The Impact of Entrepreneurship Education: A Study of Iranian Students' Entrepreneurial Intentions and Opportunity Identification

Building on the theory of planned behavior, an ex ante and ex post survey was used to assess the impacts of elective and compulsory entrepreneurship education programs (EEPs) on students' entrepreneurial intention and identification of opportunities. Data were collected by questionnaire from a sample of 205 participants in EEPs at six Iranian universities. Both types of EEPs had significant positive impacts on students' subjective norms and perceived behavioral control. Results also indicated that the elective EEPs significantly increased students' entrepreneurial intention, although this increase was not significant for the compulsory EEPs. The findings contribute to the theory of planned behavior and have implications for the design and delivery of EEPs.     

Opportunities to Improve Entrepreneurship Education: Contributions Considering Brazilian Challenges

This paper identifies challenges and opportunities for enhancing higher education in entrepreneurship considering student perceptions concerning both their demand for entrepreneurship education and their entrepreneurial intention as well as previous studies that present the points of view of experts. The main focus is Brazilian higher education, but the results address challenges that cross borders, such as the need for a practical approach. The study analyzed the data from the Brazilian version of the 2011 Global University Entrepreneurial Spirit Students' Survey (GUESSS) obtained with an online questionnaire answered by 25,751 Brazilian students from 37 colleges and universities. To give a reference for a better understanding of Brazilian statistics, data were compared to those of the 2011 international GUESSS involving also 25 other countries and 64,079 responses from them. Three hypotheses were tested. The results show that entrepreneurship education has a significant negative effect on student entrepreneurial intention and also on self‐efficacy. The same occurs between entrepreneurial intention and students' demand for entrepreneurship education. Brazilian students present higher levels of entrepreneurial intention and are significantly more motivated to take courses and activities in entrepreneurship than those students in the international sample. Approximately 50 percent of Brazilian students are potential entrepreneurs. One of the opportunities identified is to take advantage of students' positive attitudes and their high demand. The opportunities could play an important role in overcoming the challenges recognized, among which are the need for a more practical approach and the need for larger and diversified educational offerings beyond business planning. The challenges make Neck and Greene's recommendations, presented in a 2011 issue of JSBM, particularly important for Brazil. The last three sections propose different explanations, suggestions for more research, and practical recommendations.     

Women's Perceived Empowerment in Entrepreneurial Efforts: The Role of Bricolage and Psychological Capital

Women's entrepreneurial empowerment—perceived competence, self‐determination, and ability in managing a firm as an entrepreneur—is important to women's entrepreneurship in developing countries. Drawing on a sample of 369 women entrepreneurs from small and medium enterprises (SMEs) located in Gujarat, a western state in India, we find that women's entrepreneurial empowerment is positively associated with firm revenues. Gains from empowerment could be further enhanced for women entrepreneurs managing resource constraints—through bricolage—and meeting the challenges of self‐employment—through psychological capital. The present study contributes to literature on women's entrepreneurial empowerment and SME performance. Women's empowerment and the bolstering effects of bricolage and psychological capital could help government agencies and non‐government organizations devise programs and policies to improve the performance of women‐owned SMEs in developing countries.     

The Role of Perceived University Support in the Formation of Students' Entrepreneurial Intention

Entrepreneurship education is central to student entrepreneurship. Previous research has attempted to understand the role of entrepreneurship education in the formation of students' entrepreneurial intention and behavior, albeit in an isolated manner. Universities can support entrepreneurship in many ways, but it is important to measure students' perception of the support that they receive in order to understand the extent of such support and its impact on students. The current study proposed and tested an integrative, multiperspective framework. We have hypothesized that the three dimensions of university support, that is, perceived educational support, concept development support, and business development support, together with institutional support, shape students' entrepreneurial self‐efficacy. In turn, entrepreneurial self‐efficacy and individual motivations constitute the fundamental elements of the intention to start a business. A sample of 805 university students took part in the study and data were analyzed using structural equation modeling. Our findings showed that perceived educational support exerted the highest influence on entrepreneurial self‐efficacy, followed by concept development support, business development support, and institutional support. Self‐efficacy in turn had a significant effect on entrepreneurial intention. Individual motivations such as self‐realization, recognition, and role had an additional impact on intention. However, intention was not related to financial success, innovation, and independence. The findings suggest that a holistic perspective provides a more meaningful understanding of the role of perceived university support in the formation of students' entrepreneurial intention. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

Establishing Collaborative Business Education Programs in China

ABSTRACT

American universities have a valuable product for export to China, a world-class business education. Currently, the demand for Western-style business education far exceeds the supply. The undergraduate university system in China offers an excellent, though under-utilized, venue for providing Western-style business education to large numbers of China's next-generation business leaders. This paper describes the official procedures for establishing joint business education programs in Shanghai as well as the benefits and challenges of international collaboration.     

