factors explaining students’ inclination towards...
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Journal of Emerging Issues in Economics, Finance and Banking (JEIEFB)
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Factors Explaining Students’ Inclination towards Entrepreneurship:
Empirical Study of Ethiopian University Students
Buzeye Zegeye
Wollo University, College of Business and Economics,
Department of Management, Dessie –Ethiopia
E-mail: [email protected]
______________________________________________________________________________
Abstract
This study investigates the inclination towards entrepreneurship among university students in
Ethiopia. Specifically, it aims to examine the relationship between entrepreneurship education
and inclination towards entrepreneurship. The influence of demographic characteristics and
family business background on university students’ inclination towards entrepreneurship is also
being examined. An empirical test carried out on the data gathered from questionnaires
demonstrates that two entrepreneurship education variables are found to have statistically
significant relationship on the inclination towards entrepreneurship. Two demographic variables
and a family business background variable have an effect on university students’ inclination
towards entrepreneurship. Finally, based on the findings, the implications of the study have been
forwarded.
______________________________________________________________________________
Keywords: Entrepreneurship education; inclination towards entrepreneurship; demographic
characteristics; family business background; University students
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1. Introduction
Entrepreneurship has become an everyday buzzword. Policymakers, economists, academics
and even University students are talking about it.
Entrepreneurship or doing own business has remained one of the biggest occupations and a
source of income since the earliest economies and markets emerged on the face of earth. In the
primitive and old societies the men who were having various skills like making the simple
weapons used those skills to ensure their continued livelihood and existence.
With the beginning of the Industrial Revolution the range of the products expanded and so did the
range of business opportunities for a potential entrepreneur. Entrepreneurship plays a vital role
for new venture creation; existing venture expansion, social, technological and economic
development of the country (Lumpkin & Dress, 1996).
Today in this very turbulent world economy, self – employment option become as a stable
and an increasingly attractive occupation for one to engage in, particularly where there is
increasing unemployment hardship exists. In Ethiopia self – employment becomes a more
attractive and rewarding career option for the people and particularly for University students.
More specifically, entrepreneurship is a major engine driving many nations’ economic
growth, Innovation and competitiveness (Scarborough and Zimmerer, 2003; Kuratko and
Hodgetts, 2004). As many researches on the areas discloses, there is a strong Positive correlations
between entrepreneurship and economic growth in terms of creating a marvelous job
opportunities both in urban and rural areas, stimulates creativity and innovation so as to transform
technologies, knowledge and skills, expanding as well as ensuring firms survival and its
sustainability. This, in turn, has increasingly made entrepreneurship emerged as one of the most
popular research domain in academic circles to study on the importance and contributions of
entrepreneurship (Lee, Chang et al, 2005).
Courses in entrepreneurship are also becoming a popular at college and university levels
(Brown, 1999). An exponential interest in entrepreneurship studies has increased amongst both
undergraduate and graduate students over the last decade (Solomon, Weaver et al, 2005). One of
the key factors explaining this unparalleled phenomenon is the fact that wages employment or
‘secure’ employment is no longer a guarantee especially in the public sector for university
graduates (Collins, Hannon et al, 2004; Kamau-Maina, 2006; Postigo, Iacobucci et al, 2006). In
addition the luxury thought of university graduates are the elite and intelligent group in the
society, whom can easily acquire a job upon graduation has no longer reflected the realities of
today’s employment world (Seet and Seet, 2006). In today’s competitive job environment, total
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job opportunities are inevitably limited and thus one must compete to secure a job as supply of
jobs is limited. As a result, many graduates are unable to get a job upon graduation. Students are
now apparently searching for a business education that can equip them with the necessary
entrepreneurial knowledge and skills to succeed in running businesses or to create a job from
seizing existing entrepreneurial opportunities (Brown 1999; Henry, 2003).Therefore many
universities and colleges around the world have responded to this demand by introducing
entrepreneurial courses to students in an effort to promote entrepreneurship as well as a
professional entrepreneurship career (Postigo and Tamborini, 2002). For instance, in Ethiopia,
there are 31 Public Universities, various private colleges and Universities that offer courses in
entrepreneurship, even BA degree in Entrepreneurship and Management for many thousands of
students in the country. On top of this, Ethiopian government incumbents were/are conducting
entrepreneurship skills competitions among different entrepreneurs on ETV in 2012 to promote
self-employment and entrepreneurship profession. Many dialogues, forums and training programs
organized by educational institutions (Universities, Colleges, Institutes, schools, Ministry of
Education, Management Institutes of Ethiopia) are all in favor of entrepreneurship development
apart from being the subject taught at colleges and universities (Landstrom, 2005). Definitely, all
these are being done with one major goal, namely to foster entrepreneurial spirit and expect
attitude change in students, after undertaking entrepreneurial courses. Students are also expected
to value entrepreneurship as a personal and future career development alternative (Kantis, Postigo
et al, 2002).
