The Impact of Marketing Culture and Rational Decision on Academic Entrepreneurship and Entrepreneurial Marketing: Field Research for Iraqi Private Colleges

Abstract

The research aims to test the impact of marketing culture and rational decisions in academic entrepreneurship during entrepreneurial marketing by focusing on the main problem and the challenges that Iraqi private universities face. The most important of these challenges is probably the inability of the private universities to keep pace with the development and the environmental challenges. The researcher chose 26 private Iraqi universities/colleges for the study. The sample was taken from deans, assistant deans, and heads of departments, with 310 people distributed among the various colleges. The researcher used the electronic questionnaire as a tool for collecting information. Data analysis was based on the (SPSS) and (AMOS) programs. The researchers arrived at many conclusions. The most important finding was the impact on both the marketing culture and rational decision on academic entrepreneurship through entrepreneurial marketing. The higher administration in the Iraqi private universities/colleges always strive to adhere to the marketing values, norms and traditions through a commitment to rational decisions to achieve academic entrepreneurship. The higher administrators increase their commitment and adherence to this influence by adhering to marketing entrepreneurship.

1. Introduction

The apparent changes in the higher education system in the private sector have turned private universities into highly interactive and strategic units that compete to achieve the set priorities. This development means more focus on the academic administration in effectively taking its role to stay ahead, which was later termed an administrative revolution (Amaral et al., 2003). This revolution has brought about tremendous changes in the higher education system, especially in regulatory fields. This is because the responsibilities of traditional universities were mainly focused on teaching and research, and those considered as (tasks one and two), but those responsibilities have expanded its activities. This requires transformation and innovation to empower its activities, which in turn has become an essential requirement to develop social sustainability (task three). It is also known as (The second academic revolution) which had been denoted by (Martin & Etzkowitz, 2000) in their articles. Consequently, this new attitude has stimulated universities in bringing changes from traditional places for teaching and researching to an innovative university that plays a crucial role in securing the proper learning environment for individuals in the future through the capability of its higher administrative leaders to take a wise and appropriate decision and establishing up-to-date marketing strategies— also, being able to work indecently.

As a result of this new role and changes, universities have to focus on starting new policies for work division and reassess the hierarchy relations and decision-making processes. It can be done through rational planning and tasks distributions from the leader to the follower. Consequently, the decision-maker for regulatory goals in universities can develop new strategies and be able to accommodate changes in the environment by taking rational rules that empower the profits of universities and achieve the planned targets.

Based on that, this research has come as an opportunity to embody those criteria in the Iraqi environment, which is in a deep necessity for such subjects owing to the massive investment in the higher education sector, specifically in the private sector. Due to the high competition and the significant challenges in an environment which is full of restrictions, this research has been presented in a manner that relies on a suitable marketing attitude that coincides with the actual and real changes in the nature of the decisions taken and using it as an academic strategy to gain an educational innovation while taking in consideration the early talented roles for entrepreneurial marketing. Accordingly, this research will be presented in three aspects; the first one highlights the literature review and hypotheses development, the second shows the research methods and materials, and the third aspect will illustrate the results and discussion.

2. Literature Review and Hypotheses Development

This paragraph is divided into two parts, the first part discusses the research variables of the study, and the second part is devoted to the research hypotheses:

2.1. Research Variables

2.1.1. Marketing Cutler

One of the first to give a specific concept of organizational culture is (Schein, 1985), which (Kim et al., 2017) also followed And those who said that corporate culture is generally understood as the social glue that holds organizational members together and expresses the values, and social ideals, Then and as a part of it The earliest concept of marketing culture appeared when both (Deshpande & Webster, 1989) had delineated some ideas that correlate the regulatory culture with marketing and the impact of culture on administrative theory and its applications. Later on, more studies emerged that was both clearer and deep with direct relations to the marketing culture, such as those from (Webster, 1995) and (Khali & Jaworski, 1990), which demonstrate that marketing culture could be considered as the unwritten policies and instructions which provide the employees with the occupational standards. Those standards are very important for an organization in general, especially with what is related to the marketing job specifically and the executive marketing activities. Later on (Harris, 1998) applied his vision and concept regarding understanding marketing culture. He considered it a platform that helps him build concepts and crucial proposals and a marketing frame for referring ideas in his subsidiary culture that focused on the positive aspects of creation, teamwork, competition outcomes, and individuals (Andrew & Datta, 2007).

