The following four poles that were developed mainly through the phenomenological action research method, are found to influence the individual as well as collective/institutional entrepreneurial identity, Persona or mindset [i]. They are presented in sequential order, however, they are simultaneously active and intermeshed in their influence. Each pole is formulated with a central question alluring to and provoking a Platonian midwife technique. The ‘we’ form is used, as the model is applied to the collective mindset of a university.

The circle begins with exploration and realising existence, which is argued to lead to an internal locus of control. Next, the meaning of life question is formulated as “what do we want”, which is argued to be most adequately contested with axiology and teleology. This permits the setting of priorities and subsequently leads to the possibility of engaging in entrepreneuring. With the entrepreneurial ambition clarified, the implementation and practice comes to the forefront, combining with pragmatist philosophy and with cybernetics. These trends are believed to instil the creative bootstrapping practices of ‘trial and error’ based optimisation favoured by entrepreneurs. Lastly, the life-plan is set in relation against the rest of world. Ethics as well as sustainability are questioned, because only just causes that consider their environment are successful in the long term. This last pole introduces the ‘other’ not only as part of a shared world, but also as differentiating factor. Thereby, it gives raise to yet another level of reflection. The differentiation, and thereby definition, of the ‘self’ contrasts and complements other beings, values and practices.

4.2.4.1. Existentialism
Human ontology is one of the oldest and most extensive fields of philosophy. Until the present day, philosophers and scientists have been exploring and researching how to understand the human consciousness, (e.g. Dennett) and so far there is no unifying insight or model. Allow me therefore – to avoid being tangled up in the deep waters of competing schools of thought – but instead to develop a simple but uncontroversial chain of thought connecting Cartesian proof of existence to Existentialist free will, and then subsequently to an inner locus of control.

While many philosophers had previously developed theories for human existence Descartes was the first to conduct a scrutiny for implementing radical methodological doubt. Descartes’ achievement was therefore twofold: firstly he deployed a scientific empirical method of philosophy enabling it not only to serve as midwife for meta-physical understanding and construction of the world, but also to deliver the ‘hard facts’ of the conscious human being (if something like that can exist); secondly, he delivered the founding stone of scientific philosophy: cogito ergo sum. Archimedes’ dictum “Give me a fixed point and I will move the world,” receives a new perspective when there actually is a meta-physical fixed point. It allows for the development of one’s reality.

Building upon Descartes’ central insight, the Phenomenologists and other meta-physical sciences like psychology and sociology began to emerge and analyze the world in meta-physical terms, but on an empirical basis. After some time, the more practical meta-physical traits, first and foremost psychology, delivered very useful and applicable results. It was however only in the 20th century that, after the massive and terrible sufferings enabled in great part by modern technology, the psychologist Vicktor Frankl dealt with the most essential question of human existence: The question of the meaning of life. While Frankl developed Logotherapy as a method to facilitate the individual’s search for meaning [ii] (Poller, 2006), Existentialism developed as the first popular philosophy outlining a program of individual freedom (Enlightened free will and subsequent responsibility towards the world.

Existentialist philosophy stresses the human beings freedom to act. In fact, following Sartre, humans create and give meaning to their individual lives and the social world only by mindfully choosing their actions. In other words, the individual is what it does, and defines itself only by its actions. Sartre himself has formulated the first principle of Existentialism as: “Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself” (Sartre, 2006) and “full responsibility” for his existence rests on him. Within this radical school of thought, all action can be seen as entrepreneurial as one creates ones life by constantly making entrepreneurial choices. Even though it is theoretically (and if internalised also practically as in Sartre's case) possible to perceive and live one's live in this absolute freedom, which he himself felt to be a condemnation, it is more realistic to also take the later structuralist relativistic complementation into account, which counterbalances the Existentialist claim of individual freedom and in fact reverses it, saying that the individual is incapable of originality but only able to express the social conditions in which it resides or grew up.

While acknowledging both theories, they have to be interpreted as two sides of the same condition, meaning that the individual is free to, and in fact responsible for, its actions, cumulating in its individual life enterprise. While it is also true that each human character is massively influenced and formed by the conditions of his/her Lebenswelt (lifeworld). The later concept of conditioning is explored in great detail by Pierre Bourdieu, who termed this unconsciously impregnated state habitus; A concept whose relation to the educational system is worth observing in some more detail.

