In the advent of new public management, expressed as the bureaucratization of university education, the competitive approaches by the management systems, the corporatization of governance structures, and the commodification of knowledge, it can thus be surmised that it is no longer business as usual in entrepreneurship skills development. Entrepreneurship skills development is one case in point that is fast becoming of great interests to scholars of social sciences and humanities. It ought to be so due to the power relations and the materialist interests that the new public management seems to promote and also how some university functions may have to respond, as a result. The scholarship project on which this article reports, sought to problematise, analyse and explain the power dynamics behind what appeared as the growth path in one case of entrepreneurship skills development in a university institution in South Africa. While the growth path could be easily commendable, what remained elusive were seemingly the challenges of effective institutional relations which therefore could be declared as marring the opportunities for optimising the potential that such a function could realise.

Keywords: Entrepreneurship skills development, New Public Management, Organisational learning, Critical realism, Excellence.