overall aim for
education in Sweden supports a broad understanding of entrepreneurship through the
whole educational system and is described in the Swedish curriculum for primary
and lower secondary education, Lgr 11 as an attitude to learning and teaching
(Skolverket, 2011):
The school should stimulate pupils’ creativity, curiosity and self-confidence, as well as their
desire to explore their own ideas and solve problems. Pupils should have the opportunity to
take initiative and responsibility, and develop their ability to work both independently and
together with others. The school in doing this should contribute to pupils developing
attitudes that promote entrepreneurship (p. 11).
ET The focus in this paper is on the broad understanding, of the entrepreneurial attitude
56,6 as understood in a Swedish context, in the light of Swedish and international research
and policy. The point of departure for our arguments is a school culture characterized
by identifying possibilities and transforming ideas into practical and purposeful
activities (Skolverket, 2010). We want to illuminate what characterizes a school culture
where teaching is supposed to promote an entrepreneurial attitude and what the
554 challenges in leadership are for developing this kind of entrepreneurial attitude.
Research on entrepreneurship is multi-disciplinary though it has its ground in an
economic context. As the concept originates from an economic understanding, it has
to be interpreted and understood when it comes to a new context, in this case
a pedagogical school context. Leadership in schools can thus be said to be in a “field of
tension” between economic and pedagogic understanding of leadership. An integrative
approach can thus be fruitful. Even if research on school leadership is a well-studied
field, the leadership in schools focused on developing an entrepreneurial attitude is still
an unexplored area. In this paper we are inspired by economics researchers who
have a broad view of entrepreneurial learning, like Gibb’s (1993, 2002), Hynes’ (1996)
and Cope’s (2005), and their work on entrepreneurship and enterprise education. Those
theories are contrasted with theories of leadership (cf. Leithwood and Jantzi, 2005) and
school culture understood by Engels et al. (2008) and Hughes et al. (2009).

An entrepreneurial attitude in education

How entrepreneurs learn and the specificity of entrepreneurial learning is of great
interest in pedagogic research. One question to be asked then is what is specific with
entrepreneurial learning and teaching. It could be about learning in the same way
as entrepreneurs and/or as in this paper, about learning processes that stimulate and
support abilities often attributed to entrepreneurs such as energy, innovation,
creativity, an ability to take initiative, to co-ordinate and cooperate and a willingness to
take risks (Leffler, 2006).
According to Hynes (1996), entrepreneurial education includes both formal and
informal methods that are interlinked and interdependent. That means that the
informal aspects of entrepreneurial education combine and integrate with formal
aspects of education. While formal aspects focus on theoretical frameworks that
underpin entrepreneurship, informal aspects focus on skills building, attribute
development and behavioural change (cf. Harrison and Leitch, 2005). This includes
discovery methods like case analysis, company visits, brainstorming and team
projects. This is in line with a research review conducted by Cope (2005), which shows
that entrepreneurs’ learning often is described in terms of “learning by doing”, “trial
and error”, problem solving and experimental learning. The entrepreneurs’ learning is
thus seen as action oriented and focuses on the process (Jones and Iredale, 2010).
Cooperation with the surrounding community is another key factor in entrepreneurial
education (OECD, 1989; European Commission, 2002). This is also a goal in the
Swedish strategy for entrepreneurship, which emphasizes that the education system
needs to work with entrepreneurs not only in the business sector but also in cultural
and social organizations to provide inspiration to teachers and students (Government
Offices of Sweden, 2009). Cooperation with actors outside school can also challenge
students in their learning processes as they may get the opportunity to work with “real
problems” and open up for more learning arenas than the classroom (Gibb, 2002).
School is the environment where students are supposed to capture the ability
to learn, how to learn and maintain a will to learn, to be creative and feel safe enough to
take risks, to believe in their capability and develop self-efficacy. We claim that the Fostering an
same applies to principals, and that people working in school are influenced by the entrepreneurial
current culture at the same time as they are part of creating a culture. Schein (1985)
describes organizational culture as the deeper level of basic assumptions and beliefs attitude
that are shared by members of an organization, who operate unconsciously, and
define in a basic “taken-for-granted” fashion an organization’s view of itself and its
environment (p. 6). He thinks that these assumptions and beliefs are learned responses 555
and those new members learn how to perceive, think and feel in relation to emerging
problems and situations in this context.
The role of teacher leadership and the teaching environment are also discussed in
research. Jones and Iredale (2010) stress the importance of the teacher when
introducing entrepreneurial education. As entrepreneurial education includes both
formal and informal methods, Hynes (1996) states that the teacher needs to find a
balance between the academic and practitioner perspective to transfer conceptual and
academic knowledge into practical applications. The teacher also needs to make
distinctions among learning, “what”, “how to” and “with who”. Like Leithwood et al. (2008),
Hynes underlines the importance of goal setting to be able to reach positive results.
Hence, to support students’ belief in their own capability to reach an entrepreneurial
attitude, it might be necessary for teachers to “shift power” in their relationship to
students and give them more free rein and reliance on their willingness and ability
to use their capability, as OECD (1989) also points out.
Bager and Nielsen (2009) have identified what they call aggregative circumstances
for implementing entrepreneurial learning. They state together with Deuchar (2004)
that reactive forms of learning are aggregative. They think that if the dominant school
culture relies on a strong “traditional teacher-controlled” teaching and has a subject
tradition where teachers primarily see themselves as the embodiment of the subject,
connected to strong time control when factual knowledge and ability to reproduce
values are rewarded, this will make it more difficult to implement entrepreneurial
learning and teaching. Instead they emphasize proactive forms of learning when
students must think anew, take initiative and be active. The importance of these kinds
of soft values is also stressed by Draycott and Rae (2010).
An entrepreneurial attitude thus means to be creative, take initiative and curiously
explore one’s own ideas and act upon them. It consists of skills, attributes, abilities and
behaviour that can be used in different contexts (cf. Gibb, 1993). A crucial aspect is
self-confidence, i.e. how people believe in their own capability. Self-efficacy theory
states that self-efficacy beliefs raise motivation and thoughts that are important to
develop necessary skills (Bandura, 1997). Beliefs in the ability to manage a certain task
influence a person’s actions towards similar tasks. A belief in the ability to fulfil
challenging tasks will often result in trying, sometimes with a positive result. Bandura
also stresses that persons with high self-efficacy also seems to be more persistent in
completing the task.
Students as well as teachers and principals probably have different experiences in
their working life, which influence their ability to acquire an entrepreneurial attitude.
According to the philosopher Merleau-Ponty (1962), we can in a way “bracket” our
opinions or beliefs, but, “whatever I think or decide, it is always against the
background of what I have previously believed or done” (p. 395), and Cope (2005)
argues that we use our experiences, good as well as bad, when we meet new situations.
Experiences are contextually founded, and affect our disposition to change. According
to Bandura (1997), cultural values and practices affect how self-efficacy beliefs are
ET developed. A culture that promotes positive experiences can raise self-efficacy and
56,6 affect dispositions to meet change and challenges. If a principal or a teacher has doubts
about the ability to produce change, they will not succeed in changing conditions in
learning and teaching.

