Shaping the Entrepreneurial Mindset: Entrepreneurial Intentions of Business Students in Croatia

Abstract

Business students from a public university in Croatia participated in an international study on entrepreneurial self‐efficacy, identity, and education. The results of this preliminary empirical research indicate that the main predictors of the entrepreneurial intentions in Croatia are strength of entrepreneurial identity aspiration and entrepreneurial self‐efficacy. These two main constructs mediate the number of personal, situational, or contextual factors, including education. Empirical analysis supports the majority of Social Cognitive Career Theory hypothesized interaction between control variables and main constructs such as self‐efficacy, positive outcome expectations, and entrepreneurial identity. These findings thus fill the gap in the empirical evidence of the theoretical framework validity derived from different contexts.

The Moderating Role of National Culture in the Relationship Between University Entrepreneurship Offerings and Student Start-Up Activity: An Embeddedness Perspective

“…The study contributes to the existing literature on nascent student entrepreneurship and start‐up behavior in a number of ways. Extensive prior research has explored the entrepreneurial intentions of university students (Autio et al ; Carey, Flanagan, and Palmer ; Karimi et al ; Kolvereid ; Krueger, Reilly, and Carsrud ; Pfeifer, Šarlija, and Sušac ; Zellweger, Sieger, and Halter ), but the actual realization of these intentions has received relative less attention. In this paper, we document how in certain circumstances university students are more likely to engage in entrepreneurial activities.…”

Recognizing Opportunities across Campus: The Effects of Cognitive Training and Entrepreneurial Passion on the Business Opportunity Prototype

“…Last, the cognitive perspective is often useful to addressing how opportunities are identified. Opportunity recognition is the first stage of the entrepreneurial process (e.g., Baron and Shane 2008;Haynie et al 2010;Shane 2012;Shepherd 2004), and it is critical that individuals who are interested in becoming entrepreneurs are trained in opportunity recognition, even before other technical competencies are taught (for instance, writing or building business plans) (Corbett 2007;Kuratko 2005;Pittaway and Cope 2007). However, opportunity recognition often depends on finding or seeing what others cannot see.…”

“…Opportunity recognition strongly depends on an active and engaged analysis of an environment (Baron 2004) and on individuals' experiences and feelings. Thus, experimenting solutions to problems, learning by doing, critically reflecting on theories and engaging in real-life situations have stronger impacts on entrepreneurial learning and on the development of students' perceptions and entrepreneurial intentions (Liñ an, Santos, and Fern andez 2011;Pittaway and Cope 2007;Rasmussen and Sørheim 2006). This type of approach on education is called experiential learning and it has its roots in the work of Kolb (Kolb 1984;Kolb and Kolb 2005).…”

“…Because entrepreneurship education focuses on raising entrepreneurial awareness, on developing a way of thinking (Fayolle, Gailly, and Lassas-Clerc 2006), and on creating an entrepreneurial mindset (Krueger 2007), it requires the adoption of educational approaches focusing on cognition. In contrast to the inherited and stable traits perspective, cognitive approaches focus on the individuals' potential to develop their cognitive mechanisms through significant experiences, which they transform into knowledge (Corbett 2005;Fayolle, Gailly, and Lassas-Clerc 2006;Pittaway and Cope 2007). Additionally, several scholars (e.g., B echard and Gr egoire 2005) have proposed that entrepreneurship is best learned through experiential learning, since it modifies students' cognitive structures and ways of thinking, and results in the recognition of de facto opportunities (Corbett 2005).…”

Cultural Capital of Recruitment Decision‐Makers and its Influence on their Perception of Person‐Organisation Fit of Skilled Migrants

“… Knowing why capabilities (which include organisZational culture, values and beliefs), Organizational know‐how capabilities (which include job relevant explicit and implicit skills and knowledge) and Knowing whom capabilities (which include the personal relationships inside and outside of firm's networks) (Pfeifer et al., ). …”