The main objectives of this study are to examine the effect of entrepreneurship education
(independent variable) on Ethiopian university students’ inclination towards entrepreneurship
(dependent variable). Particularly, this research attempts to examine the relationship between
entrepreneurship education and university students’ inclination towards entrepreneurship. The
specific objectives of the study are;
To examine the effect of “ family business background” and “ willingness to become an
entrepreneur” on the university students’ inclination towards entrepreneurship
To investigate the effect of the university entrepreneurship promotion on the university
students’ inclination towards entrepreneurship
To examine the effect of demographic characteristics such as educational background,
previous work experience, sex as well as educational experience of the students families
on university students inclination towards entrepreneurship
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The findings of this research study will make those areas quite clear to our business students,
business people, society, government and university teachers which are demanding some
remedial actions so that the business students are encouraged to pursue their careers by
establishing and running their own businesses. If proper actions are taken and an overall
commitment is gained from everyone to overcome those factors which are serving as barriers to
entrepreneurship ( as reflected in the findings of this study) then the time to come may see the
business students if this region as successfully self – employed. Eventually, entrepreneurship can
be recognized as a highly rewarding and viable career option by the business students of Ethiopia.
2. Literature Review
2.1 The Significance of Entrepreneurship Education
Many research rigorously reveals that the pretention advantage of entrepreneurship
education to foster economic growth of the nation. For instance, Mueller and Volery (2006),
portray the importance of entrepreneurship education in influencing the students’ decision to
become and choosing a future entrepreneurial career. According to Krueger (1993 cited on
TahseenMahmoodet el, 2012) personal attitude towards entrepreneurship are set out by
superfluous factors such as previous experience. According to these research explanations, prior
studies explored that entrepreneurship education and develop a person’s level of self efficacy
(Wilson et al 2007 cited on Ibid). Students participated in entrepreneurship education have shown
more inclinations towards starting their own business (Noel, 1998), because entrepreneurship
education develop a vision among students to start their own business with innovation
(Wilson,2007). To end this, research suggests that universities, [colleges, schools] and
other institutions of higher learning have been given the mandate to play a leading role in
inculcating students with the entrepreneurial knowledge and skills that will be useful in
their future career endeavours (Nurmi and Paasio, 2007). Due to this fact, there is a need
to examine how entrepreneurship education could influence university students’
predisposition to entrepreneurship. Despite the exponential growing research interest in
the area of entrepreneurship education very little research has been specifically
investigated the relationship between entrepreneurship education and entrepreneurial
inclination in Ethiopian university students.
This research, therefore, aimed at to contribute to the current literature by identifying the
variables of entrepreneurship education that influence students’ inclination towards
entrepreneurship by giving a due attention in Ethiopian settings. Taking the above scenarios into
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consideration, this research is investigates if entrepreneurship education can be adequately
influenced Ethiopian university students’ inclination towards entrepreneurship, particularly in
Amhara region.
H1: There is a positive relationship between entrepreneurship education and students’ inclination
towardsentrepreneurship in Ethiopian university students.
