Determinant competencies for emerging educators\u2019 entrepreneurial behavior in the Institute of Agricultural Applied- Scientific Education, Iran

Abstract

Nowadays, entrepreneurship has attracted more attention in the world and is considered one of the new and essential tasks in skill training systems. The present study aimed to investigate determinant competencies of emerging educators’ entrepreneurial behavior in the Institute of Agricultural Applied Scientific Education (IAASE). The research was an applied and descriptive correlation study carried out through a survey. The population of the study was composed of 190 faculty members in IAASE in Tehran, Fars, Semnan, Isfahan and Khorasan Razavi provinces, Iran. Using Krejcie and Morgan’s (Educ Psychol Meas 30:607-610, 1970) table and proportional to size stratified random sampling method, 123 faculty members were selected as research sample (n = 123). The data collecting tool was a questionnaire whose validity was confirmed by a panel of six experts and its reliability was determined by calculating Cronbach’s alpha coefficients for different sections between 0.71 and 0.93. Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 18 was used for data analysis. The results of correlation between variables showed a positive and significant relationship between career adaptability, networking skill, occupational self-efficacy, creative thinking, and entrepreneurship climate with educators’ entrepreneurial behavior. In addition, the results of hierarchical multiple regression showed that entrepreneurship climate variable was able to adjust the relation between networking skill and career adaptability with educators entrepreneurial behavior. In other words, the educators with highly networking and occupational adaptability skills, in ideal situations, show more entrepreneurial behavior. Finally, in order to improve the current situation, some suggestions are presented to increase the educators’ entrepreneurial behavior in agricultural applied scientific institutes.