Entrepreneurial universities: a decision-making approach

Purpose Entrepreneurship of universities has a critical role due to its important effects. However, there is a significant gap in the literature regarding the methodology for evaluating university entrepreneurship. Evaluating university entrepreneurship provides valuable information to policymakers and governments. This research presents an evaluation methodology for assessing university entrepreneurship using a hybrid multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) approach. Design/methodology/approach For this purpose, entrepreneurship data of 50 universities from Türkiye were used. The evaluation framework consists of 4 main criteria and 23 sub-criteria. The importance level was determined by weighting the main criterion and sub-criteria with the subjective Best-Worst Method (BWM) based on expert opinions and the objective CRiteria Importance Through Intercriteria Correlation (CRITIC) method. The importance levels were determined by weighting the main and sub-criteria using the subjective BWM based on expert opinions and the objective CRITIC method. The final rankings were obtained by integrating the different ranking values obtained with the Borda function. Findings Findings revealed that the most important main criterion in the entrepreneurship of universities is economic and social contribution activities, and the most important sub-criterion is international patents. The proposed method ranked all universities according to entrepreneurship. Sensitivity and validation analyses proved that the method is robust, stable and consistent. Practical implications This study also provides a new perspective to policymakers and decision-makers in evaluating university entrepreneurship. Originality/value This study, which uses a hybrid approach of MCDM methods to evaluate the entrepreneurship of universities, can be adapted to different national and regional higher education systems, and this study provides guidance to researchers in this regard.