2.2 The Entrepreneurial Course curriculum and content
As contemporary researches in the areas address, exposure to entrepreneurship seems to be a
key factor to develop and foster entrepreneurial profession (Charney and Libecap, 2003; Hannon,
2005). However due to it’s multidisciplinary in nature, perhaps the pedagogical issue of
entrepreneurship is always unfinished discussion (Kent, 1990; Fiet, 2000a; Cooper, Bottomley, et
al. 2004). It appears to be unfinished debate from little uniformity concerning how, who and what
to teach entrepreneurship with regard to its contextual and conceptual understandings despite
entrepreneurship education has been increasingly gained the attention from academia (Falkang
and Alberti, 2000; Raichaudhuri, 2005; Dugassa, undefined) This happens largely due to the four
possible viewpoints held by different people when developing the entrepreneurship programmes:
from the educators’ viewpoints; the students; the programmers and the evaluators (Béchard and
Toulouse 1998, p. 318). Dugassa (undefined), expresses also the same viewpoint that
entrepreneurial curriculum develops differently across universities entrepreneurship within
business courses or a specific courses on entrepreneurship, Educator (University lecturers)
teaching this course have no or less experience over entrepreneurship, the assessment methods is
not different from other courses but which actual must be different. Dugassa (undefined), in his
study on entrepreneurship education in HEIs in Ethiopia found that entrepreneurship teaching and
courses are generally classified into two approaches: courses for entrepreneurship and courses
about entrepreneurship. The decisions on teaching methodologies in entrepreneurship courses are
therefore could be influenced by the aim of the educational objective.
To produce students who are capable to deal with real entrepreneurial activity or to
transform students’ entrepreneurial competencies to practical way is closely centered on courses
for entrepreneurship. While courses about entrepreneurship concerned with teaching
entrepreneurship as a required subject in the syllabus via traditional methods (Gibb
2002(a)).Thus, the major challenge of entrepreneurship in relation to education is the
appropriateness of curriculum and teaching methods in developing students entrepreneurial
competencies and skills (Garavan and O'Cinneide 1994). With regard to the content of the
entrepreneurial courses, Brown (1999) indicates that the entrepreneurship course content should
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be informal with an emphasize more on hands-on teaching methods. He then outlines the core
structure of teaching entrepreneurship courses should draw on:
• Critical thinking
• Reliance on experience – successful courses access students’ skills and needs
• Thinking about entrepreneurship as a career
• Use guest speakers who are experienced entrepreneurs
In response, Vesper (2004) categorizes four kind of knowledge useful for entrepreneurs and
hence the entrepreneurship course content should be developed according to this knowledge:
i) business-general knowledge – it applies to most firms, including the new ventures
ii) venture-general knowledge – it applies to most start-ups, but not so much to going firms
iii) opportunity-specific knowledge – it is about the knowledge about the existence of an un-
served market and about how the resources need to be ventured in
iv) Venture-specific knowledge – it is about the knowledge on how to produce a particular
product or goods in terms of teaching methods, different researchers propose different approaches
in delivering entrepreneurial knowledge and skills to students (Fiet, 2000; Fiet 2000). Hence,
there have been seemed to be lots of approaches to teach entrepreneurship ranging from the
conventional approach such as textbooks (Fiet, 2002), examinations (McMullan and Cahoon,
1979) to unconventional like business plan (Audet, 2000), life histories of working entrepreneurs
(McKenzie 2004); guest lecturers (Brown 1999; Klandt and Volkmann 2006) and field study or
visiting to business organizations (Cooper, Bottomley, et al. 2004). Notwithstanding the
differences in curriculum and delivery approach, the ultimate aim of entrepreneurial programmes
is to stimulate entrepreneurship awareness among students that, in turn, would increase their
interest in entrepreneurship.
H2: The entrepreneurial curriculum and content stimulates students’ entrepreneurship inclination
in Ethiopian university students
2.3 The university’s role in promoting entrepreneurship
Universities play a purposeful role in promoting entrepreneurship education to develop
regional and society economies (Binks, Starkey, et al. 2006; Co and Mitchell, 2006).
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Mahlberg(1996) agrees the remarks by stating that schools and universities have a key role to
play in promoting entrepreneurship since educational institutions are ideally considered the place
in shaping entrepreneurial cultures and aspirations among students while they are studying to
survive in today’s robust business milieu (Autio, Keeley, et al, 1997; Landstrom, 2005). This
could probably because universities are seedbeds of entrepreneurship to teach their students the
way to think and behave entrepreneurially (Bygrave, 2004). Universities, in this respect, should
position themselves as a hub of entrepreneurship by making substantial contributions in nurturing
an entrepreneurial environment that combines factors that contribute to the development of
entrepreneurship (Gnyawali and Fogel, 1994).
As a provider of entrepreneurship training programmes, universities must do all the best it
could to create an entrepreneurially supportive environment that could encourage entrepreneurial
activity in turn would help to develop an enterprise culture among university students who are
tomorrow’s entrepreneurs (Roffe, 1999).
