Relationship between entrepreneurship education and entrepreneurial goal intentions: psychological traits as mediators

Abstract

Despite the commonly held view that entrepreneurship education and training nurtures future entrepreneurs, little is known about the mechanism through which this intervention impacts on its intended outcomes. The purpose of this study was to test if selected psychological traits (need for achievement, risk-taking propensity, internal locus of control) mediated the predictive relationship between the perceived effects of entrepreneurship education and entrepreneurial intentions. A crosssectional survey of a sample of 308 vocational education students in Zimbabwe was used for this purpose. The results show that the effects of entrepreneurship education variable had a positive and statistically significant relationship with need for achievement, risk-taking propensity, internal locus of control and entrepreneurial goal intentions. Moreover, need for achievement, risk-taking propensity and internal locus of control accounted for a statistically significant amount of variance in entrepreneurial intentions. However, of the three psychological traits, only need for achievement partially mediated the relationship between the effects of entrepreneurship education and entrepreneurial goal intentions. The outcome has implications on the design and focus of entrepreneurship education programmes.

Entrepreneurship education and sustainable development: mediating role of entrepreneurial skills

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Nascent entrepreneurs of millennial generations in the emerging market of Indonesia

“…However, given that behaviour transpires in line with an individual's personality, we should believe that individual distinction in entrepreneurship is an expression of an individual's personality. Earlier studies reveal regional dissimilarity in intraindividual entrepreneurial clusters of the Big Five traits (scoring high in extraversion, conscientiousness, and openness to experience and lower in agreeableness and neuroticism), which are to be associated with more compelling geographical entrepreneurial undertakings (Audretsch et al, 2017;Obschonka et al, 2019). Broadening this rationality to entrepreneurial accomplishment, we envisage people scoring higher on personality traits associated with the entrepreneurial behaviour to be more burgeoning entrepreneurs.…”

The complex relationship between entrepreneurship and its context

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