Enterprise and Entrepreneurship Educators in a Landscape of Practice: Alignment, Hybridity, and Professional Recognition

Enterprise and entrepreneurship (EE) education is integral to higher education, yet the professional realities of those delivering it remain underexplored. Existing research focuses on pedagogy and student outcomes, offering limited insight into how EE educators negotiate identity and recognition within increasingly hybrid roles. This article addresses this gap by examining EE educators’ work through communities of practice theory and its extension into landscapes of practice, conceptualising their activity as distributed across curricular, learner-facing, and strategic domains. Drawing on two UK-wide surveys (2020, 2023), the study uses Enterprise Educators UK’s Academic, Practitioner, and Influencer pathways as ideal-typical regimes of competence to analyse patterns of alignment and prioritisation. Findings reveal growing hybridity, with educators consistently valuing learner motivation, relationship-building, and stakeholder engagement over curriculum delivery alone. While pathways remain coherent as professional reference points, practice is increasingly configured across multiple domains, challenging traditional notions of distinct role categories. The article contributes to management education by examining how a professional competence framework structures learning, recognition, and role alignment, demonstrating how recognition infrastructures shape hybrid academic work within practice-based education.