Music Education During Adolescence – A Pathway to Entrepreneurial Identity?

Abstract

This paper examines the relationship of music education (ME) and entrepreneurship education (EE) received during adolescence with entrepreneurial identity of university students. The current identity research provides solid understanding of the relationship of identity with antecedents of planned entrepreneurial behaviour, depicting identity as an explanatory variable. Researching adolescent ME alongside EE as a potential enabler of entrepreneurial identity is crucial to understand complementarities between ME and EE, have a more complete knowledge of what kinds of education may contribute to entrepreneurial identity formation, and consider the identity insights when developing educational interventions for adolescents. Our analysis is based on a sample of 203 Bachelor-level students from different study backgrounds (arts and humanities, business, etc.). We find that both ME and EE received in adolescent period are related to entrepreneurial identity in adulthood. Simultaneously, ME acts as a moderator of the relationship between EE and identity; ME is also a likely predictor of the specific type of founder identity oriented towards serving a community. These new findings contribute to expanding the identity development discourse in entrepreneurship literature, and bring novel insights to the EE research, e.g. highlighting ME as an alternative pathway to entrepreneurial identity development. On a more general level, the study provides an input to adolescent education literature and learning transfer in education research, in particular relating to the discussion on Eriksonian theory on identity development throughout lifetime.