Leadership in an entrepreneurial school setting

556 Deakins et al. (2005) claim that leadership in entrepreneurial schools consists of two
parts; one is the internal work with the staff like communication, coaching and
reflection and the other is external, like building networks with local communities.
When school is supposed to implement an entrepreneurial attitude, the internal work
with staff is crucial. The importance of having a clear vision and goals to guide both
principals and teachers in their efforts towards successful education is stressed by
Leithwood et al. (2008) and Hallinger and Heck (2010). These vision and goals should
also be shared by the staff. Principals as well as teachers can interpret the focus on
attitudes as a different or strange way of acting, which can clash against established
assumptions and beliefs about school learning. Hargreaves (2005) chooses to express it
as: “schools are places of great historical continuity” (p. 5). That is a strong reason to
make efforts to communicate vision and goals clearly.
According to the new Education Act (2010:800, 2010), Swedish principals have,
however, been given greater responsibilities and obligations in terms of leadership and
management of schools and the principal has a particular responsibility for developing
the education.
Research on the role of principals for developing an entrepreneurial attitude in
learning and teaching in schools is in many ways an unexplored area. Literature
about leadership in education sometimes points out entrepreneurial skills as needed
for leaders in education but does not focus on what leader skills are necessary for
changing attitudes (cf. Brundrett et al., 2003). It is well known that attitudes to
change differ among people, both inside and outside school. Meeting some kind of
difficult situation could be challenging or frightening for students as well as for
teachers and principals. When we meet new challenging situations we can adopt an
avoidance strategy or be proactive in identifying possibilities, based on earlier
experiences (Cope, 2005). To have the courage to be proactive there is a need to
develop self-efficacy beliefs, which is vital in all successful learning and teaching.
To develop self-efficacy, trust is vital.
To build trust and facilitate the introduction of new ways of thinking and doing in a
“traditional” school culture, Kasturiratne et al. (2012) suggest a blended approach
where traditional methods work interchangeably with the new ones. Building trust and
improving teachers’ qualities, building a vision and setting directions are, together
with understanding and developing people, redesigning the organization and
managing the teaching and learning programme, leadership qualities and practices
that Leithwood et al. (2008) highlight as characteristic of successful leaders. Robinson
(2010) argues that building relational trust is an essential capability in leadership.
Whether cooperation or working alone is supported, whether helping each other or
competition is supported, makes a difference in building trust. Beliefs in teachers’ or
students’ ability and will to learn or mistrusting them also make a difference. This can
be illustrated by how students are encouraged and permitted to use the physical
spaces in school for learning. Principals that provide opportunities and encourage the
use of the physical spaces can encourage creativity as well as cooperation between
students (Hörnqvist, 2011).
 Additionally, the European Commission (2011) emphasizes that school leaders Fostering an
should have a clear vision, shared with the staff, of what they hope to achieve through entrepreneurial
entrepreneurship education (cf. Leithwood, 2011; Day et al., 2010). However, principals’
attitudes to their own leadership are sometimes related to the skills of an entrepreneur, attitude
with a focus on abilities such as courage to lead a creative staff, encourage the staff to
think in new ways and not be afraid of taking risks (Leffler, 2009).
557
Challenges in leading an entrepreneurial school
As school is situated in an environment with many goals in policy documents,
continuous reforms and different competing interests in the policy of learning and
teaching, a challenge for principals is to have a clear direction and to prioritize and
focus on possibilities within all regulations with attention to students’ utilizing
their full potential for learning, as Skogen (2010) states. That is to be creative within
the boundaries set by school authorities, to formulate visions and goals for the
development of their schools to enhance an entrepreneurial attitude.
Another challenge is to have the courage to distribute power to students and believe
in their ability to take responsibility for their own learning, after being trained in that
direction. The importance of students’ gaining the power over their own learning is
emphasized by Johannisson and Madsén (1997). To foster this open mind to learning
and teaching, a vital issue is what experiences students get in school (Hörnqvist, 2000).
To be trusted in a permissive culture where teachers and principals believe in the
students’ will and ability could release the full learning potential in the student and
