Using institutional entrepreneurship to ‘reverse engineer’ a large engineering leadership institute

Abstract

Leadership is poised to become a major feature of engineering education, but the question of how to grow programs within the institutional context of engineering faculties remains largely unanswered by the literature. Our analysis of a single historic case study of Canada’s largest engineering leadership institute sheds light on some of the strategies used to grow from a small program to a stable educational unit. We find valuable insights on how to generalize these findings by applying concepts from institutional entrepreneurship to make sense of founder strategies.