Autio, Keeley, Klofsten, &Ulfstedt (1997) in their study on entrepreneurial intentions of
technology and sciences students across four countries consistently conclude that university
teaching environments are the most influential factors that affect students’ perceptions towards
entrepreneurial career and entrepreneurial convictions. Hence it is important to present a positive
image of entrepreneurship as career option to draw students’ attentions within the university
environment by providing the resources and other facilities available to them. As we have to
always remember that even though individuals have the relevant entrepreneurial knowledge and
skills, if they do not possess positive image about entrepreneurship, they might eventually not
venture into the field (Alberti, Sciascia et al, 2004).
Towards this end, universities, by creating an entrepreneurial culture across campus, are
expected to influence students’ decision to creation businesses with its considerable influential
factor on students. This may due to students’ preferences towards career are easily influenced by
the environmental conditions in which they are interacting with as they are young and always
looking for appropriate models (Gnyawali and Fogel, 1994; Fayolle and Degeorge, 2006).
H3: The role to promote entrepreneurship played by the university increases the inclination of
Ethiopian university students to be more entrepreneurs.
2.4 The entrepreneurial experiential learning programme
The learning process of entrepreneurship should not only confine just to the classroom
discussions but the interaction with today’s dynamic business environment is vital because of
‘critical entrepreneurial skills canonly be developed and refined if they are practised’ (Dilts and
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Fowler 1999, p. 52). This is to enable students to gain hands-on experience by seeing, touching
and feeling about the business world (McIntyre and Roche 1999; Cooper, Bottomley et al. 2004).
For this reason, entrepreneurial internship is seen as a good mechanism to provide students with
such a learning experience in a real business milieu (Dilts and Fowler 1999). Internship as
according to Gault, Redington, &Schlager (2000) is ‘generally part-time field experiences
andencompasses a wider variety of academic disciplines and organisational settings’ with its
main goal to eventually lead students to become self-employed (Dilts and Fowler 1999). Mohd
Shariff, Abdul Mutalib, & Ahmad Fadzil (2000) highlight the objective of having internship
programme is to expose students to the perspectives of industry practical and its nature of work
practices. It is a training strategy that transforms theoretical knowledge to application as well as
develops individuals’ working skills in real career world (Dodge and McKeough 2003). Neill and
Mulholland (2003) point out that the students’ placement and/or work experience programmes is
very crucial for undergraduates as it exposes and prepares a student for the real working
experience and as an external extracurricular learning activity. Having the entrepreneurial
internship programmes offer a lot of advantages for universities, organisations as well as students
(Dilts and Fowler 1999; Hiltebeitel, Leauby et al. 2000). For instance, students with
entrepreneurial internship experience tend to exhibit lower job dissatisfaction than those without
internship experience (Hiltebeitel, Leauby et al. 2000). A study by Gault, Redington, &Schlager
(2000) also vindicate that interns who have participated in the internship programmes tend to
have higher career preparation about their jobs and higher level of intrinsic and extrinsic rewards
satisfactions. Hence, acquiring applicable entrepreneurial experience does have a positive relation
with individual’s intention and readiness in pursuit of business opportunities because of their
early exposure to business environments (Cooper, Bottomley et al. 2004).
In sum, looking at the benefits of internship programmes to students, many researchers
suggested that entrepreneurial internship programmes should become a compulsory component of
students’ educational structure (Hiltebeitel, Leauby et al. 2000). This, in turn, has made internship
programmes become an important integral part of today’s educational curriculum in preparing
university students towards entrepreneurial career (Raymond and McNabb 1993).
H4: The entrepreneurial internship programme increase the likelihood of Ethiopian university
students’ to be more entrepreneurially-inclined
2.5 Family background
Much research has been suggested the influence of demographic and family background on
individual’s inclination towards entrepreneurship (for example Koh 1995; Koh 1996; Reitan1997;
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Breen 1998; Lin, Picot et al. 2000; Dunn 2004; Smith 2005; Veciana, Aponte et al. 2005;
Kirkwood 2007). The common premise is that a good influence brought by family as well as
personal own experiences about entrepreneurship who contribute to higher entrepreneurial
inclination (Koh 1996; Mazzarol, Volery et al. 1999; Kirkwood 2007). The following
summarized the research that have been scholarly conducted on the demographic characteristics
as well as the family business background on entrepreneurship. With the different results
presenting by previous research, this study particularly controlled the university students’
demographic characteristics and family business background.