Effects of managers' entrepreneurial behavior on subordinates

The recent surge of interest in promoting corporate entrepreneurship seems linked to a growing body of empirical evidence of a positive relationship between a firm's entrepreneurial orientation and its improved financial performance. Logical induction suggests that organizations that promote corporate entrepreneurship must employ managers who are entrepreneurial in their behaviors. By extension, it would seem that managers who are entrepreneurial must have a positive impact on their subordinates if the organization's entrepreneurial initiatives are to be successful. Unfortunately, despite the implicit appeal of this logic, what would “seem” to be true has not yet been substantiated empirically.To address this shortcoming and to provide managers with information from which to judge their efforts to promote corporate entrepreneurship, research was undertaken to address two specific research questions:

• 1.1. What behaviors distinguish managers who exhibit an entrepreneurial orientation?
• 2.2. How do subordinates judge the actions of managers who work for an organizational metamorphosis to an entrepreneurial model of management?

Providing a rigorous assessment of these issues necessitated the selection of a setting not typically seen as receptive to entrepreneurial initiatives. Thus, the data were collected from the two largest units of an electric utility system, one with 8,000 employees and $2.847 billion in 1992 revenues and the other with 10,000 employees and $4.297 billion in 1992 revenues. Together, these units employed 60% of the corporate staff and generated 89% of total corporate revenues.Because of the perception of the company's top management that the prospect of deregulation, if not its inevitability, threatened the viability of the company's traditional management style, executives considered specific programs to become more competitive. They formulated a plan for the long-term development of an entrepreneurial organization based on the belief of the company's executives that its future success required fundamental change in corporate culture and competitive posture.To track the evolution of its managers toward an entrepreneurial orientation, the company used two survey instruments developed with and administered by executives of the company to monitor each manager's progress and to evaluate its impact.To assess the types and frequency of entrepreneurial behaviors among managers, a theoretically driven, management “behaviors” questionnaire was developed. Eleven of its items were designed to assess entrepreneurial behavior as a distinguishable subset of generally advocated management practice. This survey was administered by the company to all 833 immediate subordinates of each of 102 individual managers.A second survey instrument, completed approximately 6 months after the behaviors questionnaire, was used to assess the “effects” of the managers' behaviors. Of particular interest were 12 questions from this instrument that measured the satisfaction levels of the 102 managers' 1,522 immediate and second level subordinates with the supervision that they received, i.e., the 12 items provided an indication of the effects of managers' entrepreneurial behaviors on their subordinates' satisfaction with the managers.The results of the data analyses support the idea that managers who are entrepreneurial in their behavior have a positive impact on their subordinates' satisfaction with their supervisors. The results indicate that as entrepreneurial behaviors increased, subordinates' satisfaction with supervision increased. Whereas 62% of the subordinates of entrepreneurial managers reported high levels of satisfaction with their supervisors, 69% of subordinates of bureaucratic managers reported low levels of satisfaction with their supervisors. Further analysis indicated that eight of 11 of the “behaviors” survey items were able to discriminate high and low subordinate satisfaction. This demonstrated that the scale developed through this research is robust in the measurement of entrepreneurial behaviors of managers.The major contributions of this study were in the development and validation of a scale that can be used to gauge entrepreneurial behaviors, and the finding that corporate entrepreneurship, as gauged by these behaviors, was well received by subordinates even when entrepreneurial management was counter to its organization's preexisting culture.     

Academics’ start-up intentions and knowledge filters: an individual perspective of the knowledge spillover theory of entrepreneurship

Previous studies suggest that entrepreneurial activity tends to be greater in contexts where investment in new knowledge is relatively high (e.g., entrepreneurial universities). However, in this specific knowledge context, only a few academics recognize opportunities and act on them through entrepreneurial activities (e.g., spin-offs). A plausible explanation could be the existence of several filters that limit the total conversion of knowledge into economically useful knowledge. The vehicle to knowledge transfer is entrepreneurship. Therefore, the main actor is the academic entrepreneur, but no empirical study has highlighted the knowledge spillover theory of entrepreneurship at the individual level. The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of academics’ start-up intentions and knowledge filters on the knowledge transfer process within entrepreneurial university. Adopting the knowledge spillover theory of entrepreneurship and the planned behavior theory, a proposed model was tested with a sample of 207 academics enrolled in entrepreneurial universities in Spain using structural equation modeling. Our findings could provide insights for policy-makers to design policies that bring further benefits to society and educational organizations as well as significant contributions to the literature.     

