Assessment of teaching corporate entrepreneurship to masters level students

Abstract

Tertiary education in terms of entrepreneurship is not adequate to stimulate entrepreneurial activity in South Africa. By assessing the effect and successfulness of tertiary modules offered in entrepreneurship (and in this case specifically corporate entrepreneurship) an improvement can be made to these courses which would lead to increased entrepreneurial activity. The purpose of this paper is to determine the effect of a corporate entrepreneurship module that has been offered to master’s level students. The research is designed as a formal study where stated hypotheses are tested to demonstrate if there is a statistical significant difference between the corporate entrepreneurial style and personality of students (over a period of three year) before and after they have completed a master’s level module in CE. A pre- and post test were conducted over a period of three years (2007 – 2009). A self-administered questionnaire was used to obtain the data. A judgemental purposive sampling technique was used and the sample consisted of 101 students. The results indicated that there is a statistical significant difference between the corporate entrepreneurial styles and personalities of students that have completed the course as well as the Intrapreneurial Performance Index. It is recommended that tertiary institutions, specifically in South Africa, must adopt a corporate entrepreneurship module in their post-graduate programmes which will assist to equip employees to become more entrepreneurial within existing businesses. Key words: Corporate entrepreneurship; corporate entrepreneurship style; corporate entrepreneurial personality; education; Intrapreneurial Performance Quotient; teaching methods.