i) Gender
ii) Programmes of study
iii) Working experience
iv) Father’s occupation
v) Mother’s occupation
Many studies has recommended the impact of demographic and family background on a
person’s inclination towards entrepreneurship (e.g., Breen 1998; Dunn 2004; Kirkwood 2007;
Koh 1995, 1996; Lin et al. 2000; Reitan 1997; Smith 2005; Veciana et al. 2005). The general
hypothesis is that individual entrepreneurial traits and the good impact brought by family add to
higher intention towards entrepreneurship (Din 1992; Kirkwood 2007; Koh 1996; Mazzarol et al.
1999). Carsrud et al. (1993, p. 53) describe demographics in entrepreneurship study as
demographic means the exploration of the entrepreneurial population by quantitative approach
through the measurement of range, development or turn down of entrepreneurs and
entrepreneurship. Within this narrower description, demography comprises the a range of
principles, societal, organic, psychological, and financial variables used to interconnect particular
traits of the entrepreneurs, their business and the particular behaviors of that population.
Gasse(1982) effectively states the impact of prior work experience : practice may have two unlike
and reverse impact on entrepreneurial mind set. It can give the entrepreneur with a set of guiding
principle or information helpful to performance; it may develop practice that are tough to modify
and may act as barrier to adaptation and improved presentation (pp. 62–63).
H5: Demographic and facilities business background has positive impact of students inclination
towards entrepreneurship among Ethiopian University students.
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Research Frameworks and Hypothesis
Adopted from Otmananeizi, but made some changes by the researcher
3. Methodology
To examine the hypotheses, data was gathered from a self-administered questionnaire
conducted among students in Wollo University, Ethiopia. The unit of analysis was the final year
students in the college of Business and Economics (Five departments i.e. Management,
economics, Marketing Management, Cooperative and Accounting). The questionnaire was
adapted from various sources and used as a means of data collection. It consisted of seven parts:
demographic and family background, future career planning and entrepreneurial inclination, role
models, the university’s role in promoting entrepreneurship, the entrepreneurial curriculum and
content, teaching methods for entrepreneurship course(s) and the entrepreneurial internship
programme.
The scales used in the questionnaire was based on a 5-point Likert scale (with 1= strongly
disagree, 2= disagree, 3= no opinion, 4=agree, 5= strongly agree) for each close-ended question.
Prior to conducting the main study, a pilot test was conducted to improve the reliability and
validity of the questionnaire. 400 open and closed ended questionnaires were distributed to all
third year students from the five departments with the help of respective lecturers in classes or
lecture halls. The participation in this study was on voluntary basis and the respondents were
given one week to return the questionnaires. SPSS version 18.0 was used to analyze the data.
Descriptive analysis, a principle axis oblique factor analysis and hierarchical multiple regression
were performed to examine the hypothesized propositions. In this study, a reliability coefficient
of 0.50 is set as the criterion of acceptability (Helmstater 1964; Felder and Spurlin 2005). For
factor analysis, as a rule of thumb, factor with higher loadings (greater than 0.3) will be chosen to
represent a factor due to its greater influence and more important (Hair, Anderson et al. 1998).
Role models
Demographic
factors
Future career plan
Exposure to
entrepreneurship
education
Entrepreneurial
inclination Family Business
Background
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3.1 Factor analysis
Prior to major analyses, factor analysis was employed to reduce or regroup the items used in
measuring the following constructs either independent or dependent variables:
_ Future career planning and entrepreneurial inclination
_ Role models
_ The University’s role to promote entrepreneurship
_ The entrepreneurial curriculum and content
_ The entrepreneurial internship programmes
We measured future career planning and entrepreneurial inclination. A principal axis factoring
with the oblimin rotation suggested two-factor solution with four questions were omitted due to
the loadings less than 0.3. For role models, six questions were used to measure the role models.
All the six questions were not reduced into separate underlying variables.
Meanwhile, fourteen items were used in measuring the university’s role in promoting
entrepreneurship in which three were reverse-scored questions.
