Omistajaohjaus, sisäinen yrittäjyys ja tuloksellisuus ammattikorkeakouluissa

The first aim of the study was to produce concepts by which corporate governance, intrapreneurship and effectiveness can be studied in the context of the Finnish Universities of Applied Sciences (=henceforth the UAS or schools). The second purpose was to find out to what extent the amount of corporate governance and intrapreneurship affect the objective-orientation and effectiveness of the same schools.The concepts of owners, juridical and psychological ownership and corporate governance were analyzed according to the Agency Theory, the Human Capital Investment Theory, the Stewardship Theory and the Stakeholder Theory. The concept of intrapreneurship was analyzed as part of entrepreneurship as seen on the level of individuals, teams/networks and organizations. The objective-orientation was handled according to the elements of the Management By Objectives and the performance-based and effectiveness-based management used by the Ministry of Education in Finland. The conceptual dependence between corporate governance, intrapreneurship and effectiveness was presented as a synthetic model.The empirical part of the study consisted of a questionnaire designed for the owners and a questionnaire designed for the staffs of 15 UAS. Acceptable replies were received from 78 owners and 888 employees. The level of corporate governance was dependent on the level of psychological ownership, more than on juridical ownership. The source of psychological ownership was the will to affect society, and it was strengthened by the will to direct the target and by coming to know the target. The amount of corporate governance and ownership were stronger in private-owned than in public-owned schools. There is much potential to intrapreneurship in the UAS. The level of self-confidence and commitment, toughness and the willingness for intellectual growth, for autonomy, to grasp opportunities, to make efforts and to be effective were the most positive features on the level of individuals.The employees were very familiar with team-working and networking - the more intrapreneurial attitudes a person had, the more team- and networking relationships he/she had. The stronger the level of ownership was and the more intrapreneurial the personnel were, the more successful was the school, according to their own evaluation. However, the concept of effectiveness is a very tense one. The owners and the personnel had different evaluations of the extent of the success of their schools and their opinions did not correlate with the measurements of the Ministry of Education.