Exploring factors motivating entrepreneurial intentions: the case of Italian university students

This study aims to identify the factors motivating the intentions of university students to become entrepreneurs. Leveraging data from a survey of 941 Italian students and adopting Ajzen's theory of planned behaviour, this paper employs the structural equation model to identify factors explaining students’ entrepreneurial intentions. The findings show that attitudes, subjective norms and perceived behavioural control positively shape Italian students’ intentions. Moreover, the findings signal that the skills acquired during the university pathway play a crucial role in encouraging students to consider entrepreneurial choices. The paper extends and complements the academic and policy debate in the field of entrepreneurship offering a comprehensive investigation of the factors affecting entrepreneurial intentions. It also allows us to contend that higher education may have an important role to play in fostering the entrepreneurial intentions of young people. This is especially significant given current global economic conditions and the renewed importance of self‐employment strategies.     

Generating and Evaluating International Entrepreneurial Ideas

Much has been written about the role and usefulness of entrepreneurial education in America's dynamic environment beset by a chronic shortage of good entry and career jobs. This paper focuses on two aspects of entrepreneurial education that are decisive to the success of a new venture, yet are hard to teach: (1) how to find profitable, realistic ideas for a new business and (2) how to evaluate them. The author applied the experiential learning approach to these two critical phases of entrepreneurial education in his international marketing classes. He describes five steps that must be taken to introduce this method in the classroom: an Idea Generating Matrix based on deductive procedures and empirical reasoning; a Multifactor Screen to select, postpone, or discard entrepreneurial ideas; a Multilevel Idea Model by applying the case of an ethnic fast food franchise; a Modus Operandi/ Modus Acquirendi Matrix to decide on the operational and acquisition strategy; and a final step, in which reflective and "respondent" behavior must convert to action and "operant" behavior.     

Task Conflict,Narcissism and Entrepreneurial Capability in Teams Planning a Business: A Moderated Moderation Approach to Explaining Business Planning Performance

Drawing on the dynamic self‐regulatory processing model of narcissism, we hypothesize that in teams planning a business, task conflict relates positively to business planning performance and that this link is reinforced by the team's narcissism. By integrating aspects of human capital theory, this brighter side of narcissism is amplified where the narcissism is aligned with entrepreneurial capability and the team members' belief in their entrepreneurial capability. The findings of the moderated moderation analysis examining 66 teams of entrepreneurship students support the study's assumptions and provide meaningful implications for social psychology and personality researchers in entrepreneurship.     

浅析“90后”温籍大学生传承温州人创业精神

随着经济的发展和时代的变迁,＂90后＂温籍大学生不得不接过温州人创业的旗帜,传承和发展温州人的创业精神,为家乡经济发展贡献力量。但是他们有着和父辈不一样的特点,吃苦能力较差、个性较强,受过良好的教育和善于运用网络技术等,因此社会、家庭、高校要创造良好的创业环境,支持和鼓励他们开展创业实践活动。     

Women's entrepreneurship and well-being at the base of the pyramid

Women's entrepreneurship at the base of the pyramid can offer a way out of poverty for families, foster the development of communities, and provide a route to modernizing countries. Yet, we know little about what entrepreneurship means for the well-being of these entrepreneurs. This study investigates the well-being of marginalized women entrepreneurs engaged in an entrepreneurship training and venture creation program. Based on a qualitative case study method, our findings show that despite successful venture creation, the women differed in their experiences of well-being, with some flourishing and others languishing. Specifically, we found that the languishing women entrepreneurs lacked family support and prior work experience outside the home, which was associated with abstract goals and unrealistic expectations of venture creation outcomes. In contrast, flourishing women entrepreneurs, benefitting from prior work experience and family support, tended to set concrete goals for their entrepreneurial endeavors and had realistic expectations. Our findings provide new insights into some of the limitations of entrepreneurship programs for women at the base of the pyramid and emphasize the importance of well-being as a measure of successful venture creation.     

Do entrepreneurship programmes raise entrepreneurial intention of science and engineering students? The effect of learning,inspiration and resources

Drawing on the theory of planned behaviour, this study tests the effect of entrepreneurship programmes on the entrepreneurial attitudes and intentions of science and engineering students. This is necessary in order to confirm (or disconfirm) conventional wisdom that entrepreneurship education increases the intention to start a business. The results show that the programmes raise some attitudes and the overall entrepreneurial intention and that inspiration (a construct with an emotional element) is the programmes' most influential benefit. The findings contribute to the theories of planned behaviour and education and have wider implications for a theory of entrepreneurial emotions and also for the practice of teaching entrepreneurship.     