Over time emerged the necessity of the availability of a sample for marketing culture, and this is actually what (Webster, 1990) had pioneered and stressed. He had emphasized the fact that marketing culture showed the degree of understanding the morals, criteria, assumptions and interactive situations with a focus on marketing activities in the organization (Webster, 1990). Later on, he concentrated more on those criteria and demonstrated it elaborately in 1993, for which he denoted that there are six factors related to the marketing culture and those are; sale mission, service, personal relations, organization, internal communication, and innovation) through which he illustrated the marketing culture sample and found that those factors made the personnel more focused on their marketing activities (Webster, 1995). After that, another opinion emanated in a different field of study led by (Singh & Shanker, 2012), who focused on that marketing culture sample is connected to the organizational culture, which is a broader concept than being a kind of directed organizations toward marketing (Aydin, 2017).

2.1.2. Rational Decision

Considering the rational decision, its first signs were presented by (Simon, 1992) who illustrated in his book (Economic and Restricted Rationales and Knowledge Revolution) the principle of rationales and mentioned that the main field to study is the concept of decision making was in an economic field. Therefore, traditional economics assumed that the rational program is the one that leads the process of decision making in an organization. Moreover, (Simon, 1992) wondered regarding the assumptions of the rational decision model, and suggested the idea that taking a regulatory decision couldn’t be considered as rational except in severely restricted conditions and stressed that the rational model proposed a group of assumptions including; decision makers have knowledge of alternatives and the consequences of implementing those alternatives and the consequences of their decisions, apart from that the rational model ignores the internal policy of the regulation system, and that the process of rational decision making involves a hidden fixed preferential arrangement among those of decision-makers so those assumptions denote that all agree with the organization goals and that the rules of decisions are well known and accepted among those in responsibilities (Rybak, 2002). Emphasizing that, (Elbanna, 2006) believes that rational is a case to do something and that the judgment on that thing being rational is to say that this behavior is understandable within a specific referential frame. Within the same concept and depending on the application of (Panagioto, 2008) of the rational idea for managers and have the capacity to give accurate and applicable decisions at the right time, they (the managers) need to construct all their activities like a specific problem and analyze the situation and put official plans on a rational basis.

2.1.3. Entrepreneurial Marketing

Entrepreneurial marketing as marketing orientation for small companies supported through the manager (or the owner) (Stokes, 2002), and consequently could be considered as aggressive and non-traditional behavior that enable entrepreneurs to succeed in their works despite the limited resources (Kbtuk et al., 2020). This opinion is backed up by (Morris et al., 2002), who make it more advanced and mature when they point out entrepreneurial marketing as the exploitation of opportunities to gain and keep risk management and get benefits from resources and value creation. This is considered a big move in entrepreneurial marketing as it gives clear landmarks in delineating the frame of entrepreneurial marketing and hence the ability to specify its dimension and components. While (Teguh et al., 2021) added that Entrepreneurial marketing is related to the first development phase where the level of entrepreneurship is high, and the degree of formalization of marketing practices is low. Later and in a more mature stage (second and third stage), marketing practices become formulated marketing.

2.1.4. Academic Entrepreneurship

Scientific theory points the term academic entrepreneurship from the traditional perspective as a (university branch) or as an institutional transfer for research or development or as a technology to start innovations or experiments (Barth & Schlogelmich, 2020) and consider the academic entrepreneurship as a way to increase the individuals profit or institutional profit or the effect or possibility through the development or the marketing of research ideas or the projects that depend on research, and this is one of the oldest definitions of the concept which put the basis for the future studies and develop additional curricula for the definitions that were pertained to the academic entrepreneurship, and through this concept that academic entrepreneurship includes all the activities of marketing side by side with the basic research and education, and similarity includes technology transfer to achieve commercial benefits and establishing new companies and setting up modern technology projects (Mirani & Yusof, 2016). After this basic concept for academic entrepreneurship, as we see, for instance (Miranda et al., 2017) pointed to academic entrepreneurship through a concept that distinguishes it from the traditional work leadership, and said that academic entrepre- neurship, apart from the characteristics features of the academic entrepreneurship which depends on an additional specific element, that connected essentially with both university personnel and students. Asgari (2014) says that academic entrepreneurship has three elements: University as an institution adapts itself to entrepreneurial management style and is managed in this way, Faculty members (professors, students, and staff) who work with entrepreneurial style, and University in interaction with its surrounding social environment follows an entrepreneurial approach.

