Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact of common undergraduate entrepreneurship classroom activities on students’ motivational processes related to entrepreneurial careers. Design/methodology/approach – In total, 700 undergraduate students from a variety of majors at a large midwestern university in the USA were invited to take a web-based survey. They were asked to indicate which experiential activities they would participate/were participating in as part of their program. Findings – The findings show that students’ entrepreneurial self-efficacy (ESE) is a driving force in classroom activities enhancing students’ intentions. However, the authors also found that the type of classroom activities that are common in entrepreneurship education negatively impact students’ ESE. Research limitations/implications – The generalizability is limited to the US region and the link from intention to behavior goes untested, but results strongly supported the adoption of social cognitive career theory to the entrepreneurship domain. Practical implications – This study lends support to the argument that promoting the learning process in entrepreneurship education should focus on real-world experience, action, and reflective processes to engage students in authentic learning, which should lead to greater entrepreneurial abilities and propensity, and eventually to enhanced entrepreneurial performance, which benefits individuals and societies. Social implications – This study suggests that the goals and pedagogical approaches to teaching entrepreneurship are issues that educators may need to revisit and update if the economic benefits of entrepreneurship are to be fully realized. Originality/value – While the relationship between entrepreneurship education and entrepreneurship activity is well documented in extant literature, this study found that activities that are common in entrepreneurship education may negatively impact students’ ESE and need to be further explored.

Previous diversity research has neglected the role of psychological mechanisms that underlie the relationship between diversity climate and employee performance. Drawing on social and racial identity theories, we hypothesized that psychological safety mediates the relationship between diversity climate and employee performance. Furthermore, we proposed that race moderates both stages of the mediation, whereby the relationships between diversity climate and psychological safety and between psychological safety and performance are stronger for minorities than for Whites. Results, based on a survey of employees and their colleagues, revealed that the relationship between diversity climate and employee performance was mediated by psychological safety. We also found that the diversity climate-psychological safety and psychological safety-extra-role performance relationships were moderated by race, such that these relationships were stronger for minorities than for Whites. Further, the indirect effects of diversity climate on extra-role behaviours via psychological safety were also moderated by race, such that these relationships were stronger for minorities than for Whites. For efficient management of diversity in organizations, research and practical implications are also discussed. Practitioner PointsIn the midst of increasing workforce diversity, the study highlights the importance of a psychologically safe work environment where employees feel confident in expressing their true selves without fear of being judged as inferior or incompetent. By necessitating the creation of psychologically safe work environments, the study establishes psychological safety as a principal motivator of employee performance behaviours in a racially diverse work setting.

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SummaryThrough the lens of boundary theory, we examine whether the relationship between role overload and workfamily conflict is explained by the use of interdomain transitions. With a sample of 250 working adults, we examined whether individuals respond to role overload by engaging in interdomain transitions and how the frequency of these transitions influences work-family conflict both concurrently and over time. Results support our expectation that at a given time, interdomain transitions function as an episodic coping mechanism with short-term costs (greater work-family conflict) and benefits (less role overload). Also, engaging in interdomain transitions was an explanatory variable linking role overload and work-family conflict. We expected that, over time, engaging in interdomain transitions would function as a preventive coping mechanism, serving to reduce role overload. Interestingly though, several of the longitudinal hypotheses were counter to prediction. Our findings provide further evidence for the use of boundary theory in examinations of the work-family interface. Insights on areas within the literature that require further theoretical development are discussed, along with a consideration of the application of emerging methodologies within our empirical designs.

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