To measure the entrepreneurial curriculum and content, a principal axis factoring using
oblimin rotation was performed on the fourteen questions, including the three reverse-scored
questions. The results suggested that two-factor solution was appropriate. Finally, for the
entrepreneurial internship programmes, eleven items were used with three items were reverse-
scored questions. One item was extracted due to factor loadings less than 0.3 and thus ten
questions were loaded into the same factor.
Table 1: Descriptive statistics of the respondents
Variables Characteristics No. of the respondents
(N=400)
Percentage 100%
Personal
characteristics
Age 18-25 350 87.5
26-34 20 5
34-42 10 2.5
42-50 20 5
Total 400 100%
Sex Male 250 62.5
Female 150 37.5
Total 400 100%
Marital status Single 350 87.5
Engaged 0 0
Married 50 12.5
Total 400 100%
Father’s Entrepreneur 100 25
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business
Background
Employed 100 25
Unemployed 200 50
Total 400 100%
Mother’s
Business
background
Entrepreneur 50 12.5
Employed 50 12.5
Unemployed 300 75
Total 400 100%
Entrepreneurial
work experience
2years 25 6.25
0-2years 50 12.5
0years 325 81.25
Total 400 100%
4. Analysis and Results
The respondents’ profiles out of 400 usable questionnaires, the respondents were heavily in
favor of females with 37.5 per cent (N=150) compared to males with only 62.5 per cent (N=250).
As all of the respondents were studying at the undergraduate level, they were mostly aged
between 18 to 25 years old, with 87.5 per cent (n=350), a respondent was aged 26-34 were 5 per
cent (n=20), respondents was aged 34-42 were (n=20). When comes to the respondents’ working
experiences, 2.25 per cent (n=25) have had 2years working experience, 12.5per cent (n=50) had
1year working experience (n=325) had no work experience. Pertaining to the respondents’
parents’ working status, most of their fathers have been working as farmers (unemployed) (50 per
cent; n=200) and their mothers who were unemployed (or households) (75 per cent; n=350). Self-
employed (entrepreneur) and employed was ranked in the second higher by the respondents for
their fathers’ current occupations (25per cent; n=100 and 25 per cent, n=100 respectively) and
self employed mothers (12.5 per cent, n=50) as well as mothers employed to other organizations
(12.5 per cent, n=50).
Table 2: Factor Analysis for key variables
Main variables and questions Factor
loading
Entrepreneurial inclination α =0.803)
1. Seriously considered entrepreneurship as a highly desirable career option.
2. Never thought of entrepreneurship as a career choice.
3. Have the planning for opening a new venture.
4. Won’t start a business because it is too risky and I am afraid of failing.
5. Would like someday to start my own business.
6. Could easily pursue a career involving self-employment.
0.764
0.749
0.737
0.682
0.597
0.482
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7. If pursue a career involving self-employment, the chances of failure would be
very high.
8. Prefer to work in a big organization rather than a small firm.
Image of entrepreneurship (α=0.636)
1. Entrepreneurship is about job creation
2. Entrepreneurship is an honorable profession and I respect people who are
entrepreneurs.
3. Admire those who succeed in running their own business.
The university’s role to promote entrepreneurship (α=0.794)
1. University is an ideal place to learn about starting a business.
2. More entrepreneurship and business educational programmes on campus would
help students to start businesses.
3. Entrepreneurial or business related examples are included in classroom teaching.
4. Students are encouraged to pursue entrepreneurship ventures in the university.
5. The university infrastructure and policies discourage entrepreneurship.
6. Get to meet lots of people with good ideas for new businesses.
7. People are actively encouraged to pursue their own business ideas.
8. My university course prepares people well for entrepreneurial careers.
9. There are no student clubs on campus which promote entrepreneurship.
10. University has infrastructure in place to support the start-up of new businesses.
11. A creative university environment inspires me to develop ideas for new
business.
12. Entrepreneurial activities are limited only to business students.
13. Entrepreneurship courses should be made compulsory in order to stimulate
entrepreneurial spirit in campus.
