Research on women entrepreneurs over the last 40 years has centered on comparative studies between men and women related to sociodemographic, perceptual, and contextual factors. An emerging area for research is studying contextual factors such as corporations, households, family businesses, and universities. Using an institutional theory framing, this study explored the constraining and enabling factors institutions have on the entrepreneurial propensity of women faculty at Michigan State University and the University of Michigan. Given the gaps in the women's entrepreneurship knowledge base, the following research question was asked: how do university policy, support measures, and reward systems constrain or enable the entrepreneurial activity of white women faculty in engineering? A qualitative case study approach was used to collect and analyze the data. Interviews were the primary data source and documents were the secondary data source. Pattern matching was used to analyze the data. Findings show that university promotion methods and the number of faculty job responsibilities were constraining factors. The factor that was enabling to white women engineering faculty at both universities, was the ability to act as a change agent who shapes new institutional environments.
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