Impact of Business and Management Studies on Students’ Intentions to Become an Entrepreneur

Abstract

Entrepreneurship has been considered a way to enhance economic welfare and to provide employment opportunities. Entrepreneurial studies help in polishing the entrepreneurial skills. However, there is a need to understand which factors affect students’ perceptions of becoming entrepreneurs and the relationship between their entrepreneurial education and their attitudes (or intentions) towards entrepreneurship. Some of the students start their business studies without any intentions of becoming entrepreneurs while others do so to become entrepreneurs. They want to start their own business may be because they have a family business background or because of other intrinsic or extrinsic interests. This paper seeks to contribute towards finding whether obtaining a degree in business education affects students’ attitudes and subjective norms (the perceived social pressure to engage or not to engage in a behavior) about entrepreneurship, and whether these, in turn affect their motivation towards becoming an entrepreneur or not. In doing so, it enhances the understanding of how education can affect students’ attitudes toward entrepreneurship, specifically in Peshawar. This study was carried out by employing a quantitative approach i.e. an OLS regression model. TPB (Theory of Planned Behavior) and EES (Entrepreneurial Event Model) were used to check the intentions and behavior of students towards entrepreneurship. For this purpose, the final year students of BBA (Bachelor in Business Administration) and MBA (Master in Business Administration) are selected at random from Institute of Management Studies (University of Peshawar) and Institute of Management Sciences. The analysis of results showed that there is a positive relationship between entrepreneurial studies and intentions to become an entrepreneur, and that these two variables are more important than the others.2