Taken for granted or wilfully ignored? Seeking legitimacy for the entrepreneurship educator

Purpose This study offers insights into how the entrepreneurship educator (EE) is legitimised in higher education. Design/methodology/approach This exploratory study is based on content analysis of 73 university programme specifications, 61 university strategies and 35 job advertisements. The study uses Suchman’s (1995) conceptualisation of organisational legitimacy to assist in categorising the results according to type of legitimacy. Findings Connections are made between the legitimacy of the EE and wider societal discourses surrounding the legitimacy of enterprise/entrepreneurship as expressed in university strategies. Attempts to legitimise the EE specifically, as opposed to “the educator” more broadly understood, are quite limited. Programme specifications mainly offer a cognitive form of legitimacy relating to teaching, with elements of pragmatic legitimacy arising from educators’ links to industry and research prowess. Job descriptions are more focused on the educator’s research as a form of legitimation. Research limitations/implications The study creates a baseline of knowledge surrounding the legitimacy of the EE, which raises important questions as to how the educator is supposed to add value in relation to different stakeholders. Originality/value The concept of legitimacy, despite widespread application in other disciplines, has found very limited application in the study of EE. Using three sources of data, the paper offers a first application of Suchman’s (1995) conceptualisation of legitimacy to entrepreneurship education. It thereby offers a critical perspective on the role of the EE as shaped by institutional norms.