Behaviours and entrepreneurial intention: Empirical findings about secondary students

This paper aims to identify some factors that may be explaining differences among secondary students in start-up intentions. For that, the study develops an entrepreneurial intention model sustained by the use of Azjen’s Theory of Planned Behaviour (TBP). Using a sample of students aged between 14 and 15 years old, a questionnaire based on the Li?án and Chen’s Entrepreneurial Intention Questionnaire was administrated. The purpose is to test a model of entrepreneurial intention using structural equations. The findings point that TPB is an appropriate tool to model the development of entrepreneurial intention through pedagogical processes and learning contexts. The education and training should centre itself much more in changing personal attitudes than in knowledge. Moreover, it is desirable that an entrepreneurship educational programme could contribute to the development of competences related to entrepreneurship, social and civic skills, and cultural awareness.     

A multi-motivational general model of entrepreneurial intention

We develop and test an overarching model of entrepreneurial intention that includes profit, social impact, and innovation as the three main drivers of entrepreneurial behavior. A holistic model is developed to identify separately the generic intention to be a self-employed entrepreneur from the associated intention to be a specific type of entrepreneur. The latter is revealed by using a conjoint experiment to reveal the individual's relative preferences for profit, social impact, and innovation outcomes. Using fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis we provide insights into individuals' motivations for different types of entrepreneurial careers and for their multiple pathways to the same entrepreneurial type.     

高校创业教育工作现状及对策研究

分析创业教育的内涵和高校创业教育工作的现状,提出高校要明确创业教育的目标,构建完善的创业教育体系,建立高水平的创业教育师资队伍,创造全方位的创业教育支持体系,对高校深入开展创业教育工作,推动"以创业促就业"战略的贯彻和落实,具有重要意义.     

Entrepreneurial passion diversity in new venture teams: An empirical examination of short- and long-term performance implications

Empirical evidence is mounting that passion is an important part of entrepreneurship, contributing to behavior and outcomes for entrepreneurs, employees, and ventures. Yet knowledge of the performance implications of passion within new venture teams is sorely lacking. We examine how both the average level of entrepreneurial passion and the diversity of passion within new venture teams contributes to venture performance in both the short- and long-term. We test our model with multi-source, multi-wave data collected from 107 new venture teams participating in an accelerator program. Our findings indicate that average team passion is not significantly related to performance, but passion diversity, particularly intensity separation, is negatively related to performance. These findings have important implications for the literature on passion, new venture teams, and group affective diversity.Executive summaryWhile existing studies have substantially improved our understanding of entrepreneurial passion, its sources, and its subsequent impact, insight into this topic remains limited in at least three ways. First, most new ventures are founded and led by teams rather than individuals, yet existing studies predominantly focus on entrepreneurial passion at the individual rather than team level. Second, while there is a prevailing assumption in existing literature that entrepreneurial passion leads to beneficial outcomes consistent with longstanding work in psychology, there is emerging evidence in entrepreneurship that passion may not always be functional and that it can even be dysfunctional. Despite this, we have limited understanding of what types of passion or when or for whom it is dysfunctional. And third, extant work on entrepreneurial passion for individuals and within teams has focused on behavioral or self-report measures of performance (e.g. Cardon and Kirk, 2015; Santos & Cardon, 2019) as well as venture survival, rather than objective team or firm performance in the short- and long-term.In this paper, we study the influence of team passion on new venture team performance. We draw on theory concerning entrepreneurial passion within venture teams (Cardon et al., 2017) that suggests that different aspects of entrepreneurial passion within teams shape team dynamics and venture outcomes. While generally, theories of passion suggest that entrepreneurial passion is positively related to team outcomes due to the positive emotions it brings about, we find that in teams, the relationships are more complex. While the average level of passion among team members is positively related to team performance when considered alone, this effect is not significant when passion diversity is also considered. Diversity of passion among individual team members has a negative relationship with team performance, including diversity in the level of passion team members experience (intensity separation), as well as diversity in the object of their passion (focus variety). These negatively affect team dynamics due to conflicting emotions and identities among team members associated with passion diversity. We examine these relationships on specific team performance outcomes including evaluation of the business idea in the short-term and venture performance five years after their participation in an accelerator.The sample used in this study includes 107 entrepreneurial teams that were part of an accelerator program in the Netherlands. Teams were evaluated on the quality of their business ideas at the end of the accelerator program and the amount of investment the team had received five years later. Our results provide no support for positive effects of average team passion on the quality of the business ideas and confirm the negative effects of passion intensity separation on the quality of the business idea and the negative effects of passion focus variety on later venture performance.This paper makes several contributions. First, we expand the literature on passion in entrepreneurship, specifically adding to our understanding of passion within new venture teams. More specifically, we contribute to the growing body of evidence concerning potential dysfunctions of passion by uncovering a dysfunctional property of team passion diversity that uniquely manifests itself at the team level of analysis. We contribute to the literature on new venture teams by examining team composition in the form of passion diversity, and its relationship with team performance. Finally, our study extends work on the effects of entrepreneurial passion by looking at objective team performance outcomes in both the short- and long-term.For entrepreneurs, our findings confirm the importance of affect and identity for new venture teams, and specifically our findings indicate that there is a dark side to team passion. While passion is generally positioned as a positive phenomenon, we highlight the negative outcomes that passion can have in the team context. Diversity in the amount of passion team members experience can diminish the quality of the business ideas the team is able to generate in the short-term, while diversity in the focus of team members' passion can diminish the firm's long-term performance. For investors and accelerator communities this research validates the importance of considering entrepreneurial team composition and specifically entrepreneurial passion levels and domains when investing in teams or when supporting venture building.     

