Drivers and constraints of students’ entrepreneurial intentions across cultural contexts: A neo-configurational perspective

Abstract

Even though there is evidence of interconnectedness among antecedents of entrepreneurial intentions, emphasizing the need for understanding their joint effects, cross-cultural studies focused on students' entrepreneurial intentions have primarily looked into the isolated effects of these factors, neglecting their complex interplay. Drawing upon complexity theory, we aim to fill this gap by exploring how various factors mutually influence students' entrepreneurial intentions across diverse cultural settings. We employ the fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis on a sample of 144 students to generate novel insights about drivers and constraints of entrepreneurial intentions in two distant cultural clusters, i.e., Confucian Asia and Eastern Europe. Our findings shed light on how attitudes, subjective norms, perceived behavioural control and barriers intertwine to shape students' entrepreneurial intentions in different cultural settings, thereby affirming the principles of the neo-configurational perspective adopted in this study—multiple conjunctural causation, causal equifinality, and causal asymmetry. While enriching our understanding of the role of national culture in shaping entrepreneurial intentions, this study provides unique insights to management education scholars and practitioners about the need for tailoring entrepreneurial curricula based on the complexity and cultural sensitivity of antecedents of students’ entrepreneurial intentions.