Pierre Bourdieu (1988; Bourdieu & Passeron, 1990) has done seminal work on the formation process and its relevance in social power reproduction and his account on how education is responsible for much more than simple scientific knowledge transmission, but in fact is also a main influencer in character development and the individuals ideals or belief set. He introduced the term habitus to describe the natural (and as such unquestioned) unconscious ability to perceive and produce activities. As such habitus is a structuring structure, which means that it has the ability to create something within a structure. Furthermore, he did he not understand learning as a the act of practiced individual activities, but as learning of production for the creation of activities. As such, learning is a holistic process where a creative, or entrepreneurial, ability is apparent.

In his book “Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture (Theory, Culture and Society Series)” (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1990), he presents five principal hypotheses, as one complete and self-contained theory on the sociology of education. The style and content of these hypotheses are extremely complex. For this work, relevant interpretations are made here in order to develop an argument for (1) universities as locations of critical review and (2) on education for reflexive capacity. In the first hypothesis he states that: symbolic violence, which he defines as the unconscious impregnation of habitus, is always a repetition of a constellation of materialistic violence [iii]. Subsequently, he says in hypothesis three, that one can always analyse the social organisation of a community through the observation of the educational system. Educational systems form the habitus of the social fabric, and thus constituencies dichotomize into those who follow 'truth' (as in natural sciences) or into those people who as non-conformists within the system tend to pursue less dogmatic sciences like language and philosophy (Nemeth & Hefler, 2001). One interesting claim is expressed in the fourth thesis, where he says that the educational institutions are no exception to the rule because they are obsessively engaged in ensuring their own reproduction (continued existence), which results in a deep dependence on what Bourdieu calls the arbitrary violence of the present power conditions on which they depend. He therefore denies the 'freedom of science' and their vaunted search for truth, so often claimed as it is, to be at the heart of all science and educational systems. For ultimately, claims they are, as illustrated easily by an observation of practice in totalitarian regimes, and which is subtly true for all societies, serving thusly as an example of materialistic and political power.

There is one positive process within this rather drastic evaluation. Educational systems transmit the dominant habitus , but they also enable (at least some) to understand and become conscious about the habitus itself, this is the first step to analyse and subsequently propose original changes and amendments to the current system.

This is the basis for the following argument: humans who (at least to a certain level) posses the capacity to reflect upon and critique historical and emerging thought structures, represent a very valuable social and cultural resource produced in universities. This means that students and faculty are responsible to continuously watch that this exact feature of universities is not lost. It is by working out this aspect that Bourdieu's approach can be helpful; in so much that it serves to evaluate and demand the education for reflexive capacity and social awareness.

From there we examine the connection to what researchers in entrepreneurship have found to be a fundamental disposition of entrepreneuring human beings – an internal locus of control (Koh, 1996; Mueller & Thomas, 2001) – comes natural. Internal locus control describes the psychological attitude that the world is an environment shaped by our actions, rather than one being shaped by the overarching fatal turmoil of the aggregated currents and particular temporal happening on this planet [iv].

One visible expression of an entrepreneurial philosophy and an inner locus of control is the choice to engage in self-fashioning (Fleischmann, 2006). Self-fashioning, a term introduced by Stephen Greenblatt (1980) to describe how Renaissance noblemen used to create a physical image and work on their reputation as part of their efforts to shine according to social standards, seems to express (from an aesthetic and visible side) how an entrepreneurial philosophy plays out.

The following paragraphs examine how this element was observed at the universities investigated.

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[i] While the three terms – identity, persona, and mindset – are very closely related, it is useful to have them differentiated: identity is what one construct oneself to be, persona is what one aspires to be, and the mindset is the concrete conceptualized (thematic) model, a representation of a part of the persona.

[ii] And in my understanding Logotherapy can be seen as a method to enable individuals to live their lives entrepreneurially.

[iii] Materialistic violence represents materialistic means (money etc.) by which power is reproduced.

[iv] The theme of external versus internal locus of control is the local representation of the structure versus agency discourse, which has been fought for decades (in my understanding) ending in a stalemate of acceptance that both are valid perspectives delivering useful insight. Once again it is complexity sciences with its setup of environment and strange attractors that delivered a Gordian solution (Kurzweil, 1991) to the problem by suggesting an inclusive balanced scenario.

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