大学生创业瓶颈分析与对策研究——以江苏镇江大学生创业为例

大学生创业是促进大学生就业的重要途径。文章以江苏镇江的大学生创业为研究对象,在查阅文献和问卷调查的基础上,从社会、高校、个人三个层面分析制约大学生创业的瓶颈,创业瓶颈是由创业环境、创业教育、创业意识三个方面的原因造成的。要解决大学生创业瓶颈问题,就必须采取提升城市总体经济实力、完善创业保障机制、加强对大学生创业意愿培养。     

Middle managers' perception of the internal environment for corporate entrepreneurship: assessing a measurement scale

This study assesses the measurement properties of a scale that measures the key internal organizational factors that influence middle managers to initiate corporate entrepreneurship activities. In this study, corporate entrepreneurship is used in a broad sense to include the development and implementation of new ideas into the organization. Using this definition, this study describes an instrument used to empirically identify the internal conditions that influence middle manager's participation in corporate entrepreneurship activities. During the last decade, the role of the middle manager in corporate entrepreneurial activity has been recognized in the literature. The empirical research on the internal organizational factors that may foster middle manager activity has been limited, both in volume and scope. However, the literature does converge on at least five possible factors. The appropriate use of rewards: The literature stresses that an effective reward system that spurs entrepreneurial activity must consider goals, feedback, emphasis on individual responsibility, and results-based incentives. This factor, therefore, highlights middle managers' role in this regard. Gaining top management support: The willingness of senior management to facilitate and promote entrepreneurial activity in the organization, including championing innovative ideas as well as providing necessary resources, expertise or protection. This factor captures middle managers' role in this area. Resource availability: Middle managers must perceive the availability of resources for innovative activities to encourage experimentation and risk taking. Supportive organizational structure: The structure must foster the administrative mechanisms by which ideas are evaluated, chosen, and implemented. Structural boundaries tend to be a major stumbling block for middle management in corporate entrepreneurial activity. Risk taking and tolerance for failure: Middle managers must perceive an environment that encourages calculated risk taking while maintaining reasonable tolerance for failure. The literature on the internal factors was utilized to develop an assessment instrument called the Corporate Entrepreneurship Assessment Instrument (CEAI). The instrument contained 84 Likert-style questions that were believed to assess a firm's internal entrepreneurial environment. Understanding middle manager perceptions about the internal corporate environment is crucial to initiating and nurturing any entrepreneurial process. A scale such as the CEAI, therefore, could be very useful for companies that wish to embark on a strategic transformation through corporate entrepreneurship. The measurement properties of the CEAI, including a factor analysis and reliability assessment, were determined. Results confirmed that five distinct internal organizational factors, similar to those suggested in the literature, do exist. Based on how the items loaded on each factor, the factors were entitled management support, work discretion, organizational boundaries, rewards/reinforcement, and time availability. The reliability of each of these factors also met acceptable measurement standards. From a managerial perspective, the results indicate that CEAI can be a useful tool in diagnosing a firm's environment for corporate entrepreneurship, identifying areas where middle managers can make a significant difference, and develop strategies that can positively spur and sustain corporate entrepreneurship efforts. The results of such diagnosis can be useful in designing effective training programs for middle managers.