14. The university provides resources to assist student entrepreneurs
The entrepreneurial curriculum and content α=0.828)
1. The instructors are experienced and competent course presenters.
2. As a result of taking this course, have better understanding about business.
3. The instructor did a good job of making this course relevant to the real world.
4. The course developed entrepreneurial knowledge and skills.
5. The instructor did stimulate interest in entrepreneurship through the course(s).
6. Interest towards entrepreneurship has been raised after taking the course(s).
0.428
0.305
0.728
0.713
0.389
0.583
0.547
0.542
0.521
0.489
0.470
0.477
0.475
0.466
0.452
0.450
0.377
0.363
0.364
0.653
0.656
0.647
0.628
0.627
0.580
0.550
0.511
0.508
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7. The course(s) provided a new and different experience.
8. The course(s) taught to deal with ambiguity in the real world.
9. The course(s) provided an opportunity to learn by doing.
The entrepreneurial internship programmes( α=0.754)
1. Feel confident about tackling unfamiliar work-based problems.
2. Help to develop the ability to plan and organize my day-to-day work.
3. Help to develop my job-related skills.
4. Provides me with a lot of new business ideas.
5. Did not learn much from it.
6. Help to develop my problem-solving skills.
7. Had lots of real business experiences that are not found in the classroom.
8. Was used as cheap labor.
9. Develop my communication skills.
10. Did not increase my practical business knowledge.
0.651
0.618
0.618
0.566
0.575
0.552
0.500
0.446
0.440
0.409
Table 3: Means, standard deviation and matrix correlations
Variables Mean S.
D
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
Entrepreneurial
inclination 3.74 0.6
4
1
Programmes of
study
0.48 0.5
1
.117
**
1
Father’s
occupation
0.34 0.4
7
.104
*
-
.067
1
Mother’s
occupation
0.12 0.3
3
.157
**
.020 .220
**
1
Gender 1.66 0.4
6
.167
**
-
.115
**
.152
**
.018 1
Working
experience
1.15 0.3
6
.207
**
.090
*
.023 -
.044
.166
**
1
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Image of
entrepreneurship
4.43 0.4
1
.238
**
.100
*
.127
**
.113
**
.019 -
.020
1
Role models 3.80 0.4
6
.112
*
-
.060
.087
*
-
.045
.092
*
.016 .198
**
1
The university’s
role topromote
entrepreneurship
4.13 0.3
5
.301
**
.180
**
-
.026
-
.051
-
.049
.019 .019 .294*
*
1
The
entrepreneurial
internship
programmes
4.29 0.3
8
.154
**
.022 .056 .051 .066 -
.062
.202
**
.149*
*
.317
**
1
The
entrepreneurial
curriculum and
content
4.14 0.4
1
.320
**
.215
**
.006 -
.019
.032 .013 .311
**
.244*
*
.618
**
.296
**
.336
**
1
N= 400; ** p<0.01; * p<0.05
Table 3 presents the means, standard deviations and inter-correlations for the above scales
and demographics well as family business background variables coded as dummy variables. It is
observed that male students and students with self-employed parents have higher inclination
towards entrepreneurship. In addition, university students with working experiences were more
inclined towards entrepreneurship than those without the experience. The role of universities in
promoting entrepreneurship is highly correlated to the entrepreneurial curriculum and content as
well as image of entrepreneurship. Interestingly, from the correlation matrix, all scales have a
statistically significant correlation with entrepreneurial inclination.
Hierarchical multiple regression is designed to test hypotheses where two steps are involved.
Demographic characteristics and family business background are controlled first. Step two
involved both the control and independent variables. The entrepreneurial inclination is the
dependent variables. The results of the hypothesis testing are shown in Table 4. In step 1, when
the control variables are included, the model explains 10.4 per cent of the variation in
entrepreneurial inclination (R2=0.104). However, in step 2, after adding the independent
variables to the model, it explains an additional 11.8 per cent of the variation in entrepreneurial
inclination. This change in R2 is significant, F(6, 405)=10.223; p<0.001. The results of the
analysis demonstrate that the role of universities in promoting entrepreneurship (_=.152, t=2.498,
p<0.05) and the] entrepreneurial curriculum and content (_=.172, t=2.905, p<0.01) are the two
significant independent variables. Therefore, the Hypothesis 1 and Hypothesis 2 were supported.