enhance self-efficacy. To be allowed to discover new solutions to “old” problems may
result in principals and teachers as well as students having to trust their judgement
and mustering the courage to carry them through, where self-efficacy is crucial.
Creative persons are not always easy to handle, they can come up with the most
unthinkable ideas. A challenge for principals is then to motivate and coach teachers to
supervise students within the boundaries set by national policy documents, without
limiting their creativity.
It might also be a challenge to firmly establish that direction and transform vision
and goals into practice. In leading a school towards an entrepreneurial attitude, the
transformation of ideas into practical activities might be the most provocative part,
though it can be a big culture-breaking challenge in school. Without a firm belief in the
value of this orientation, and a self-efficacy belief in the ability to set clear directions,
a feeling of losing control can be frightening and threatening for the professional self,
regardless of being a principal or a teacher.
To be able to transform those creative ideas into practical activities, principals have
to be acquainted with what is going on in classrooms and use situational leadership
skills to know how to support and motivate teachers to invest energy in this learning
process (Hersey et al., 2001) and to react when things are moving in an unexpected
direction. The benefit of trust and good relations to teachers is supported by Day et al.
(2010) claiming that successful leaders provided an environment where teachers felt
safe to try new models and alternative approaches that might be more effective.
Transforming a school culture towards a more entrepreneurial culture, where
identification of possibilities and transformation of ideas into practical and purposeful
activities are highlighted, might also need courage to handle resistance and conflicts
among staff.
Changing a culture towards a more entrepreneurial approach takes time and we
claim that persistence is a keyword for success. Kasturiratne et al. (2012) suggests a
ET blended approach where traditional methods work interchangeably with the new. They
56,6 mean that having a blended approach in leadership can be helpful in a short-term
perspective to overcome resistance; in a long-term perspective there is a need to
implement modes of teaching that nurture an entrepreneurial attitude, which can be
challenging for principals’ ability to set clear directions and developing people.

558 Concluding remarks

It is interesting to note that in many studies about entrepreneurship in schools,
principals are seldom mentioned. If so, it is in the margin (a subordinate clause).
Are they not important or have they abandoned the pedagogical leadership to let
teachers and students be by themselves in classrooms?
In fostering an entrepreneurial attitude, an analysis of the school culture in relation
to identifying possibilities and transforming possibilities into practical and purposeful
activities, is crucial to visualize areas for improvement. Letting students identify
possibilities would not be a big problem. The next step, which is supporting the
students to transform their ideas into practical and purposeful activities and take
responsibility for their work progress can be more challenging. Principals that share
the belief that change is necessary in a modern society and is an on-going work that
never ends are well equipped to lead the implementation of an entrepreneurial attitude,
by setting a clear and communicated vision and goals in a collaborative way
(Leithwood, 2011; Leithwood et al., 2008). Otherwise there is a risk that people work in
many different directions where some could be contradictory. A significant factor for
leading towards an entrepreneurial attitude is to identify possibilities instead of
emphasizing problems. The importance of forming a collaborative environment for
sharing goals and building relations is also stressed by Day et al. (2010). In the choice
between safety and risk taking too many principals tend to choose safety, which hardly
stimulates an entrepreneurial attitude. Our final conclusion is that the challenges are
about the building of trust and a broad distribution of power among staff along with
having courage to think outside “the box” and challenge existing teaching and learning.

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About the authors 561

Dr Maj-Lis Hörnqvist is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Political Sciences and is
connected to the Centre for Principal Development, Umeå University. She has a PhD in Teaching
and Learning. Her research area is school leadership and contextual conditions in learning
and teaching.
Dr Eva Leffler is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Education and is connected to the
Research Centre for Enterprise Learning and Entrepreneurial Education and to the Centre for
Principal Development, Umeå University, Sweden. She has a PhD in Educational Work and her
research area is entrepreneurial education, gender and school development. Dr Eva Leffler is the
corresponding author and can be contacted at: eva.leffler@pedag.umu.se

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