The Relationship Between Role Stress and Creativity Among Entrepreneurship Centre Leaders in Canadian Postsecondary Institutions
Bibliographic record
Abstract
As higher education institutions increasingly emphasize entrepreneurship and innovation, understanding the dynamics and challenges faced by entrepreneurship center (EC) leaders has become essential. EC leaders serve as critical connectors within entrepreneurial ecosystems, linking institutions, faculty, students, and external communities. This research investigates the multifaceted roles of EC leaders and examines how role stress—manifesting as role ambiguity and role conflict—impacts their performance, resourcefulness, innovation, and creativity. Grounded in role theory and social learning theory, this study analyzes the interplay between role stress and creativity through a comprehensive theoretical framework. Role theory provides the foundation for exploring the constructs of role conflict and ambiguity, while social learning theory’s concept of self-efficacy highlights its mediating influence on creativity. A model of creativity further describes the factors that enhance or inhibit creative outputs within organizational contexts. This qualitative study focused on administrative leaders within ECs in Canadian postsecondary institutions. Data were collected through 14 semi-structured interviews with EC directors and managers who play pivotal roles in decision-making and strategic operations. The findings revealed that EC leaders frequently experience both role ambiguity and role conflict due to the competing demands and expectations inherent in their roles. Despite these challenges, the leaders demonstrated a high level of creativity, leveraging role stress as an opportunity for innovation and problem-solving. The study contributes to understanding the dynamics of creativity within complex and uncertain work environments in higher education. It highlights the resilience and resourcefulness of EC leaders and offers insights into how institutions can better support these leaders to foster entrepreneurial growth, innovation, and organizational success.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.007 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.008 | 0.003 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".