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Table 4: Regression results on entrepreneurial inclination
Model 1 Model 2
Program of the study 0.119* 0.045
Father’s occupation 0.054 0.040
Mother’s occupation 0.149** 0.152**
Gender 0.140** 0.131**
Work experience 0.179*** 0.184***
Image of entrepreneurship 0.090
Role model -0.007
The University’s role in
promoting entrepreneurship
0.152*
The entrepreneurial internship
program
0.024
Entrepreneurial content and
curriculum
0.172**
R2 0.104 0.222
Adjusted R2 0.093 0.201
∆R2 0.104 0.118
F value for ∆R2 F(5,411)=9.534 F(6,405)=10.223
From Table 4, it is found that gender (β=.131, t=2.859, p<0.01), working experience
(β=.184, t=4.043, p<0.001) and mother’s occupation (β=.152, t=3.320, p<0.01) are statistically
significant for the demographic characteristics and family business background. When the other
demographic and family business background variables were controlled there was a positive
relationship between gender and entrepreneurial inclination, suggesting that, as expected, males
have higher inclination towards entrepreneurship.
Those students with working experiences have higher inclination towards entrepreneurship
which is expected as the previous studies. However, the results show no significant between
students’ programmes of study and inclination towards entrepreneurship. Surprisingly, father’s
occupation was also not statistically significant in relation to student’s inclination towards
entrepreneurship in comparison to mother’s occupation.
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5. Discussions
The purpose of the study was to investigate the university students’ inclination towards
entrepreneurship among Ethiopian university students. The researcher hypothesized those
different variables that play significant role or impact towards entrepreneurial inclination. In
addition, the researcher posited a relationship between entrepreneurship education and
entrepreneurial inclination, entrepreneurship inclination and demographic and family business
background variables. In general, the results of the analysis provide empirical supports for the
position played by the university in promoting entrepreneurship (Edwards and Muir 2005;
Postigo, Iacobucci et al. 2006; Nurmi and Paasio 2007). It is positively correlated to
entrepreneurial inclination. This relationship may be attributable to the increasing demands from
students to seek for quality education from educational institutions that could equip them with the
entrepreneurial competencies in preparing them for future careers.
Moreover, universities are ideally considered the place in shaping entrepreneurial cultures
among students while they are studying (Mahlberg 1996). Hence, it is important for universities
to provide entrepreneurially friendly environment in encouraging and fostering entrepreneurial
culture.
In doing so, universities must be able to design and/or develop the curriculum that would
fulfill the students’ demands as well as the industry. Furthermore, the exposure to entrepreneurial
courses would certainly, to some extent, influence students’ inclination towards entrepreneurship.
The findings added to the body of entrepreneurial study regarding to the Universities role in
promoting the importance of self-employment. The researcher could find that the universities
promotion has positively influenced the students to incline towards entrepreneurship. Another
important finding is that experiential learning is highly encouraging students to focus on creating
their own job. The researcher therefore could suggest that universities teaching methodologies
must focus on field visit, inviting entrepreneurs as guest to the class speaker to share his/her
experience.
6. Conclusion
In this paper, university students’ inclination towards entrepreneurship is examined together
with several related variables. The results of the analyses indicated that two entrepreneurship
education variables, i.e. the university’s role to promote entrepreneurship and the entrepreneurial
curriculum and content along with gender, working experience and mother’s occupation are
statistically significant. These results are anticipated to have certain implications to both
universities and students alike. The changes of the recent roles played by universities, at one
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hand, are much needed in order to create an entrepreneurial environment in an effort to fostering
entrepreneurship among students. On the other hand, students must be ready to be able to swift
their current learning approach to a more practical way which is required in the entrepreneurial
learning process. The findings of the results could also hope to shed some new insights to the
current entrepreneurship literature particularly in Ethiopian settings. The finding of this study
supports the finding of some previous studies, for example Tahseenmahmood et al
(2012),OoiYengKeat et al (no defined), and others.However, this study is not without its
downstream. One of the major limitations of this study is being case in its study nature and as a
result, its finding may not help for general conclusion.
7. Recommendations
Having the finding in the mind, the researcher recommended the following;
The ministry of education must revise the mode of course delivery for entrepreneurship
from lecture to experiential learning
The University must revise the content of the course entrepreneurship
The course entrepreneurship must be included in every department course syllabus
The university leaders must promote more the importance of entrepreneurship to their
students
University leaders and teachers must work on empowering female students on top of
males
The course of entrepreneurship should be included in every syllabus across all
departments
Acknowledgement
My sincere thanks are due to the two Anonymous Reviewers for their useful insights and
comments which greatly helped me to improve the manuscript.
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