Enacting Entrepreneurial Leadership under Constraint: A Single-Case Study of the DRIV-EL Framework in an Emerging Indonesian Private University

Abstract

Entrepreneurial leadership constructs were developed largely in commercial settings, and little is known about how they are enacted where academic authority is distributed and resources are thin. This single-case study examines how the four dimensions of DRIV-EL, a synthesis framework comprising Dynamism, Resilience, Innovation, and Vision, are enacted in an emerging Indonesian private university, and which institutional conditions shape that enactment. Unlike survey-based studies of leadership in Indonesian higher education, it compares accounts from seven positions, from the foundation chair to students and an alumnus (24 informants), using framework analysis with DRIV-EL as a sensitizing lens. Dynamism was tempered by institutional caution, and leaders' risk-taking was thinly evidenced. Resilience appeared mainly as continuity work by administrative staff and programme heads under chronic resource constraints. Innovation tended to remain at programme level rather than becoming institutional routine. Vision was not yet fully aligned across levels: the foundation chair described formal innovation autonomy with incentives, whereas programme heads and the dean reported that no formal policy was yet in place at programme level. Theoretically, the study proposes four refinements to DRIV-EL for testing, each linked to an explanatory mechanism rooted in split decision rights, chronic constraint, and immature routines, and identifies resource mobilization as a boundary condition that the framework omits. Practically, it points foundations and academic leaders to innovation policy that is written and shared across levels, an explicit route for institutionalizing innovations, recognition of continuity work, and clarity about the foundation's decision rights.