2.2. Hypotheses

To study the relationship between the research variables, the researcher will test four basic hypotheses dealing with four research variables, and a group of sources was relied upon to determine the dimensions of these four variables, Marketing Culture (MC) (Homburg & Pflesser, 2000), Include (Marketing Values (MV), Marketing Norms (MN), Marketing Traditions (MT), Marketing Behaviors (MB)), Rational Decision Making (RDM) (Scott & Bruce, 1995), Include (Rationale (RD), Intuition (ID), Spontaneous (SD), Avoidant (AD), Dependent (DD)), Entrepreneurial Marketing (EM) (Stephen et al., 2019), Include (Focus on opportunities (FO), Risk taken (RT), Innovation (I), Utilize resources (RU), Focus on customers (FC), Proactive (P)), and Academic Entrepreneurship (AE) (Yusof et al., 2012). With regard to the hypotheses, it was agreed on the impact of each of the marketing culture and rational decision as independent variables in academic entrepreneurship as a dependent variable by mediating entrepreneurial marketing, and these hypotheses are as follows:

H1: There is a significant statistical effect for both the marketing culture and the rational decision on Academic Entrepreneurship.

H2: There is a significant statistical effect of both the marketing culture and rational decision on the Entrepreneurial Marketing.

H3: There is a significant statistical effect of Entrepreneurial Marketing on Academic Entrepreneurship.

H4: There is a static morale effect for both the marketing culture and rational decision in the Academic Entrepreneurship through Entrepreneurial Marketing.

The researcher designed the hypothesis scheme to answer the questions of the problem and test the research hypotheses. Through the researcher’s acquaintance with some of the previous knowledge Contributions, this model was developed to measure the effect of marketing culture and rational decision on academic entrepreneurship by mediating entrepreneurial marketing, as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Research Model

3. Research Methods and Materials

The Iraqi environment faces high competition in the higher education private sector, which happened due to the establishment of many new universities and the high number of students. Consequently, every university tries to stay ahead of other universities by attracting a large number of students, which necessitate following new strategies and directing its operations like a leader and advertising its activities in a modern way, which could make universities encounter many challenges and being unable to achieve the expected results. In such circumstances, the availability of rationales among those decision-makers in those universities could play an essential role in directing resources, regulatory guidance, administration, staff universities future, and dealing with new opportunities, and the weak points that are connected with universities, which might help in reducing the risks that could face universities during their moving to the Academic Entrepreneurship. Therefore, an important research question could be applied which is (what is the spectral effect of each marketing culture and rational decision in accomplishing the Academic Entrepreneurship through Entrepreneurial Marketing?

To test these hypotheses, the researchers adapted questionnaires as a measuring tool. They were distributed as a research sample with a total of (310) individuals, including (the college dean, assistant dean and head department) in a group of 26 Iraqi private colleges. Those questionnaires were distributed electronically due to the (COVID-19) pandemic.

4. Results and Discussion

In testing the research hypothesis, we need to test the multi Regression who have been done by the researchers through (SPSS) and (AMOS) to find the explanatory force (R2), factor-beta (B) and (F) value and (t) and (P-value) for sloping sample that determines the extent of influence that the independent variables have on the dependent variable, and we seek to test the influence hypotheses identified by the research. It will be investigated according to the multilinear regression equation, as follows:

\(Y_{i}=B_{0}+B_{1} X_{i} 1+B_{2} X_{i} 2+\ldots+B_{k} X_{i k}+U_{i}\)        (1)

And vectors to estimate those parameters. Formulating equations in a picture matrices:

\(\left[\begin{array}{c} Y_{1} \\ Y_{2} \\ \cdot \\ Y_{n} \end{array}\right]=\left[\begin{array}{ccccc} 1 & X_{11} & X_{12} & \ldots & X_{1 k} \\ 1 & X_{21} & X_{22} & \ldots & X_{2 k} \\ \cdot & \cdot & \cdot & \ldots & \cdot \\ 1 & X_{n 1} & X_{n 2} & \ldots & X_{n k} \end{array}\right]\left[\begin{array}{c} B_{0} \\ B_{1} \\ \cdot \\ B_{k} \end{array}\right]+\left[\begin{array}{c} U_{0} \\ U_{1} \\ \cdot \\ U_{n} \end{array}\right]\)        (2)

4.1. The First Hypothesis

Table 1 and Figure 2 present the results of testing this hypothesis.

Table 1: Results of testing sloping of marketing culture and rational decision with its interactions in Academic Entrepreneurship

Figure 2: Demonstrates the Outcome of the Effects of Marketing Culture with Rational Decision in Academic Entrepreneurship

Figure 2 demonstrates the outcome of the effects of marketing culture with rational decision in Academic Entrepreneurship.

