Abstract
Intention plays a very important role to measure one’s willingness to pursue entrepreneurship as a career. Previous researchers have differed about various antecedents that impact the entrepreneurial intention to start a business. Entrepreneurship education (EE) assumes to play an important role in shaping traits and attitudes of an entrepreneur, contrary to the “entrepreneurs are born” school of thought. We use the Individual entrepreneurship orientation (IEO) construct as developed by Boltan and Lane (2011) to measure its impact on the intention levels of students. The use of Effectuation (Sarasvathy, 2001)as a pedagogical tool is used as a mediating variable between IEO and intentions. In a leading business school, a group of 63 business graduates were taught entrepreneurship based on effectual principles as proposed by Sarasvathy(2001).The empirical findings suggest an insignificant impact of IEO on student’s intention levels; however the impact is significant when effectuation is used as a mediating variable between IEO and entrepreneurial intentions. The paper discusses the theoretical foundations of individual entrepreneurial orientation, effectuation and intention, and then empirically tests the proposed model, followed by findings and recommendations. The findings of this research empirically established that the elements of IEO (i.e. risk taking, pro activeness, and innovation) independently do not increase students intentions to start a business, however when mediated by effectuation approach the intention levels of students were positively affected.
Highlights
Entrepreneurship has been considered as a very important tool in bringing an economy out of poverty and increasing employment levels
The part played by entrepreneurship education in promoting entrepreneurship is considered to be the key element in changing attitudes of the people(Potter, 2008)
As the empirical tests reveals, Individual entrepreneurship orientation (IEO) does not have a significant direct impact on the student’s intention to start a business. It is only significant if we teach them the effectuation principles
Summary
Entrepreneurship has been considered as a very important tool in bringing an economy out of poverty and increasing employment levels. D. Sarasvathy, 2001)which can be used in class whereby a student has to model an entrepreneurial character This activity helps students understand the importance of making partnerships and accepting surprises in an entrepreneurial venture, as by entering into the shoes of the entrepreneur the students is able to naturally act and think in an effectual way. This positively impacts the thinking capability of the students and they are able to come up with innovative strategies. Instead of expected returns I look at the downside risk of the opportunity
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