Moderating effect of human capital factors on the relationship between entrepreneurship training and entrepreneurial orientation: an empirical study on micro-sized businesses

Abstract

Despite the fact that entrepreneurial orientation (EO) is widely studied in specific literature, little has been done to understand the ability to teach EO, or address the factors that could affect the adoption of such an important strategic entrepreneurial attitude. In this study, we used hierarchical linear regression to test the moderating effect of human capital factors on the relationship between entrepreneurship training and EO. We tested the research hypotheses on 1,330 micro-entrepreneurs who had been previously trained on entrepreneurial attitudes. We found no moderating effect of any of the tested human capital factors such as age, gender, education level, or previous work/job experience. The uniqueness of this study lies in its attempt to investigate the moderating effect of human capital factors on the relationship between entrepreneurship training and EO. According to the findings of this study, we concluded that entrepreneurs can learn and adopt entrepreneurial orientation in their businesses regardless of age, education level, gender, or work experience.