It appears from the outcomes of Table 1 and Figure 2 that there is an effect for both marketing culture and rational decision on the Academic Entrepreneurship as the explanation factor (R²) reached (0.742), and so that the marketing culture for the private Iraqi universities and the rational decision of the higher administrative units explain that approximately (74%) from the changes that could happen on the Academic Entrepreneurship, which is a relatively high percentage. It is concluded from that the importance of both the marketing culture and rational decision in giving motivation for the high administrative units in the Iraqi private universities to moving forward and working to transfer from the traditional academic curriculum to the pioneer one through the help to improve those universities and set up new academic laboratories and assisting the teaching staff by stimulating them for doing scientific researches which could solve social problems to achieve the possibility of universities work as an essential partner in strategic success for industries overall.

It is also crucial to denote the dimensions that had led to this quantitative effect on Academic Entrepreneurship. It appeared that each of (marketing values, marketing traditions, marketing cultures, marketing behaviors, and intuition) are factors that have deep indicative qualitative effect, and so that we can say that the marketing values those universities have, and their deep-roots values and cultures that the administrative personnel hold on, and the pursued behaviors, in addition to depending on intuition, feelings, and personal experience in taking decisions are the most important in achieving the Academic Entrepreneurship, especially the value of (F) which belongs to the current decline in sample which reached (95.983) which is more than its table value which equals (3.92) in a free degree of (309, 1), in addition to the point that the level of decline sample detector reached (0.000), so that one could say that there is a proof for the H₁: hypothesis: (which states that there is a significant statistical effect for both the marketing culture and the rational decision on the Academic Entrepreneurship).

4.2. The Second Hypothesis

Table 2 and Figure 3 present the results of testing this hypothesis.

Table 2: The Outcomes of Testing the Effects of the Decline of Marketing Culture and Rational Decision Dimension on the Entrepreneurial Marketing

Figure 3: Summarize the Multiple Decline Sample Effect of the Marketing Culture and Rational Decision on the Entrepreneurial Marketing

Figure 3 summarize the multiple decline sample effect of the marketing culture and rational decision on the entrepreneurial marketing.

It is obvious from Table 2 and Figure 3 that the explanatory value (R²) for decline sample had reached (0.711), and so it could be concluded that the changes (marketing culture and rational decision) with their dimensions could explain of about (71%) of changes that could affect the entrepreneurial marketing, and leaves the remaining percentage for other changes that haven’t been taken into consideration in the current decline sample. This proves that marketing culture and rational decision play an essential role in the possibility of transferring from a traditional marketing strategy to a more advanced and more effective strategy. Regarding dimensions, it appeared that the effect of both marketing culture and rational decision on entrepreneurial marketing belongs to the following dimensions (marketing values, marketing norms, marketing traditions, marketing behavior, rationales, and the avoidable). Therefore, it is possible to say that the deep-roots marketing values in the private Iraqi universities and the marketing traditions by which the higher administrative units that continues to keep on in those universities, and the behaviors which they practiced side by side with depending on the rationales and the percentage of avoidable decision for those administrations, have played in general, a role in the capability of those universities to encounter challenges through giving superb service that can complete with other universities to approach the entrepreneurial marketing.

In the same context, the value of calculated (F) for the multiple decline sample is (81.914), which is higher than its scheduled value, apart from the qualitative sample, which is (0.000). Therefore, we can say that it asserts the validity of the hypothesis H₂: which states that there is a significant statistical effect of both the marketing culture and rational decision on the Entrepreneurial Marketing.

4.3. The Third Hypothesis

Table 3 and Figure 4 present the results of testing this hypothesis.

Table 3: Results of Testing the Effect of the Decline of Entrepreneurial Marketing on Academic Entrepreneurship

Figure 4: Illustrate the Results of Testing the Decline Sample Among the Implication of Entrepreneurial Marketing for the Iraqi Private Universities

The results of Figure 4 and Table 3 demonstrate that there is a significant qualitative effect between the entrepreneurial marketing for the Iraqi private universities and Academic Entrepreneurship, as the value of (F) for the decline sample reached (65.376), which is more than its tabled value at an indicator level of (0.000). This leads to the clear achievement of new strategic marketing methods in the Iraqi private universities, which could lead to the transfer to a new way of vision from the traditional marketing maneuvers to modern marketing maneuvers which in turn reflected clearly and directly in the possibility to lead to assist the pioneers in universities to adopt policies that help them to develop their scientific researches and technologies reaching to the Academic Entrepreneurship in those universities, which reached the value of (R²) for the decline sample of (0.564), which proves that the entrepreneurial marketing in the Iraqi private universities could relatively explain half the changes that happened to the Academic Entrepreneurship in those universities with a percentage of (56%), and leave the remaining changes that haven’t been covered in the current sample. Regarding dimension, it appeared that achieving the entrepreneurial marketing in the Iraqi private universities in the Academic Entrepreneurship belonged to the impact of an indicative qualitative factor for all dimensions except the (proactive) factors, which haven’t an indicative qualitative effect. Therefore, it is possible to say that there is proof for the correctness of hypothesis H₃: which states that there is a significant statistical effect of Entrepreneurial Marketing on Academic Entrepreneurship.

4.4. The Fourth Hypothesis

Finally, the essential research hypothesis H₄ would be tested. This hypothesis tries to test the mediating role for the mediating role of entrepreneurial marketing on the effective relationship of both the marketing culture and rational decision on Academic Entrepreneurship (Table 4). By comparing the explanatory factor (R²) of the hypothesis H4: there is an indicative qualitative and statistical effect for both the marketing culture and rational decision on the Academic Entrepreneurship through mediating the entrepreneurial marketing, with the explanatory factor (R²) for the hypothesis H1: There is an indicative qualitative and statistical effect of the marketing culture and the rational decision on the Academic Entrepreneurship, and then monitor and allocate the number of changes in the explanatory factor (∆R²), which if increased its value being an indicator of the positive changes of the mediating variable among the overall independent variables on the follower variable, and vice versa.

From Figure 5 and Table 4 it is obvious that the value of the explanatory factor (R²) has increased changes by an amount of (0.008), as the value of (R²) for the current decline sample reached (0.750), whereas the value in the previous decline sample was (0.742), and this indicates the positive mediating effect of the entrepreneurial marketing on the overall variable effects (the marketing culture and the rational decision) on the variable (the Academic Entrepreneurship), whereas the value of calculated (F) is (88.815), which is higher than its scheduled value, and this proves the quality of the decline sample. Moreover, regarding the quality of the mediator role in the entrepreneurial marketing, where its value reached mediator role in the entrepreneurial marketing, where its value reached (CR = 0.007) with a (P = 2.691), which indicates the quality of the mediating role for the entrepreneurial marketing and then accepted the hypothesis H4: There is an impact with indicative and qualitative statistical effect for each of the marketing culture and the rational decision on the Academic Entrepreneurship through the entrepreneurial marketing. From this, it is clear that the higher administrative units in the Iraqi private universities depend essentially on entrepreneurial marketing as a suitable and effective strategy to achieve its pioneering goals, which is represented by the Academic Entrepreneurship as the marketing culture and the rational decision participated efficiently in reaching and achieving the Academic Entrepreneurship so that this participation and efficient accomplishment aggravate its positive role with entrance and accrediting the entrepreneurial marketing as a work context to ensure this achievement and for the proficient accomplishment of the Academic Entrepreneurship (Figure 6).

Table 4: The Decline of the Marketing Culture and the Rational Decision on the Academic Entrepreneurship by the Intervening Entrepreneurial Marketing

Figure 5: Summarizes the Multiple Decline Sample Affecting Dimensions (Marketing Culture and Rational Decision), on the Academic Entrepreneurship by the Intervening Entrepreneurial Marketing

Figure 6: Structural Model

5. Conclusion

It appeared that the higher administrative units of the Iraqi private universities have noticeably taken care for accrediting the Academic Entrepreneurship and moving its academic staff for more creative and pioneering work in both scientific types of research and innovations and showing the capability to do partnership with the industry sector. It appeared that there is obvious care from the higher administrative units of the Iraqi private universities to grow its marketing cultures and marketing behaviors in it, apart from show care for making rational decisions by using objective, rational way of thinking and taking care by investing the optimum chances and placing strategies to comfort risks and working to improve the available services for students and strive to focus on clients and making benefits from the available resources.

The higher administrative units in the Iraqi private universities has directed its care and its developmental progress of the marketing culture and its rational decisions that were taken in achieving the Academic Entrepreneurship through the creation of new services and developmental research, apart from working to renew its works and strategies to attract students and build a highly developed academic system. It looks clear that the higher administrative units in the Iraqi private universities/colleges have made clear benefits of the effects of the marketing culture and the rational decision to achieve the Academic Entrepreneurship and moving by it for the possibility of improving its current position.

The entrepreneurial marketing has a clear effect on the Academic Entrepreneurship of the Iraqi private universities, and this effect appeared clearly by focusing on the available opportunities and accepting risks and by innovations. The strategy of entrepreneurial marketing, which has been followed by the Iraqi private universities/ colleges has a clear and important role in supporting the effect of marketing culture and rational decision on the Academic Entrepreneurship, and this appeared clearly through focusing of those administrations on the available opportunities and enduring to get its benefits and accepting the exposed risks and trying to minimize their consequences in addition of working to achieve the best possible benefits by using the available resources.